How to Conduct a SWOT Analysis (Examples in Business & Marketing)

A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis is a simple yet powerful tool to help you develop your business strategy.

A SWOT analysis is a powerful tool because it enables you to quickly study the fundamentals of a company or project and provides ideas on the opportunities you need to take advantage of and the threats you need to mitigate.

Who should do a SWOT analysis?

When a business decides how to expand its territory, launch a new product, or face off competitors, a SWOT analysis facilitates a realistic, fact-based, and data-driven look at the business and informs further actions.

Questions that help inspire SWOT analysis

Here are some questions to guide you through building your SWOT analysis. These questions are focused on a SWOT analysis of your own company, but you can ask the same questions about your competitors to analyse them.

Strengths

Strengths are what your company does well that separate you from the competition. They are the internal, positive attributes of your company that are within your control.

SWOT-Strength General Questions:

• What competitive advantages do you have over your competition?
• What is successful about your business processes and strategy?

SWOT-Strength Examples:

• Intangible assets you have in your business, such as knowledge, education, network, patents, skills, and reputation and brand (i.e., a good client profile)
• Technology assets such as your website, platform, algorithms and other proprietary technology
• Physical assets you have, such as customers, equipment and cash (i.e., adequate cash flow)
• An efficient and low-cost business process

SWOT-Strength Example Questions In Marketing:

• What advantages do we have to achieve the marketing goal?
• What are the available tools to help us reach the marketing goal?
• How do we leverage our existing channels and audience?
• Any unique differentiators that separate our own brand?

 

SWOT-Strength Examples in Marketing

• Worldwide reputation in the marketplace
• Well-established brand position with a well-defined market niche
• Large audience base
• Good marketing budget

Weaknesses

Weaknesses are what your company lacks and your competitors do better than you. These are things that you might need to improve on.

 

SWOT-Weaknesses In general

• Are there things that your business needs to be competitive?
• What business processes need improvement?
• What tech limitations may prevent us from achieving the goal?
• Are there tangible assets that your company needs, such as money or equipment?
• Time-consuming work that prevents the business to achieve the goal

SWOT-Weaknesses In marketing

• Unclear unique selling point
• Product not innovating itself
• Ineffective distribution channels
• Resources limitation

Opportunities

Opportunities are external factors in your business environment that you are yet to leverage.

SWOT-Opportunities In general

• Is your market growing and are there trends that will encourage people to buy more of what you are selling?
• Are there upcoming events that your company may be able to take advantage of to grow the business?
• Are there upcoming changes to regulations that might impact your company positively?

SWOT-Opportunities Examples

• Underserved markets for a specific product
• Few competitors in your area
• Emerging needs for your products or services

SWOT-Opportunities In marketing

• What tactics are your competitors not utilizing?
• What channels are you not using but your target audience are?
• What new trends can be leveraged upon?

SWOT-Opportunities Examples

• Pop-up trending news that you can align with your brand
• Finding unconventional potential partners for collaboration and crossover
• Marketing on new social media channels that your target demographic is using

Threats

Threats are external factors that you have no control over. You may want to consider putting in place contingency plans for dealing with them if they occur.

SWOT-Threats In general

• Do you have potential competitors who may enter your market?
• Will suppliers always be able to supply what you need at the prices you need?
• Could future developments in technology change how you do business?
• Are there market trends that could become a threat?

SWOT-Threats Examples

• Emerging competitors
• Changing regulatory environment
• Changing customer behavior

 

SWOT-Threats In marketing

• What market conditions (or audience sentiment) may prevent us from achieving the marketing goal?
• Is consumer behavior changing in a way that could negatively impact your marketing effort?
• Are there new emerging channels that your competitors are leveraging but you are not?

SWOT-Threats Examples

• What market conditions (or audience sentiment) may prevent us from achieving the marketing goal?
• Negative media coverage
• Distribution channel in jeopardy (i.e. low reach on certain channels)

 

Steps to conduct a SWOT analysis

 

Step 1 – Gather requirements – What is the goal for conducting a SWOT analysis? (Changing business model? Improving business process? Analyzing new competitors?)

Step 2 – Fact-based research – Use competitive tools and industry data (Statista, Similar Web, Pitchbook, etc.) to map out the full picture.

Step 3 – Involve various parties in the discussion – Gather data and insights from various departments and seniority in a company, so you can get a diverse view and avoid group bias.

Step 4 -Establish priorities from the SWOT

• How can we use our strengths to take advantage of the opportunities identified?
• How can we use these strengths to overcome the threats identified?
• What do we need to do to overcome the identified weaknesses in order to take advantage of the opportunities?
• How will we minimize our weaknesses to overcome the identified threats?

Case Study 1: Canva’s Business SWOT Analysis

Strengths	Weaknesses
Large customer base Powerful brand recognition – More than 60% direct traffic Well-defined audience niche – people with little design experience who wants to create visuals Nice credibility – company business partners include Huffington Post, Lonely Planet, TechCrunch etc.	Relied on US market and South America market Few income streams (paid user subscriptions and company plan) Huge IT infrastructure investment and maintenance cost due to freemium business model
Opportunities	Threats
Increase use of social media raise the demand of quick visual editing tool Potentials in Europe and Asia to be unleashed Potential partnership with platforms that have large user base	Large rival – competitors include Adobe and Microsoft Decreasing demand on printing goods (cards, recipe calendar etc.) lower the needs of using Canva Social media usage moving towards video consumption and Canva’s video template function is facing huge competition

Case Study 2: Canva’s Marketing SWOT Analysis

Strengths	Weaknesses
Powerful brand recognition A well-defined product facilitates marketing messaging Nice credibility – higher chance to get users to later stages of a user-acquisition funnel Strong SEO presence	User base mainly on English markets Difficult to convert free users to paid ones High app user acquisition costs Low app user retention
Opportunities	Threats
Engage potential users (marketing degree students, high school students, elderlies etc.) Leverage increasing MEMES usage and create MEMES and Giphy templates	Pressure in increasing the marketing budget if competing in the US market Low audience reach in common digital channels like Facebook and Instagram

With clear goals and actions in hand, businesses can start creating their strategic planning with the right information.