SWOT Analysis: The Guide to Doing It Right

SWOT analysis is a management technique that helps companies identify their business's strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Learn more.

Salesforce Staff

November 20, 2024 1 min read

A SWOT analysis can be an incredible way to better get to know your company, your competitors, your customers and prospects. Read on to learn how to implement SWOT analysis in your business effectively.

SWOT analysis is a management technique that helps companies identify their business’s strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In addition, SWOT stands for Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Threats.

Regardless of industry or scale, SWOT analysis is a valuable tool for any organisation. The technique can even be applied to different sectors of the same organisation.

From marketing to product development, it is a valuable tool for assessing a company’s current position in the market, understanding industry trends and outlining strategies for the future.

In this article, we will demystify SWOT analysis, making it a practical and straightforward tool for your business strategy. We’ll explain what it is, how to apply it, and, most importantly, how it can benefit your business. Let’s get started!

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What is SWOT Analysis?

As mentioned above, SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Threats. Before we delve into these topics, it is worth noting that SWOT analysis is usually done as a matrix. This matrix is divided into four quadrants, each representing an aspect of the SWOT analysis.

Visually representing a SWOT matrix effectively summarises the information you’ve gathered and highlights key findings. Visualisation helps simplify the analysis, making it easier to understand and share with others.

The SWOT matrix presents information clearly and concisely, making it easier to remember and discuss. Its visual format helps identify patterns and trends, facilitating informed decision-making.

Finally, the matrix is usually organised in a specific pattern, following this logic:

Above: internal elements of the organisation (Strengths and Weaknesses)
Left: positive elements (Strengths and Opportunities)
Below: external elements (Opportunities and Threats)
Right: Negative elements (Weaknesses and Threats)

Now that we understand how the matrix is organised let’s explore what belongs in each quadrant of your SWOT analysis.

Strengths: These are your company’s strengths, that is, what it does well and can use to stand out in the market. Examples include fast delivery, talented professionals, experience serving large clients, or a specific niche.
Opportunities: These are external factors that could benefit your business. Examples include new technologies, unexplored market niches, emerging consumer demands, or the launch of new social media platforms.
Weaknesses: Everything your company needs to improve to remain competitive in the market, such as an unmotivated or inexperienced team, high prices, inefficient processes, or a bad reputation.
Threats: These are market trends, which are shifts in the market that can harm the company, and competitive threats, which are challenges posed by other companies. Examples include economic instability, high competition, or changes in legislation.

What benefits does SWOT analysis bring to a business?

SWOT analysis is a widely used tool to assess the strategic position of a company, organisation or project.

With this analysis, strategies can be defined to maximise strengths, minimise weaknesses, take advantage of opportunities and face threats.

Let’s look at some benefits of using SWOT analysis in different scenarios and applications:

Identifying the company’s strengths and weaknesses:

Identifying your strengths and weaknesses requires thoughtful reflection. When conducting a SWOT analysis, set aside dedicated time to carefully consider these aspects of your business or project.

An example of a strength could be the quality of your products and the efficiency of your processes. Try to base your analysis on real evidence rather than intuition. Quality recognition seals, success rates, and customer feedback are essential indicators that accurately identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Market and competition assessment

Likewise, SWOT analysis also allows you to identify market opportunities and competitive threats, such as new consumer trends, regulatory changes, entry of new competitors, and other variables that may affect your business.

Take the boom in AI-based applications like ChatGPT, for example. Using this new technology is a huge opportunity for various industries, from healthcare to data science. On the other hand, your competition will also be looking to stand out and become a threat.

Definition of strategies

SWOT analysis enables you to define strategies that maximise strengths, minimise weaknesses, capitalise on opportunities, and address identified threats.

Strategy definition is the core purpose of SWOT analysis. The true value lies not just in identifying weaknesses but in developing solutions to address them while leveraging strengths and opportunities.

Clear and objective communication

To include several points in the SWOT matrix, it’s necessary to synthesise a lot of complex information. Things on paper like “unmotivated team” can give rise to countless explanations, but with the SWOT analysis, you and your team must identify the actual problem, making communication with the company’s partners, other employees, investors, and customers easier.

How to do a SWOT analysis?

Now that you understand the main advantages of SWOT analysis, it’s time to apply it. Start by clearly defining your objective. Are you aiming to reposition your brand, launch a new product, or run a marketing campaign?

Once you’ve set your goal, invite relevant team members to a meeting. Choose participants based on your objective to ensure productive collaboration. For example, a marketing team member might be crucial when discussing a product launch, while a developer may offer less insight for an influencer campaign.

While SWOT analyses are typically conducted in group settings, they can also be performed effectively by individuals. The individual approach trades diverse perspectives for deeper, more focused insights. This method allows for more detailed exploration of ideas, though it lacks the benefit of multiple viewpoints.

The SWOT analysis typically takes a few hours but may extend to a full day for complex topics. Prepare necessary materials for note-taking and brainstorming. Use whiteboards, paper, pens, and sticky notes, or digital tools like Miro for remote teams.

After gathering all points, evaluate the collected information and identify key factors for strategy and decision-making. Prioritise these factors based on their importance to the company or project.

Use the analysis results to develop business strategies, marketing plans, and other strategic documents. Review and update the SWOT analysis regularly to stay informed about market changes and internal conditions.

SWOT Analysis Example

To make this content more educational, we have prepared an example of a SWOT Analysis that can serve as a model for you. Let’s imagine that we are a company focused on the B2B market, which sells personalised gifts for employees and events. In this sense, we must consider and analyse our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Tips for getting your SWOT analysis off the ground

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool, but it is only helpful if the company knows how to analyse and put the information you have gathered and put on paper into practice. To leverage the full potential of your SWOT analysis, incorporate these proven techniques into your strategic planning process:

Prioritise strategies: Prioritise strategies by identifying the most crucial actions for your business. Consider starting with easily achievable goals or focusing on high-impact initiatives. Engage your team in a thoughtful discussion to create a well-reasoned priority list.
Set goals and objectives: Ensure that your goals and objectives align with the company’s mission and vision.
Develop an action plan: Break down your goals into manageable steps. Figure out who’s best suited to handle each part and put them in charge.
Monitor and evaluate progress: Implement regular reviews to assess the execution of your action plan. Analyse key performance indicators and milestones achieved. Based on these assessments, make timely adjustments to strategies and tactics as needed.

Practical Applications of SWOT Analysis

Now that you’ve learned about SWOT Analysis, you might be wondering how to put it to use. Let’s explore some ways to use this technique:

Business strategy development

SWOT analysis is widely used for developing business strategies as it helps organisations identify their strengths and weaknesses.

Examples:

An online retailer can use SWOT analysis to spot opportunities for expanding into growing product categories while assessing and mitigating competitive risks.

A construction firm might discover a trend of project delays through customer feedback. Using this insight, the company can explore new project management methods or introduce employee incentives to boost productivity.

Marketing planning

By using SWOT analysis to create a marketing plan, you can assess your company’s positioning in relation to the market and its competitors. By using SWOT analysis to assess market trends and identify customer preferences, a company can develop a marketing strategy that delivers results.

Examples:

A fashion brand notices its customers are increasingly interested in conscious consumption and sustainability. By leveraging this insight, the company can craft marketing messages that resonate with these values, potentially boosting product appeal and sales.

When launching a new app for teenagers and young adults, a development company identifies an opportunity to focus its marketing campaign on TikTok and Instagram, platforms popular with its target audience.

Project management

SWOT analysis enhances project management by allowing teams to assess their resources and capabilities against project requirements. This process helps identify and minimise risks, ultimately leading to more effective project execution and better outcomes.

Examples:
A consulting firm identified its team’s skills and knowledge in relation to the project requirements. With this information, tasks were assigned, and an action plan was defined according to each member’s capabilities, increasing the effectiveness and quality of deliverables.

An engineering firm can use SWOT analysis to assess its resources relative to a specific project, considering factors such as time and budget. From there, it can develop a project management plan that takes into account the challenges identified.

Performance evaluation

Another way to use SWOT analysis is to assess a company’s performance in relation to its goals and objectives. By doing this, the company can identify which areas are successful and which need more attention and effort.

SWOT Examples:

A retail company can use SWOT analysis to evaluate store performance across Australia and New Zealand. This helps identify successful stores and those needing improvement. The company can then replicate effective strategies or investigate regional factors affecting poor performance.

A healthcare company can use SWOT analysis to assess its disease prevention programs. This approach highlights successful areas and those needing improvement, helping to enhance overall program effectiveness.

Did you enjoy learning more about SWOT Analysis?

SWOT analysis is a simple and effective tool that can help businesses of all types and sizes stay competitive and achieve their goals.

By identifying your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you can develop informed business strategies and make better decisions across all business areas.

To perform a SWOT analysis, it’s important to follow the correct steps and ensure that the SWOT matrix is carefully analysed and implemented.

With SWOT analysis as part of their strategic planning, companies can position themselves for long-term success.

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