One of the most useful strategic-planning tools for any business is conducting a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis. This technique is used to guide planning and decision making by identifying four key components that factor into meeting your business objectives. A foundational element of our strategic planning at Communiqué PR is to consider a business’s brand positioning and the overall environment in which the business is doing business.
Conducting a SWOT analysis is advantageous for many reasons. It can guide any business decision large or small, whether you’re introducing a new process for employee onboarding or managing finances and physical resources.
Identifying the four elements of a SWOT analysis is only the beginning – the real value lies within addressing your SWOT analysis findings to strengthen your business. Before Communiqué welcomes new clients, we research and speak with the business to determine where their business is at in whole, using some of the questions below as a framework to obtain deeper and more meaningful insights. For example, we may ask, “What publication would you like to see your business in?” This question addresses the opportunism that lies ahead.
Here are a few example questions to guide the development of a SWOT analysis:
Strengths and Weaknesses. You’ll want to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the business or brand in the marketplace. Please note, these should focus on the internal business or brand and not the market conditions. Here are some example questions to identify business strengths and weaknesses:
- Where is your business most proficient?
- What driving factor(s) result in making sales or generating new business?
- What is the strongest product or service your business offers?
- What are the sales figures and profit margins of your business’s key brands?
- What is your product’s positioning and how does it resonate with key audiences?
- Where do you need improvement most?
- Where are you lacking growth?
- In what areas have you experienced failure? What led to it?
Opportunities and Threats. Considering both opportunities and threats is crucial to a business’s long-term success. Both of these elements are external and represent ways your business will be impacted by market conditions. Some examples of questions to ask when identifying business opportunities and threats are:
- What is the market health?
- What are the industry’s trends?
- How is your cash flow and how can it be improved?
- What events, speaking opportunities and awards can you take advantage of to boost your presence?
- What is the status of your competitor’s products or services?
- Are there forecast shifts in consumer behavior, governmental regulations and the economy?
- Will supplier costs eventually increase?
- Is emerging technology changing how customers or clients interact with your business?
Working toward a PR major at Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, Wash., I took marketing courses where we frequently conduct SWOT analyses for projects. By doing this, we better understood how businesses achieved better results.
One of these projects included creating a PR campaign and SWOT analysis for a local non-profit business, Backyard Harvest – they work to provide fresh produce to the communities in the Palouse and Lewis-Clark Valley. Two outcomes our class procured by doing this were:
- Launching a discussion focused on improving the non-profit business.
- Developing materials that would likely increase the number of volunteers among WSU and University of Idaho students.
In any industry, and especially as PR professionals, it is important to conduct a SWOT analysis, as it enables professionals to develop a plan that leverages their business’s strengths and capitalizes on broader market conditions. Most importantly, SWOT analyses allow companies to implement the appropriate strategies to achieve key business and communication goals.