It’s finally time to put all the data together. We’ll conduct an easy SWOT analysis for that. To make sure we’re on the same page, here’s a definition of SWOT analysis:
A SWOT analysis is a strategic overview of your company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Threats and Opportunities.
Rather than cover tons of theory, let’s keep things simple and take a look at what I came up with for my imaginary email marketing software company:
Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats
Sole focus on email marketing -> simplicity for the end user Not a well-known brand. Go after SMBs and bloggers by focusing on what’s important to them when positioning the product. Going after customers who already use other platforms might be an uphill battle. It takes time getting used to one and they might be tied to using more products at once.
Comparable product to competitors for a lower cost. Considerably lower marketing budget. Explore the option of increasing email
deliverability as one of the features.
Live support available for anyone. Lacking integrations competitors have. We have a more flexible team -> opportunity to be the first one on the market to reflect potential upcoming regulatory changes like GDPR.
The workload like this whatsapp number list allows both the vendor and the affiliate to focus on. Clicks are the number of clicks coming to your website’s URL from organic search results.
More personalized communication. Build great free tools with high search demand.
To make things even clearer, here’s the formal explanation of what each column should include:
Strengths: advantages of the business or product over competitors
Weaknesses: disadvantages of the business or product relative to competitors
Opportunities: external factors the business can leverage to its advantage
Threats: external factors that can cause problems for the business
A SWOT analysis simply allows you to wrap all the information up in a comprehensible format.
Final thoughts
Competitive analysis is an important component to creating a great marketing strategy. However, it’s not a one-time thing, I’d recommend to come back and refresh it once a year as you, your competitors, and the market evolve over time.
The key is to put your findings into action. Because if you get your market research wrong, it will affect both your marketing strategy and tactics.