"Network Solutions - Small business conversations and working together for small business success" - 3 new articles
Doing the SWOT Analysis Dance - Part 9 of the 2009 Marketing Plan SeriesConcluding our dive into the sub-sections of the situational analysis, we wrap up with the all important SWOT analysis. It is a dance of sorts because you have to dance around the fact that in some ways your competitors might have over you but it is better that you learn this now and how to work around it or market against it that will help you in the long run. The term SWOT analysis stands for "Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats". Start with posing these sessions to your brainstorming team: Are your competitors becoming stronger? Are there emerging trends that amplify one of your weaknesses? Do you see other external threats to your company's success? Internally, do you have financial, development, or other problems? Let’s break each part down and then wrap up with some the advantages this section can offer you and your team: Strengths: Here is where you must capture the positive aspects internal to your business that add value or offer you a competitive advantage. This is an opportunity to remind yourself of the value existing within your business. Think about what your company does well. You should address the strengths within your business that add value to your product or your marketing efforts. You should also describe your positive tangible and intangible attributes.
Weaknesses: These are factors that detract from your ability to have a competitive edge. It includes the negative aspects internal to your business that distracting customers from seeing the value you offer or place you at a competitive disadvantage. These are areas you need to enhance in order to compete with your best competitor. The more accurately you identify your weaknesses, the more valuable the SWOT Analysis is to your readers. Some questions to help you get started are: What do your customers complain about? What are the unmet needs of your sales force? Opportunities: Traditionally, a SWOT looks only at the external environment for opportunities. I suggest you look externally for areas your competitors are not fully covering, then go a step further and think how to match these to your internal strengths. Remember, these are opportunities external to your business. If you have identified "opportunities" that are internal to the organization and within your control, you will want to classify them as "strengths". Try to uncover areas where your strengths are not being fully utilized. Are there emerging trends that fit with your company's strengths? Is there a product/service area that others have not yet covered? Threats: A threat is a challenge created by an unfavorable trend or development that may lead to deteriorating revenues or profits. As with opportunities, threats in a traditional SWOT analysis are considered an external force. By looking both inside and outside of your company for things that could damage your business, however, you may be better able to see the big picture. Competition — existing or potential — is always a threat. Other threats may include intolerable price increases by suppliers, government regulation, economic downturns, devastating media or press coverage, a shift in consumer behavior that reduces your sales, or the introduction of a "leap-frog" technology that may make your products, equipment, or services obsolete. What situations might threaten your marketing efforts? Get your worst fears on the table. A part of this list may be speculative in nature and still add value to your SWOT analysis. Advantages of a SWOT Analysis - Uncovering Opportunities This is where you look externally for areas your competitors are not fully covering, then go a step further and think how to match these to your internal strengths. Try to uncover areas where your strengths are not being fully utilized. Are there emerging trends that fit with your company's strengths? Is there a product/service area that others have not yet covered? Once you have uncovered these opportunities take each one and discuss how you will market them. Will it be a mixed marketing campaign? A targeted sales effort? What resources will you need (e.g. new collateral, selling guides, web site content, e-mail marketing)? Advantages of a SWOT Analysis - Address and Overcome Problems Problems are not necessarily a bad thing. They are just issues that need to be overcome. It is better to get out front of problems that may exist than have them rear their ugly head when you are selling or raising money. Problems could be strong competitors, your product lacking critical features that you are not able to roll out yet or a long sales cycle. You should list each problem and discuss an approach to overcome them in a sales situation and with specific marketing messages that counter what a customer might be thinking. How Do You Make Financials Sing? - Part 8 of the 2009 Marketing Plan SeriesYou can’t have a product discussion and not include financial for the number geeks in all of us. We will dive into our “Marketing Plan Financials in Plan English” toward the end of the series but many will need to connect some financial dots in the situational analysis at a high level leaving the detailed stuff (budgeting, break even analysis and cash flow analysis) for the “back of the book”. This section should be about 2-4 pages in length and kids, keep it pretty for the rest of us. Now while you will need to write some short paragraphs to explain your information, tables and graphs are your friend here. The Financial Analysis section is separated into two general areas - sales and profitability Part 1 - Sales Anaylsis In this section you need to focus on the current sales that your industry and you business are doing across segments, product categories and various distribution channels. Let’s break it down like this: Overall Industry and Market Share - Sales for the Entire Market Sales By Segments and/or Product Categories - Sales by segments and/or product categories Sales By Distribution Channel - Sales for each channel Sales By Geography - Sales for Each Region Part 2 - Profitability Analysis Since we focused on sales which is really revenues, we need to splice this up and see what is actually profitable. Just because you can make money from it does not mean you make a profit. You will need to look across the revenues and include the marketing related expenses. Let’s break it down like this: Revenue Breakdown - Use the sales numbers from above but identify realized revenues not just projections Marketing Expense Breakdown - Direct Marketing Expenses - These are the expenses that are tied to the product(s) and must be identified in that way Again, stay high level Since this part of the situational analysis, you are using this sub-section to make your point and support your overall analysis. More detailed financial stuff comes later and in our final posts in the marketing plan we will do it in plain English. On Office Pools, Social Networking and ProductivitySince we’re heading into the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games this weekend, I figured it’s not too late to look at how the office tournament pool, mixed in with a little social media, can be a tool to help improve inter- and intra-office communications. Earlier this week at The OPEN Forum Blog, there was a blog entry, “A Little March Madness Can Be Good for the Workplace,” [link via Fark] that was a refreshing change from the standard, pre-written annual “the NCAA tournament costs employers $_ billion in lost productivity” story ($4 billion, according to the linked MSNBC article, followed by the just-as-predictable counter-articles) Not to make too big a thing of it, but I think there’s a valid point here about why office pools are good. But it’s not the point about the sketchy numbers, the value of distractions from hard times, or even the soft “good for morale” argument. The value of things like office pools, happy hours, softball leagues, language learning lunches, and other social activities, is that they help encourage social networking among employees (that’s social networking in the traditional sense, not just online). They provide venues for social interactions among groups that might not normally mix (especially in bigger companies), where interpersonal, horizontal connections can form (no, not those kinds of interpersonal, horizontal connections), which can later help build shortcuts, get around artificial institutional barriers, and flatten hierarchies, to help people form true interdisciplinary teams. Basically, that was a bunch of organizational jargon that means you can meet people who might be able to help you get stuff done, or who can point you to people who can answer a question, or who might be more willing to take the extra step for you because they know you. And because these activities are at least somewhat removed from official office stuff (even if they’re sanctioned), they let people engage on a different level than they would on, say, an official “team-building exercise,” or a cringeworthy skit during an all-hands meeting. I’m just going by my own anecdotal experiences, but I’ve found that establishing and maintaining social connections with people in unrelated groups has paid off for me many times. Of course, office networking has been around ever since there were offices. So how’s social media fit into this? I think that social status sharing and “ambient intimacy” tools like Twitter and IM away messages help make it easier to maintain connections that you’ve made during social activities. They’re relatively unintrusive, and even if they only give you the illusion of really “knowing” a person, they can give you context to better prepare you for professional interactions. (Then again, if you’re a jerk, maybe you don’t want people to get to know you better. But even then, knowing that you’re a jerk can be valuable to other people, so they can either route around you, or figure out a more effective strategy of dealing with you.) In many ways, corporate implementations of social media tools are just ways to unlock, codify, and make accessible all the personal networking information we’ve got stored in our melons. Which is why I’m interested to see how organizations adopt social media tools that go beyond just pure knowledge management and communication. Anyway, the office tournament pool is a particularly good example of these kinds of activities — the barrier to entry is low; the skill factor is balanced by luck; the potential financial stake keeps people interested; and there’s plenty of stuff to talk about while it’s happening (and it even has a built-in expiration date). Is this just an elaborate apologia for the office pool? Or do you think it can be a launch point for better office communication? Leave a comment below. (Heck, you can also tell us how your bracket is doing. Mine is kind of middlin’.) More Recent Articles
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