Our guide to creating a SWOT matrix analysis to prioritize digital marketing strategy with the TOWS technique
A SWOT analysis is an essential part of any business or marketing plan. It allows you to create a plan of action based not on what you’re interested in doing or on your gut-feel, but what you need to do given the situation in the marketplace. It considers your capabilities for marketing against competitors plus looks at opportunities created as new technologies are introduced.
What is a SWOT?
As you’ll know it’s a planning tool summarising the internal Strengths and Weaknesses against external Opportunities and Threats. These external opportunities and threats are available to all competitors in the marketplace. Our technique recommends a 2 X 2 matrix for SWOT and TOWS analysis, you'll find examples below.
Why is SWOT analysis useful?
When creating a digital marketing plan, SWOT analysis is an essential step. I think it’s sometimes seen as…
Strategic analysis of an organization is an essential factor when it comes to formulating a plan for the smoother working of your company
Strategic analysis refers to the process of researching an organization and its working environment to formulate a strategy. There are many other definitions of strategic analysis with a different perspective. But they all involve a lot of common factors.
What is strategic analysis?
Strategic analysis of an organization is an essential factor for planning and optimizing your marketing strategy. With the help of strategic planning, you can align and achieve your marketing objectives with your business' overall vision.
Improvement is the one constant in any company. You need to keep improving your organization. So, to educate yourself, you must periodically conduct strategic analysis. This will then help your organization to plan ahead and determine which areas need improvement.
We've got marketing solutions to support you and your team to conduct and implement…
5 reasons why SWOT analysis is still relevant to marketing strategy development
Over the last few years, it sometimes feels like the SWOT analysis is under attack. Only a few years ago I remember the contrarian views of Mark Ritson in his column for Marketing Week when he started knocking SWOT analysis, a technique that I continue to use and recommend for creating digital marketing strategies.
Here's a flavour of his views, from the post for Marketing Week which was expanded on in a post for Australia's B&T titled the utter pointlessness of SWOT, Ritson said:
"The big clue to the utter pointlessness of the SWOT approach can be gleaned from its total lack of value to any marketer".
He was talking about the application in the real-world and bemoaning why it is still taught in universities and colleges. I'd certainly agree - if it doesn't work in the real world, it shouldn't…
Benchmark the priority areas for your digital marketing strategy
The fact is, there isn't a perfect time for any benchmarking, so now as good a time as any to take a little time to reflect on your team or your organisations strenghts and weaknesses and how you feel that's bearing up against your top 2 or 3 competitors. So much changes in a year, internally and externally, and there's a lot to be said for a pragmatic review to ensure that your focus and undoubtedly limited resources are in the right place for 2012.
With this in mind, we decided to create a new Internet marketing benchmark tool for our Expert members.
What exactly do you health check?
[caption id="attachment_9345" align="alignright" width="271"] The Healthcheck tool now available to Expert members[/caption]
It's a little like going to a health clinic for a check-up, we believe, there…
