The SWOT analysis, or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Chances are you've come across these English terms before in your life. This business model for a so-called strength-weakness analysis may sound outdated, old-fashioned and dusty, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Even today, SWOT analysis is extremely useful when it comes to setting goals for almost any business. Why? We'll tell you why below.

The goals we set with our clients help determine their business results. As soon as we sit down with a client to set new goals or adjust existing ones, we find that sometimes this is more difficult than you might expect.

A well-defined goal or, more importantly, a long-term strategy stands or falls with adequate knowledge of the market in which the client operates. That's where a SWOT analysis comes in.

A SWOT analysis, so to speak, is a practical tool for refining business strategy. You set the strengths and weaknesses of a company against the opportunities and threats of the market in which the company operates. Such a clear analysis ensures that some things suddenly become crystal clear.

That said, it is by no means a magic model for instant success, but rather offers insights into the company's positioning and desired direction.

To begin, it is important to determine the exact subject of the analysis. Are you going to analyze the entire organization, are you going to focus on a particular department, product group or service? The more specific you are here, the more valuable the information you get from the SWOT analysis. We determine this topic for the internal analysis together with the client.

Next, together we determine which market we are in for the external analysis. Once these factors are clear, we have a clear delineation for both the internal and external analysis.

This internal analysis provides insight into issues in which the company is stronger or weaker than the competition. You can use the strengths as competencies to exploit the opportunities and counteract the threats that roll out from the external analysis. To then develop the internal analysis, we answer the following questions, among others:

• What is the current positioning?
• What is the current marketing strategy?
• What SEO activities are currently being done and how are they performing?
• What are the social media activities?
• How is the website performing?
• Are ads being advertised, and if so, how are these ads performing?
• How is the company/product/service currently performing?
• What is the competitive advantage/distinctive character?
• What is the current marketing performance?

For the external analysis, we look at the market. We want to gain insight into this so that we can determine (potential) opportunities and threats. Here it is good to look at both the competition and the target group. Questions we answer include:

• What changes are going on in the market?
• Who are the competitors?
• Who is the target audience?
• What keywords are competitors scoring on?
• What keywords is the target audience using?
• What social media platforms are being used?

The internal and external analysis are complete. Now what? The next step is to draw conclusions and contrast strengths and weaknesses with opportunities and threats. Are you just starting to make SWOT analyses? Then you can use the so-called "confrontation matrix" to map this out in an orderly fashion.

We are already more experienced - of course 😉 - so we often get straight to work formulating the main areas of concern. These can be things like:

• We set up ad campaigns for Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn
• We make sure an x number of pages rank for search term 'x'
• We make proposals for a re-design of the website
• We are shaking up the site structure

And we could go on with examples for a while, because there are plenty of options! The important thing is that we always put in an SEO, SEA or social media related solution. Of course, the exact content of this solution varies from client to client.

For example, for HelloChair optimized the product feed. This has led to more clicks and more conversions from Google Shopping ads. Indeed, if we compare the number of conversions in May with those in April, they increased by 46.67%.

Why is it so valuable to do this SWOT analysis with our team? New perspectives give new insights! When you make such an analysis on your own as a company or department, you may end up in tunnel vision and unexpectedly overlook things. By doing the analysis together with people who have both a fresh perspective and different areas of expertise, you will get surprising insights anyway.

Need help with your business strategy and can't figure it out on your own? Come through with your request.

We'd love to work with your company and story to create an enlightening SWOT analysis and put your digital goals and desires into action. Get in touch with usand who knows, maybe we'll see each other soon at a splashy brainstorming session!

schedule a brainstorm