Simple marketing models to help you develop winning strategies – Part 2: SWOT

How the SWOT marketing model works.  

Strategic marketing models, such as the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), can be a useful tool to support more effective marketing strategies and campaign plans. 

Much of the content is already known, either by you or your colleagues and other stakeholders. These models help by providing a framework you can use to share ideas and plans, and the thinking behind those ideas and plans. 

Why use strategic marketing models? 

Marketing models can be useful for gathering structured information and developing your thinking. They are also effective frameworks to shape how you communicate with your stakeholders.

However, strategic marketing models – or any models and frameworks – don’t provide all the answers or do your thinking for you. And remember the GIGO principle applies – feed them with garbage in, and garbage out is what you’ll get. 

Also, beware of using marketing models in isolation because they won’t give you a complete picture. For example, when used together, the three models covered in this three-article series – PESTLIED, SWOT and Ansoff Matrix – will help you understand your external environment and some of your organisation’s internal capabilities. You can then consider how you can develop your proposition strategy to exploit market opportunities. 

Where does your SWOT data come from? 

The SWOT helps you to understand your organisation and the world outside it. So you need data about your external environment, some of which may come from your PESTLIED.

You also need information from inside your organisation. This will come from you and your colleagues. Remember that some external stakeholders, such as customers and suppliers, can provide you with valuable insights about you, but from an external perspective. This is valuable if you can get it. Buying them lunch secures informal and candid input.

How does SWOT work? 

The SWOT addresses both internal and external factors that are often interrelated. Some sources will say that you should use the SW for your organisation only and OT for external factors. Why? This is your tool for developing more effective strategy, it is not a set of rules or a test of your knowledge. An internal strength might offer an external opportunity. And every threat, when viewed through a different lens, becomes an opportunity. 

This means you use the framework to expand your thinking, not limit it because that’s what someone on the internet says. 

Finally, be honest, even if you don’t think you can share some of the findings with certain internal stakeholder groups. Just because the management is in denial about something that not working, it doesn’t mean you have to be.

Here are some examples of what your SWOT could include:

Strengths 

Start by thinking internally, but holistically. We’re marketers, we build brands, and brands are what all your stakeholders experience about every interaction with your organisation, not just your shiny logo. In this context, what are your organisation’s strengths? 

These might include a high-quality product with superior features, strong proposition, rock solid intellectual property such as patents, high levels of productivity, responsive customer service, highly-regarded brand and fast speed-to-market.    

Think also of your back story and hidden strengths. For example, a corporate culture that positively encourages mistakes, agility and flexibility, strong cashflows and an effective leadership team.

Weaknesses

OK, this is a tough one, because it means being objective and honest, not slinging mud at other parts of your organisation. There are some obvious candidates for weaknesses, such as your product quality may be poor and may not deliver all the benefits that your competitor’s product delivers. Your customer service may be poor. Geographical coverage may be patchy. You may have limited service-delivery capacity, so customer waiting times are long. 

There are other less obvious weaknesses. Your IT department or technology function may be a blocker rather than an enabler. Poor financial management places pressure on sales and marketing to achieve sales and revenue at any cost, and limits investment. Lack of investment means ageing plant, which in turn impacts on product quality. You may not realise how much what your financial colleagues do, or don’t do, impacts on your marketing.

You may be limited in what you can do about the challenges, but you can plan around them and manage stakeholder expectations accordingly. 

This is where we depart from the traditional interpretation of the SWOT and think SWTO. 

Remember why we are doing this, why we’re using these strategic marketing models? We want a more effective marketing strategy and campaign plan. We want to increase our competitiveness. We want to improve and create opportunity. So, we end this process by identifying opportunities that the strengths, weaknesses, and threats offer.

Threats 

Competitors, regulations and approvals, costs and prices, supply chain pressures, expiring patents, changing demographics, emerging technologies, the state of the economy and the weather are all threats to one organisation or another. As with the other categories, there are many obvious threats, and these are just a few examples. 

There are threats that may not appear relevant to you, but the law of unintended consequences mean they will do. The perfect storm of the pandemic and Brexit is an emerging example and is a fascinating case study to learn. It encapsulates virtually every weakness and threat you can imagine. 

Marketing is a good example. This happened to Copestone. Pre-Brexit, because of fears over what customer barriers might arise, a global corporation decided to locate its new bottling plant in Poland and not expand its facility in the UK. That meant one of our clients lost a project. In turn, we lost the case study, blog, press release and social media activity that would have come from that story.

Opportunities

Again, there are some opportunities that are obvious. A country deregulates a particular market, allowing external entrants. A new technology creates new markets to exploit. 

Think about your weaknesses and threats and how you can turn them into strengths and opportunities. Your product may have fewer features and benefits than the market leader. But maybe the market leader has become complacent, trades on the strength of its product brand and so invests less in customer service. 

Is that your opportunity? You can’t complete the R&D to improve your product, nor find the money to upgrade the plant so quality improves.

But you are in control of the messaging, audience and possibly customer service. You can focus on the product positives, such as price, clearly identify the support available, and transforming a customer service team can be actioned faster and far less expensively than upgrading a plant. And you have control and/or influence. 

In our Brexit example above, we have limited influence how corporates make global investment decisions. But as an agency, we can identify which UK businesses are impacted by Brexit. We can then target those potential clients with marketing and communications solutions that will help them exploit the opportunities and overcome the challenges.

Threats becomes opportunities and weaknesses become strengths when you look at them from a different perspective. And the SWOT, or SWTO, is a tool that enables you to do that. 

In the next article in this series, we will explain how to use a tool that helps you understand identifying strategic marketing windows and growth opportunities for your organisation, the Ansoff’s Box.  

If you need support to write engaging, audience-driven content for your B2B brand or agency, contact Copestone today.