The Tactical Approach to Marketing

One of the best ways to analyze your marketing plans is the SWOT approach. No, you won’t need to have tactical gear to make this analysis. You will need the ability to be honest with yourself, or have an employee who can give you honest feedback.

The SWOT approach is not a new concept in marketing, but it is one that tends to be overlooked, and underappreciated. SWOT does take time to complete properly, and the more honest you are about your business’ results the more helpful the process will be.

What is SWOT?
SWOT analysis or the SWOT Matrix as it is sometimes referred to, is a structured process that is used to analyze the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats of any business ventures or marketing campaigns. You can perform this analysis on past marketing campaigns to see where they may have fallen short, or where they have succeeded. You can, and should, going forward run this on any and all campaigns or business ventures you are looking into after you have set your goals. The results may amaze you, and hopefully help make your decisions a bit more grounded, and fact-based.

Strengths
Strengths are the characteristics of your campaign or business venture that will create an advantage over other businesses or ideas. Spend some time on this aspect; this is the first step and a large one. Be honest, be imaginative, and try to look at this from different angles. Ask family, friends and employees for their input. How do they see this move or marketing idea? You are only looking for the positives at this point; how may this action set you apart and achieve your end objective? What aspect of this campaign or of a past campaign set you and your business apart from your competition?

Weaknesses
Weaknesses are exactly what the name means; which aspect of this plan, or business venture is lacking? This is one of two areas many business owners will stumble when doing a SWOT analysis. If you have an overly honest friend, family member or employee who will give you their true opinion call on them for this. Weaknesses could be anything from a lack of finances, lack of knowledge or experience or even the lack of manpower to accomplish the goal or goals that were set. Many times the weaknesses are easy to overcome with a bit of planning and thought. It is far better to find weaknesses before you run a campaign and correct them, than to let it run its course and then discover the faults.

Opportunities
Opportunities are aspects of your marketing plan or venture that you can exploit to your advantage. Will this bring in more money, double the size of your sales floor, make you a premier dealer or even just increase how your business is thought of locally? If you are a dreamer, this is where you can let your imagination go a bit. Opportunities will be, if the results are positive from this, what the general public sees as positives. If you can get feedback from others in this area, you should. Most people though may try to rain on your parade and point out the weaknesses when asked for opportunities. Just accept their input and file it accordingly. Remember, opportunities are one of the fun parts to this, so be sure to enjoy it.

Threats
Threats are aspects that could cause problems for not only this plan or venture, but also for your business as a whole. Threats could come in many forms and pop up at any time throughout the plan. While weaknesses can be overcome easily by better pre-planning, threats sometimes cannot be avoided. A threat could be the realization that this venture will empty your savings. Can your business survive or grow fast enough to replenish your savings account before you need it? A threat could mean that bringing in a new product line could mean losing another due to contract issues or retail floor space. Threats are very real and need to be identified and looked at closely.

When you are identifying your threats, find solutions to them as well. Murphy’s Law will raise its ugly head when you least need it to. Finding solutions to these threats before they occur will help you not only react better should they occur, but it will also help you qualify the level of each threat.

If you have never run the SWOT Analysis or SWOT Matrix, you should give it a try and see what the results have to say. If you are skeptical of this new-to-you method or marketing analysis, run the SWOT method on a past campaign. Hindsight is always clearer, but it will at least give you a sense of how this method works. If you have had success with the SWOT Analysis or questions on how to run it, feel free to post your comments to Facebook. There is always someone who can answer your questions, it may just be a fellow Fishing Tackle Retailer!