Situation Analysis to kick off your Business Marketing Strategy
How To Develop Your Business Marketing Strategy: Situation analysis
Business Marketing Strategies are developed from a straightforward analysis. It begins with a situation analysis.
Situation analysis
What is the current condition of your business and the market that you are in? Or what is your starting point? And what does your business need to do to achieve its vision?
A situation analysis establishes the current condition of your business and the market and is the starting point for establishing what your business needs to do to achieve its vision.
SWOT Analysis
This simple technique is used to identify and evaluate possible strategies to guide the future direction of your business.
It looks at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths and weaknesses tend to be internal issues; opportunities and threats tend to be external.
You can best determine your SWOT factors in a brain storming session with your key staff. The most important part of the analysis is to decide what you intend to do about each factor.
Ideally, aim to apply your strengths to opportunities. Alternatively, look at how to address a weakness that may be stopping you from taking advantage of an opportunity, or decide what action to take to block a threat.
Strengths (internal, positive factors)
Strengths describe the positive attributes, tangible and intangible, internal to your organization.
Weaknesses (internal, negative factors)
Weaknesses are aspects of your business that detract from the value you offer or place you at a competitive disadvantage. You need to select strategies that do not depend on these attributes. Alternatively, if the best opportunities available to you are dependent on these weaker aspects, do something about them .
Opportunities (external, positive factors)
Opportunities are external attractive factors that your business could take advantage of in order to prosper.
Threats (external, negative factors)
Threats include external factors beyond your control that could place your strategy, or the business itself, at risk. You may have no control over these, but you may benefit by having contingency plans to address them if they should occur.
Have you done a SWOT analysis on your business lately? If you want to develop a business marketing strategy for your business (or perhaps you simply haven’t done a situational analysis on your business recently) then schedule time now to make a SWOT analysis a priority.
Get your key staff members together to contribute their ideas and perspectives and encourage them to invest in the planning process for your business marketing strategy right from the start. Perhaps you could seek out a business consultant who can offer their expertise as an independent third party to help you to create a marketing strategy.
However you decide to do it, performing a situation analysis is the first step to a business marketing strategy that will enable your business to achieve the vision you have for it.