If you’re working in business you might be hearing a lot about SWOT Analysis Template in your day-to-day life, and while most would have probably understood what the term SWOT means, some probably still don’t.
But no worries, because we’re here to catch you up on that. Not only will we offer you different SWOT analysis templates that will suit your needs to best, we’ll also be talking as to why having a SWOT analysis template is important for any business out there, especially for larger scale business.
What is SWOT Analysis
Before getting into the SWOT Analysis Templates, it’s fair to understand what SWOT Analysis actually meant first.
SWOT Analysis is a strategy that’s used to help a person, organization, or business firm to identify weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, and threats related to said business.
These diagrams can be very useful when a business is trying to decide whether to embark on a certain venture or strategy or not by visualizing the pros and cons in a clear and concise way..
The Benefits of Using SWOT for Planning
At the current age we’re living in right now, it’s imperative for business to take time every now and then to assess itself against its competition in the market. Especially when its thinking of launching a brand-new product or service.
Doing a SWOT analysis helps a company assess itself in a way that’s both honest and effective while also thinking carefully of its competitor and the industry itself.
A good SWOT analysis can help your company be more competitive when it comes to making business decision. You will most of the time want a SWOT analysis that’s accurate and thorough to help your business make its important decisions later down the road.
SWOT analysis also helps business leaders do this by examining its current performance and other factors that affecting the company in general.
How to Make A SWOT Analysis
Now that we know what SWOT analysis is, it’s still too soon for us to just jump in and use the SWOT analysis templates we’ve provided. Why, you ask? Well, we still don’t know how to actually make one ourself.
You can’t just throw random things in the SWOT Analysis template and expect it to make sense for you, your business, or your colleagues.
Here’s common steps to help you get started with your SWOT Analysis template:
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Start with a problem that requires solution
When you’re thinking of making a move on your business, it probably means you’re taking steps forward. And with every steps forward, there’ll be problems that you need to solve with whatever resources you have. Thankfully, SWOT diagrams can help you achieve this.
For example, let’s say your business is going to launch a new product line, you’ll want to know what barriers to entry if there was any, and you may also want to think about what unique characteristics your product or business can bring to the marketplace.
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Always start with strengths
Thinking up the strengths of our own business is pretty easy. It can almost be anything that your business can use for its advantages when planning a strategy.
It can be the fact that you have strong social media accounts, a large following on Twitter, or Facebook, or even a strong relationship with the press media that can help you get your media coverage needs filled up by them.
Other strengths can also be your large budget, your product’s Unique Selling Proposition or a customer loyalty that help boost sales.
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Listing your opportunities
Listing your opportunities can take some research of your competitor and seeing what advantages they have over their similar products. Maybe your competitor doesn’t have the edge in the market because they rely on traditional advertising such as radio and television, while your products is geared towards the more millennial, digital-minded people of the world.
Just this opportunity alone can give a sizable amount of prospective customer because you fill in the niche that your competitor doesn’t. Always look at what they lack, and find out what opportunities they’re missing out on.
After you’ve completed your SWOT Analysis, you’ll be able to create a marketing plan to guide your business to prosper and wealth.
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Where to Look for SWOT Factors?
Sometimes, figuring out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your business is as easy as one-two-tree, but most of the time, it’s a harder thing to find out especially if your business is a bit on the larger side.
To help you get started so that you can use our SWOT analysis template right away, here’s some of the place you can start looking for these factors;
- Resources
- Core competencies
- Capabilities
- Functional areas
- Value chain activities
- Organizational culture
These points above are a good place to start for you to look for your business’ strengths and weaknesses. But, keep in mind that these are just general suggestions meant for the general public. At the end of the day, the one that knows the best about their business is of course, you yourself.
5 Guidelines for a Successful SWOT Analysis
Now we know everything to know about SWOT Analysis, it’s time to make our very own SWOT analysis using our SWOT analysis template. Just to make things easier, not only do we provide the templates to get you started brainstorming instantly, we also have these 5 guidelines that you can follow in order to make a successful SWOT analysis.
- First and foremost, factors need to be identified relative to your competitors. This will help you specify whether said factors are strengths or weaknesses.
- Lists between 3-5 items for each category. Creating too short or too long of a list will only make you disoriented and unfocused.
- Define items as clearly and specifically as possible.
- Don’t use opinions as a base, use facts instead.
- The factors should be something that’s action oriented.
And with all that being said, you should be good to go on creating your very own SWOT analysis using our SWOT Analysis Templates.
Conclusion
Using SWOT analysis is something that every millennial needs to understand and do in order to stay relevant in business. Thankfully, as we’ve explained above, the steps are very easy and not hard to understand at all, and with our SWOT analysis template, it will just make it even easier for anyone to create their own SWOT analysis.
