How a marketing SWOT can help you prioritize marketing efforts
A SWOT is a standard part of any business plan. It allows you to see how your business stands up against the competition and identify your strengths, weaknesses, threats, and business opportunities. A SWOT can help you:
Evaluate your business against competitors
Identify your strengths and weaknesses
Recognize potential threats and opportunities
While traditionally used for overall business strategy, SWOT analysis is equally valuable for digital marketing efforts.
The Importance of a Digital SWOT Analysis
Online businesses often face different challenges compared to brick-and-mortar operations. A digital SWOT analysis can provide crucial insights, especially when resources are limited. Here's how it can help:
1. Reveal unexpected online competitors
In the digital space, competition isn't limited by geographical boundaries
You might discover competitors you weren't aware of, operating in different markets
Understanding your competitive landscape helps in positioning your brand effectively
2. Highlight customer acquisition costs
Digital marketing often involves paid advertising, which can be costly
A SWOT analysis can reveal which channels are most cost-effective for your business
This insight helps in allocating your limited budget more efficiently
3. Uncover opportunities to reach a broader audience
The internet provides access to a global market
SWOT analysis can identify untapped markets or demographics
This can guide your expansion strategies and content creation efforts
4. Identify creative ways to engage with your online following
Digital platforms offer unique engagement opportunities
SWOT analysis can reveal which platforms your audience prefers
This helps in focusing your efforts on the most effective channels
5. Optimize resource allocation
When resources are limited, it's crucial to invest them wisely. A SWOT analysis can help you:
Identify your strongest assets and channels
Understand where you're underperforming
Make informed decisions about resource allocation
For example, if your SWOT analysis reveals that you have an amazing TikTok following but your SEO is lackluster, you might:
Allocate more resources to creating TikTok content to capitalize on your strength
Use your TikTok audience to drive traffic to your website
Invest in improving your SEO gradually, perhaps by creating content that resonates with your TikTok audience
Remember, the goal is not to spread your resources thin trying to excel in every area, but to strategically leverage your strengths while addressing critical weaknesses.
6. Identify low-hanging fruit
A SWOT analysis can reveal opportunities that require minimal investment but offer significant returns. These could be:
Underutilized features on your existing platforms
Emerging trends that align with your strengths
Partnerships or collaborations with complementary businesses
By focusing on these areas, you can maximize your impact with limited resources.
Setting Clear Business Goals
Before conducting a SWOT analysis, it's crucial to define your business goals. When creating goals, make sure you get to the heart of what you want to achieve. Often people may create fuzzy goals such as, "I want to increase my website traffic" or "I want more social media followers". What you likely want, however, is to increase your revenue by 10% in the next six months. Therefore your goal is not more traffic; instead, your goal is to increase sales - so let's call that out.
Effective goals should:
Be tangible and benefit your business
Address the core of what you want to achieve
Be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound)
Example of a SMART Goal:
"Increase online revenue by 10% in the next 6 months"
Specific: Clearly states what needs to be achieved
Measurable: Success can be quantified (10% increase)
Attainable: Based on current sales, it's realistic
Relevant: Directly impacts the business
Time-bound: Has a defined timeframe (6 months)
Conducting Your Digital Marketing SWOT Analysis
When performing your SWOT analysis, consider the following areas:
Strengths: What digital assets or capabilities give you an advantage?
Weaknesses: Where do you lack in your online presence or digital strategy?
Opportunities: What trends or changes can you leverage for growth?
Threats: What external factors could harm your digital marketing efforts?
Aligning SWOT with Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Use the insights from your SWOT analysis to:
Prioritize your marketing efforts
Create effective strategies for SEO, social media, and email marketing
Align your business goals with your digital marketing priorities
Maximize your online success
The online landscape looks different than brick and mortar operations
While physical locations remain important, moving online offers both opportunities and challenges. Many businesses eager to expand their digital footprint or revamp their online marketing strategies often overlook the importance of a comprehensive digital audit.
Consider this: Your brick-and-mortar store might excel in selling a particular product, benefiting from prime location and low local competition. However, the online marketplace for the same product could be oversaturated, requiring a different approach.
In the digital realm, you're not just competing locally, but potentially globally. This necessitates a strategic approach to improve your online visibility, whether through search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, or paid advertising. It's crucial to calculate the customer acquisition cost (CAC) in this expanded market and ensure it aligns with your profit margins.
While increased competition is a reality online, the digital landscape also offers vast opportunities for growth. Your products or services could reach markets you never thought possible, potentially transforming a local business into a global brand.
Let's examine a SWOT analysis for a fitness studio transitioning to a hybrid model, leveraging both in-person and online services. This example highlights the unique aspects of the current digital ecosystem:
SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats)
S: Strengths
Engaged community on Instagram and TikTok
Successful loyalty program with gamification elements
High-quality, diverse class offerings (both in-person and online)
Strong brand reputation in local market
W: Weaknesses
Limited presence on emerging platforms (e.g., BeReal, Threads)
Inconsistent content strategy across different social media channels
Underutilized email marketing automation
Lack of personalized digital experience for members
O: Opportunities
Leverage AI for personalized workout recommendations
Expand into the metaverse with virtual reality fitness classes
Develop a mobile app for seamless booking and progress tracking
Collaborate with micro-influencers for authentic brand promotion
Utilize short-form video content (TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts) for broader reach
T: Threats
Rapid emergence of AI-powered home fitness solutions
Increasing ad costs on major platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Google)
Data privacy regulations affecting personalized marketing efforts
Economic uncertainties impacting consumer spending on fitness
Measuring your online business goals against your SWOT
If you are moving online or starting an online business, a SWOT is a great tool to understand where you should start your marketing efforts. A SWOT allows you to examine where you should allocate efforts for immediate success and where you’ll want to use your resources as you build your business.
For example, if your website doesn’t rank well organically in search engines, but you are looking to fill classes TODAY, putting most of your marketing budget into SEO services may not be the right choice.
Picking the right digital marketing tactics based on your goals and online SWOT
Marketing efforts that focus on the short term and long term can happen simultaneously, but it’s important to know what levers to pull to help you reach your goals.
Knowing SEO can take several months, it may not be our best effort in the immediate. Instead, it might make sense to capitalize on an extensive email list, or social following. Perhaps we should use our email list and offer a referral incentive or tap into our TikTok and Instagram following and offer buddy passes or create an online competition to gain more immediate customers. We may also want to experiment with Google Search Ads, so our service offering shows up in search results.
That said, we don’t want to rely on paying for traffic in the long term, so we might passively start creating guides and blog content and link-building strategies that will serve us down the road.
A digital marketing SWOT analysis is a great tool to gain a holistic assessment of your company’s online presence, identifying key areas of advantage, improvement, potential growth, and risk. This strategic evaluation can not only help you craft a more focused and efficient digital marketing approach, but also help you prioritize your marketing efforts.
