When you land a new client, performing a marketing SWOT analysis can help you identify areas where the client excels, falls short, as well as what opportunities or threats are present for them. This effective analysis tool is used by businesses all over the country to gain a better understanding of how their marketing efforts are performing, and where things need to change.
Here, we’ll discuss how to perform a SWOT analysis on your new client’s marketing efforts. You’ll learn what SWOT is, how it helps, and how you should go about discussing the results with the client and formulating a plan for moving forward. Follow this SWOT analysis guide for a better understanding of your client’s marketing needs.
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
SWOT is a simple acronym and stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. These might seem like simple things to identify, but sometimes, you need to look deeper at a client or business to truly understand each of these four components. Here are some examples of each for marketing:
Strengths
- Good social media presence
- Interacts with customers on and offline
- Follows up on leads
- Diverse marketing platforms
- Has an effective strategy in place
Weaknesses
- Doesn’t interact with or follow up with customers
- Ignores customer complaints/requests
- Doesn’t have a good social media presence
- No plan or strategy in place
- Completely ignores marketing altogether
Opportunities
- Chance to diversify marketing platforms
- New marketing tools have become available
- New audiences are within reach
- Word is spreading fast about the client’s brand or services
Threats
- The competition has a much more effective marketing strategy
- Customer relationships are at an all-time low
- No SEO strategy, drop in website traffic
- Customers aren’t responding to promotions
The Importance of Keywords and SEO
Search engine optimization is what gets your client’s web content in front of viewers, thus increasing web traffic, social media presence, and even sales. The more their content is optimized, the better their websites, social media pages, and eCommerce stores will perform. This should be one of the first things you consider in a marketing SWOT analysis.
Customers often find new businesses and products by using search engines like Google to search for specific keywords. The higher up on the search engine queue your client’s site or product is, the greater the chance is that a potential customer will clink the link.
What strengths exist in their current SEO strategy? What are its weaknesses, opportunities to improve, and imminent threats? This alone can help you formulate a new and improved marketing plan that your client will love.
Look at Their Social Media Presence
Social media is one of the best marketing tools available, and it’s normally free to use social media sites. What’s better than a far-reaching tool with access to billions of potential customers that you can use for free? Social media is so integral to the marketing process that just about any business you can think of likely has a social media page of some sort.
Unfortunately, just having an active page isn’t enough when it comes to social media. Your client needs to be active and engaged with his or her followers, and keep the page up to date. Use the typical SWOT model to determine how your client performs on social media.
Are they good at responding to and interacting with customers, but falling short when it comes to regular posts and updates? Are there opportunities to grow their page(s) that they’re not taking or threats to their social media success?
Be Honest In Your Analysis
One of the areas where SWOT analyses can fall short is honesty; especially if you’re performing one for a new client. You want to impress your new client, but you may not want to tell them where they’re falling short for fear of offending them. The fact is, they’re probably paying you to be honest to begin with, so sugar-coating your analysis can only lead to further issues down the road.
When it comes to identifying the weaknesses in your client’s marketing efforts, don’t be brutal, but be honest with them. If they’re not putting enough effort into their SEO strategy, social media, or diversifying their efforts, they need to know. Don’t’ tell them they’re doing a horrible job, but let them know these are areas where they can improve.
Conclusion
A SWOT analysis can help you get a better picture of how your client functions and where they’re falling short. They’ll appreciate the honesty and the effort you put into an effective analysis, so don’t be worried about hurting any feelings. Weaknesses are important to growth, so don’t sugar-coat things. If your client needs to perform better in a certain area, let them know. Happy SWOTing!