SWOT analysis

This article is about the analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) within an organization or project. In Dutch, it is called a strength-weakness analysis. It is a model, or rather an inventory, of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats arising from the organization or project. By doing this properly, you can determine the right strategy. The SWOT analysis is thus a part of the marketing process. Many books and articles have been written about a SWOT analysis. On this page we explain it to you in a nutshell and we end with some sources where you can go deeper into the matter yourself.

SWOT analysis and the internal and external analysis

The SWOT analysis consists of a number of steps. In doing so, you begin by analyzing the marketing or business environment.

The internal environment

This refers to your own business environment or everything directly related to the initiative or project or its manufacture. When you analyze this properly, based in part on the SWOT analysis, you can gain insights into where you are stronger and where your areas of concern lie.

The external environment

This section relates primarily to everything and everyone around your company, initiative or project. By properly analyzing this, you can identify where possible opportunities may lie and where possible threats may arise from. Roughly speaking, it consists of two parts:

• Organizations, people and things you do have the ability to influence (indirectly).
• Organizations, people and things that you have little or no ability to influence.

Sequence

It makes perfect sense to start with yourself, i.e., the internal environment. Then you look around at the external environment, before incorporating the findings into a SWOT analysis. However, this order is not fixed and it is not a rule. In practice, you will often find that you gradually discover things that relate to an earlier or later part to be analyzed. This is just as well, because one cannot be separated from the other and the external environment has a lot of influence on the internal environment and, for the most part, vice versa as well. Don't let that distract you.

Selecting key components

After analyzing the marketing or business environment, a large number of strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats often emerge. Because this can become a long list, and you can't tackle everything (at the same time) by a long shot, you're going to make a shuffle to arrive at a number of concrete topics that you want to use to start strategizing. You do this by prioritizing them. You look at the relevance of the subject for the customer or for the market segment and at the extent to which it is distinctive compared to the competition. Then you can come to the following:

Topics you don't include

These are the things that are hardly distinctive from the competition and also hardly important to the buyer or market segment.

Topics you are most likely to include

You take the topics, which after analysis show they are very distinctive from the competition and also very important to the buyer or market segment.

Topics you might bring

Some things that come out of the analysis are low priority and you still decide whether or not to include them, or perhaps at a later time. These are the things that:

• Barely distinguishable from the competition and but important to the buyer or market segment.
• Be distinctive from the competition but of little importance to the buyer or market segment.

Strategic planning

Then you can arrive at a strategy or, in other words, the course you want to take with your organization. Generally, within marketing, a distinction is made based on time frame:

• Strategic decisions: you make these for the longer term (between five and ten years)
• Tactical decisions: these relate to the medium term (1 to 3 years)
• Operational decisions: these relate to the short term (less than one year)

These deadlines are mentioned in relation to business. Thereby the deadlines may vary, they are not fixed and are not legally based. Certainly in the cultural sector you may be setting a strategy for a slightly shorter time frame. The sector is changing at such a pace that not everyone looks that far ahead. In addition, you may find yourself initiating a new project every year. Then it might be a good idea to do a SWOT analysis for both your organization and the project. Either way, take the deadlines as a guide, think about them and make sure you set a good course, at least for yourself.

Processing the outcomes

Based on the entire marketing process, including the SWOT analysis, you can much more easily arrive at a number of documents you need. This is because you can use the results for such things as the budget, a project plan, plan of action, communications plan and the like. You often attach these to an application for a fund or grant or add them to the permit application.

Learn more

Doing a SWOT analysis adds tremendous value. It seems like a difficult process and especially in larger organizations or projects, it can also be quite time consuming and difficult. We have described it briefly and concisely in this article. We can recommend, if you want, to go into it in a little more depth. Google is your best friend but we have listed some websites for you: Wikipedia This page explicitly describes the whole process. By means of an example you will be guided through it. A number of schematic examples are provided to help you along. Marketing Teacher This is an English language website that has been describing all kinds of marketing concepts in not too difficult language for years. YouTube Of course, you can also find many videos related to SWOT analysis. Through this link you will find a lot of them, in Dutch and in English. So you can choose which movie appeals to you the most.

If, from your expertise, you yourself have knowledge that would fit this topic, or if you see opportunities to improve this text, we look forward to receiving your message at info@cultuuracademy.nl.