Why You Should Conduct a Business SWOT Analysis Quarterly
Jen Drago 
A SWOT analysis can help illuminate your business' strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Use it quarterly for best results!
Prefer to watch this on video instead? Click here!
Have you heard of a SWOT Analysis? In this blog post, we are going to get clear on what a SWOT analysis is and why it is important to our business. I’m also going to share why I think it is important to do this quick but super important process at least once a quarter.
What is a SWOT Analysis?
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. A SWOT analysis is a subjective analysis of our business’ internal strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats that exist in your business environment and industry.
If you’re honest with yourself, a SWOT analysis can point out some things that you can work on every quarter and you can build those tasks into your goals into your tasks.
Internal Strengths and Weaknesses
One of the key things to know is that strengths and weaknesses are internal to your business. That means that they are also completely within your control as the leader. You can choose to further bolster your strengths and strengthen areas in which your business is weak.
External Opportunities and Threats
Opportunities and threats are outside of your control and exist in your business’ operating environment or they may be trends in your industry. While these trends are not within your control as a business leader, they can definitely affect your business.
SWOT Analysis Example
In this example SWOT analysis of a hypothetical business, you can see that the business is very strong in the expertise that it’s providing to its clients. The leader has strong technical skills, so the tech part of their business does not scare them. The leader has some money in the bank which gives them a little freedom to get up and running (i.e., a financial runway).
The time they can dedicate to the business is somewhat unlimited because the leader’s children are adults and he doesn’t have a full-time job any longer. And finally, the business has excellent assets in place, including a website and a lead magnet.
This business’ weaknesses include that its email audience is small. The business has limited course offerings at this time, so they have few saleable products. They're really in development mode for courses and other things that they can sell. The owner is wearing all the hats and does not currently have any team members that can support him. The business doesn’t have any prerecorded courses products that can generate sales 24/7. They have limited automation and no sales funnel.
Now we will turn to things that are external to the business -- the opportunities and threats. The business has an opportunity to take advantage of social media algorithms and incorporate more video in order to get more followers and more views. The leader has an opportunity to select better tools to support their business and possibly consolidate tools to reduce expenses. The leader has realized that he should probably hire a virtual assistant to help out 5-10 hours per week on things like video editing and social media posting. This will allow him to stay in his “zone of genius” which is creating the course and other assets that will generate business revenue.
The threats include that leader needs health insurance and may need to be employed to access this insurance if he can’t find an affordable alternative on the market. He is also a little concerned about finding the right team members in this challenging labor market. Another threat is that his business model is completely tied to social media platforms at the current time since his email list is small, which means he’s at the whim of the algorithms and the business continuity of those platforms. Other threats include obligations to help care for aging parents.
How Do You Use a SWOT Analysis to Improve Your Business?
By assessing your SWOT at least once a quarter, you can pivot and shift your actions based on your analysis. You will be more responsive to changes because you will be conducting the analysis more frequently.
In general, you are using this analysis to build on your strengths, strengthen your weaknesses, capitalize on opportunities and mitigate threats.
We walk you through a SWOT analysis as one of the first parts of your strategic planning process in our self-paced course called Align Your Impact. We also have several free downloads on our website related to creating a Vision Narrative and creating a Simple Strategic Plan.
If you want a directed process where we guide you through these processes, our VIP days might be the perfect fit! Let us know how we can support you in building your business success!