SWOT analysis is an essential step in developing a digital marketing strategy. Indeed, it can help you understand your strengths and weaknesses as well as the opportunities and threats that present themselves to you.

Currently, consumers rely heavily on digital means to research products. Digital marketing then becomes a key element of product or service sales . Which means that spending time determining both the negative and positive capabilities of your business will be essential to the success of your digital marketing strategy.

What is SWOT in digital marketing?

Digital marketing can come in several forms. This could be an online sale or advertisements served on digital channels such as: search engines, websites, social media, emails and mobile apps. However, the speed of growth in technology requires a disciplined approach in order to survive, hence the need to carry out a SWOT analysis.

The term “SWOT” is an acronym for : Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It is both a well-known business term and a formidable strategy development tool. The SWOT analysis will therefore help you identify what makes your digital business or brand unique compared to your competitors and the resources you have available.

The first step in the analysis is to determine the strengths and weaknesses that the company can control itself.

These are strong points such as:

• the years of experience of key personnel,
• the reputation of your brand,
• a significant number of subscribers on social networks.

There are also weak points including:

• limited resources ,
• a lack of access to skills ,
• poor location of your business.

The second step of the analysis boils down to determining the opportunities and threats that are part of the external environment. They cannot be controlled by the company.

Opportunities may include :

• a forecast of growing demand for the product,
• new market trends ,
• unreached potential markets .

As for the threats, they concern:

• negative impacts on your business or the entire sector,
• Unfavorable trends that may result in a deterioration of revenues or profits,
• The competitors.

Why do a SWOT analysis in digital marketing?

A SWOT analysis is divided into two parameters: internal and external. The first is to identify the internal factors including the strengths and weaknesses of your business. On the other hand, the second makes it possible to determine external factors , namely opportunities and threats.

Each component of a SWOT analysis plays an important role in your digital marketing projects:

• Strengths: they touch the points to be found in the force. These points relate to all the positive attributes of your business, whether tangible or not. Once you have identified your entity's strengths, you can find a way to retain and develop them to become your strengths.
• Weaknesses: These refer to the weak points that you need to strengthen or make competitive and better to stand out from your competitors. Plus, when you accurately identify your weaknesses, you'll learn a little more about your own business. So you could improve.
• Opportunities: These concern external factors which represent new markets with high potential that you can subsequently exploit to your advantage. Identifying opportunities will be an integral part of your business's purpose and growth.
• Threats: These indicate factors beyond your control that may threaten the existence and growth of your business. Once threats are discovered, you can easily develop a plan to deal with them. As a result, you will not have to fear the threat when it is there, because you will already have a strategy to overcome it.

The process of SWOT Analysis in Digital Marketing

In a SWOT analysis, strengths and opportunities represent the positive factors , while weaknesses and threats relate to the negative factors . SWOT analysis is an essential part of an online marketing plan. Indeed, it sheds light on the long-term vision of a company.

Overall, the information obtained after a SWOT analysis can help you develop smarter strategies and lead you to greater success. This involves asking yourself a series of questions to determine strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Strengths :

• What capabilities do you have that the competition doesn't?
• What quality or cost-effective resources do you have that others don't?
• What are the factors that give a certain turnover?

Weaknesses:

• What internal processes need improvement?
• What activities should you avoid?
• What are the factors that contribute to lost sales?

Opportunities :

• Are there any interesting trends you can benefit from?
• Are there any good opportunities ahead?
• Is there something the target audience is looking for that your business can offer them?

Threat :

• What are the obstacles ?
• Can government regulation hurt your business?
• Are competitors working on a better product/service?

How to make SWOT profitable in digital marketing?

SWOT analysis can be applied to the company as a whole or used to evaluate specific departments, products, and marketing methods. Exploring the factors that could harm your business will help you know how to use your strengths and be on the lookout for potential threats.

Using a SWOT analysis in digital marketing can be very beneficial provided you know how to make it profitable. In this case, it is necessary to:

• Capitalize on your strengths: to know your strengths, you need to identify the products that are selling well on the market. Then you need to see how to make them work or make them an even bigger force. For example, if a specific product is much more in demand than others, you can try to improve its design to make it even more attractive.
• Reduce Weaknesses: If you do not pay attention to your weaknesses, they can lead to loss. For example: if you lack communication tools, this will reduce your exchanges with your customers who you could subsequently lose. Besides, if you are not aware of a failure in your system, it can grow and slowly destroy your business from the inside out. On the contrary, if you are aware of it, you can easily tame the problem, reverse it or reduce its effects. Once weaknesses are identified, you can put an effective action plan in place to try to resolve the issues.
• Identify an opportunity when it presents itself: the digital world is becoming larger and larger. As it grows, new opportunities open up for Digital Marketing. Additionally, changing trends related to marketing or your latest product can lead to opportunities. For example, if you adapt your product to customer suggestions in comments, you could see an increase in user satisfaction. As a result, your profits will double because your product or service will be in greater demand.
• Recognize threats: Threats can directly destroy your business. By anticipating and proactively identifying them, you can limit their negative effects. Among other things, you can make a list of negative factors depending on the urgency. Then you can see how the strengths could reduce the threat outcome.
• Develop a Strategy: Once you've completed the online marketing SWOT analysis, it's time to translate the data you've collected into short- and long-term strategies. Indeed, the SWOT analysis is only the theoretical part of your marketing strategy. To do this, you must use the information you have gathered to bring change to your action plan.