Online commerce is on the rise and has prompted numerous businesses to build a website; a sizable chunk of these businesses only operate online. You would be startled to know that a lot of them make little or no money from their online venture, for reasons well within your grasp – faulty internet marketing strategy. The adage “Build and they would come” is the main culprit behind businesses failing to monetize online. Building a website is not the ‘be all end all’; there is more to it. You internet marketing strategy can make or break your business.
Marketing a product or service demands sound strategy, be it traditional marketing (offline) or online marketing. In order to build a simple market overview strategy to analyze the business’s internal as well external environment, a basic tool like SWOT comes in handy. Not only is the tool simple to use, but also a great starting point. For people who are not from a marketing background, let’s start by explaining what SWOT stands for :-
- S – Strengths.
- W – Weaknesses.
- O – Opportunities.
- T – Threats.
A few facts:
- Strengths and weaknesses stem from internal sources whereas opportunities and threats stem from external sources.
- Strengths and opportunities are useful and can be used to your advantage, whereas weaknesses and threats are harmful and would go against you.
A basic SWOT analysis of your business would help you gauge facets of your business which could be leveraged to create the maximum ‘bang’ online, as well as help you capitalize on them. Getting your priorities right is imperative to make quick wins. As a tactical measure, you could work towards eliminating your weaknesses and neutralizing your competition for sufficing your long term strategies.
Before you start doing a SWOT analysis, it is important to comprehend that SWOT analysis is very subjective in nature. Ten different people analyzing the same business will come up with ten different sets of results. Further, you will have to be realistic and honest while carrying out this analysis. Bolstering your strengths or undermining your weaknesses can have a detrimental effect.
SWOT analysis for SEO could be implemented for all types of websites, but larger websites will have more variables and hence pose difficulty in achieving actionable deliverables. It is more suited for small to medium websites having fewer variables and thereby more direct actionable results. |
