3.2 Build a SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is truly one of the most powerful tools in business. And thanks to custom Envato Elements templates, you can build one into your marketing plan presentation. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It's truly a quartet of the four main forces that impact your business. Think of SWOT as a two by two grid with your business sitting in the middle. Each of the four quadrants is a strong force on you. Essentially, SWOT balances your strong suits and competitive position against your weak spots both internally and externally. SWOT is a must-have in a marketing plan, because it represents a clear-eyed look at competitive reality. First up, you gauge your relative standing in a macro competitive environment. Then you contrast it against potential factors that might derail your journey to success. This same technique applies equally to sole proprietorships and global corporations alike. Every firm has strengths, and every firm has weaknesses. SWOTs are one of the most popular and useful elements of a strategy deck, and they're really critical if you intend to inspire potential customers and investors. Going through the work of putting together a SWOT forces you to take a clear look at your business and think about what's ahead. By presenting the analysis in your marketing plan presentation, you can vividly demonstrate an accurate understanding of your own reality. Investors will appreciate the SWOT, and members of your company will look to it to think about where they play in the market. Let's start building a SWOT analysis in our presentation here. The project proposal template from Envato Elements offers up four slides that fully cover the SWOT. I'll jump to the first one here. And as you can see, it deals with our strengths. Of course, this is a favorite topic, so let's dive in and start filling it in. For Everylytics, our roster of data-driven talent is prominent. I'll make this the first line item by simply clicking on and typing over the text placeholders, as you're seeing me do here. And then I can repeat those same steps, easily filling in my own content to establish the working landscape. Our Envato Elements slide deck includes these cool letter image placeholders as well. These can be used to add visual interest and feature an image cutout of your choice. To add an image, I'll simply come over here to the letter shape and right-click on it. You'll see this menu here at the top of the drop down, and I'll go ahead and click on Fill. More options will appear. And in this case, the one I want is Picture. When I click on it, PowerPoint will open up a new browse window. Here, I can locate the image of my choice on my computer. Keep in mind, these letter placeholders will crop photos pretty severely, so it's better to use something more abstract. Most details will probably get lost. When I find one I like, I'll click to insert it, and PowerPoint will drop it onto my slide. It's quick and easy and adds totally unique detail to your marketing plan. One of the best places to grab an abstract image like this is from the Envato Elements stock image library. Keep in mind that that same subscription that gets you the slide deck templatess is also home to many thousands of images that you can use in your presentation. They're all included as part of that singular element subscription, so it's a great idea to tap back into those resources. Next up, I'll go ahead and repeat these same steps for the other three sections. Weaknesses include a somewhat crowded landscape, challenges with marketing, and data I found illustrating how many firms abandon analytics data unless it pays off quickly. Opportunities tie into the data we explored earlier about how many individuals and businesses intend to pursue the use of analytics in 2019. Threats include growing competition and a proven dislike of smaller companies to pay for business insights. Let's recap. As I scroll through my four SWOT slides here, you can really see how Everylytics stands out in the macro environment. They also show how we intend to capitalize on the same opportunity rich, yet challenging niche in the market. And the shapely image placeholders add a dose of visual interest that instantly draw audience eyes to each slide. Thanks for watching.