The Market Place and Marketing Planning

Part of your marketing involves you taking a look at your business and analysing its strengths and weaknesses. It also involves you looking at the market place in which your business operates and examining the opportunities and threats.

This is called carrying out a SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis should be conducted at least twice yearly and your marketing plan should address the weaknesses in your business and build on the strengths you have identified. It should also state how you are going to capitalize on the opportunities and possibly what action you are going to take to overcome any threats to the business.

The strengths and weaknesses

What strengths does your organisation have that you can build on? What are the weaknesses that you need to correct?

For example:

Strengths

-Good client base
-Good product range
-Clear vision of management
-Well-motivated staff.

Weaknesses

-Inadequate database
-Weak on investing in new products
-Web Site out of date or no Web Site
-Reception area image poor
-Recruitment problems.

The weaknesses will affect the performance of your organisation. Either eliminate them or turn them into strengths. Taking a realistic stock of your strengths and weaknesses is a must.

The opportunities and threats

What is happening in your market place now and possibly in the future that could affect your business? What action do you need to take as a result of this? The opportunities and threats are concerned with the external factors which affect your company and over which you have little or no control.

The same item could appear under both columns. For example, legislation introduced by the government could pose both a threat and an opportunity to your organisation. The competition could also be both a threat and an opportunity - you may be able to take market share from your competitors and equally they could take market share from you.

Other things that need to be considered under these headings are:

Consumer attitudes, changing lifestyles, habits, values and trends

How will these affect your business? Identifying gaps in the market for new products and services could spring from being attuned to changing consumer patterns. Our lifestyle today is much faster than that of previous generations.

Customers want their products delivered quicker, hence the growth of same day delivery services. Those organizations that spot the opportunities presented by changing consumer attitudes will continue to gain a competitive advantage and win market share.