SWOT analysis refers to identifying certain factors of a business: its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. These factors help a business to gain a better insight into several core functions of the firm.
A SWOT analysis template helps in making business plans and strategies accordingly. Therefore, learning how to make a SWOT analysis for yourself or your business will help outline future goals. This will significantly help in decision-making.
To know more about SWOT analysis, continue reading until the end to find more about various SWOT templates.
What Is SWOT Analysis?
The full form of SWOT is Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. These four factors play a major role in the decision-making and strategy building of a person for themselves. It also helps companies to chart up proper business plans to maximize their profits.
In SWOT Analysis, your strengths and weaknesses are the internal factors over which you have some form of control or influence.
On the other hand, opportunities and threats are external factors you have no control over. Conversely, these two factors will influence your actions.
Most businesses consider SWOT analysis to be the best tool for conducting an internal, strategic audit.
This is because doing so helps a company to identify its main strengths that they can bank on, and primary weaknesses to take care of. In addition, it also helps firms to identify key profit-making opportunities and external threats to businesses to look out for.
How To Write SWOT Analysis
Before you start charting up a marketing plan or business strategy plan, creating a SWOT analysis will be helpful. Therefore, you can see that it’s important to know how to write a SWOT analysis for your company by yourself.
To fill up the SWOT analysis template for your business, you must look inwards into what your company can do. In addition, you should also conduct external research to scope out the market to identify business opportunities and threats.
Therefore, before you start writing your SWOT analysis, you must research four aspects of your business first.
As an example, we have explained and conducted a fundamental SWOT analysis of the company Apple below:
- Strengths: These refer to the various elements of your company that can help it to be profitable. These include your firm’s USP (Unique Selling Point) and brand value.
- Weaknesses: These are the main weaknesses of the company that your management and the employees need to work on. These are mostly referred to as limitations like an inadequate number of employees and geographical limitations.
- Opportunities: Sometimes, you will see market opportunities, like a change in customer trends, that you can invest in and make profits. These are the core opportunities of your firm – external factors that can fetch you more profits.
- Threats: When external factors like new products or services launched by a company make your business lose market share, then it’s a big threat.
Therefore, for an example, a basic SWOT analysis template of Apple would be like this:
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
| One of the most globally valuable and iconic technology brands of all time. Apple is at the top when it comes to premium technological products and the visual design of promotional content. Apple uses Liam to recycle older devices and use parts to make new ones. This makes its production cycle highly sustainable. | Since Apple products are premium-priced, they are pretty expensive for the average person. This can be seen more in developing countries. Apple products only support Apple-supported software. There is less scope for using third-party software than competitors Android and Microsoft allow. |
| Opportunities | Threats |
| Apple has one of the highest customer retention rates (90%). Therefore, Apple has one of the most loyal customer bases. Apple has entered the highly profitable music and video streaming segment using Apple Music and Apple TV. Apple has also entered the rising fitness tech market using Apple Watch. | Since most of the production of Apple devices happens in China, the Covid pandemic affected the supply chain significantly. Because of the high price of products, Android companies like Samsung and Lenovo dominate the smartphone market. Microsoft dominates the laptop and computer market because of its cheaper products. |
Best SWOT Analysis Template In 2022
If you are ready to use a free SWOT Analysis Template, then we recommend using one of these depending on the industry:
1. Marketing SWOT Analysis Template
If you have a marketing business, then your template should be visually pleasing. It should focus on your panache to create creative visuals that a marketing firm should always focus on.
2. Executive SWOT Analysis Template
If you are an executive of a company, then you can create your SWOT analysis in PowerPoint. You have to make it visually pleasing but formal in style to give it a corporate (not dull) look. Before posting on your webpage, it’s best to learn how to edit the footer in WordPress.
3. Non-Profit SWOT Analysis Template
When it comes to creating a SWOT analysis PowerPoint template for a non-profit organization, keeping it simple works the best. Therefore, try using simple colors and smaller bullet points for easier understandability.
4. Consultancy SWOT Analysis Template
If you are a consultant, then a corporate template will work great here. Use bolder colors with simple designs that highlight why clients should contact you. Before posting on your webpage, it’s best to learn how to change the theme of WordPress.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions):
Yes, you can create a SWOT analysis template in Word. You have to use the diagram tool or the table tool to create SWOT diagrams with four different sectors.
The five steps to keep in mind while writing a good SWOT analysis are
Start with understanding your strengths.
Focus on mitigating weaknesses.
Identify market threats.
Look for profitable business opportunities.
Review actions of competitors, consumers, and suppliers.
You can create a SWOT analysis Excel template by simply writing down all the four factors in various cells of a page. You can also create and use it in smart arts to make it visually better.
While there is no specific SWOT analysis template in PowerPoint, you can use smart arts and different slides for each factor to create a well-detailed and visually pleasing SWOT analysis.
Conclusion
Using a SWOT analysis template to understand the core competencies of your business is crucial in 2022. This significantly helps you to see the main factors that can influence your marketing strategies and business plans every year.
Therefore, to conduct your SWOT analysis, create a visually pleasing template to match your industry. For example, a marketing firm will have a visually better SWOT analysis than a consultant (more corporate).
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