How do you road test your strategy? How do you poke holes in it to see if it can stand up to the market forces? In this episode, we are going to share how to do a SWOT Analysis.

1. START BY ASKING ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS.

• How do we create sustainable growth?
• How will we diversify our revenue streams?
• When I was in the wholesale business in fashion, it was always a challenge to not put all of your revenue growth into one retailer. (Or eggs in one basket as we would normally say). Many times, we have a single retailer who begins to take up a lot of our production, leaving us vulnerable to an unexpected “pull out” or their own economic limitations that may impact you. Diversifying your customer base.
• How do I adjust margins and costs to stay competitive?
• How do I innovate?

2. DO A SWOT ANALYSIS

• Collect competitive intelligence. What are the opportunities. What are the threats from your competition?  How does it impact your own strategic offering. With your ears and eyes to the information being conveyed through customers, media, etc.

STRENGTHS- Ask yourself

• What do you do well in sales, marketing, product innovations, data capture and analytics as well key leadership?
• What are your core competencies?
• What differentiates you from your competitors? The standout word that anyone will refer about you.
• Why do your customers buy from you?

WEAKNESSES

• Where do you lack resources? People, talent, skills etc.
• What can you do better or should outsource?
• Where are you losing money, or your margins are nominal?
• What competitors have an edge over your current strategy and infrastructure?

OPPORTUNITIES 

• What’s possible? What can you bring to market? 
• What is it that you want to capitalize on?
• What do you have in the way of internal knowledge, resources, and capabilities to optimize?
• Can you run with this? Can you optimize part of the process whether it is technology, product offerings, global reach, or marketing.
• WHAT ARE THE NEEDS OF TARGET CUSTOMER. And how can your brand meet those needs?

Customer segmentation and targeting is critical to developing your strategy and understanding the overall needs and lifestyle preferences that you will serve.

 What needs or wants define your ideal customer? Utilizing surveys of current customer makeup will show gaps of fulfilling those needs.

What characteristics describe your typical customer? In my past brand building and strategic planning, I would have the teams create a Brand Persona- Give them a name and describe them so that we can bounce the strategy off of t

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