How to Do SWOT Analysis for Your Business

SWOT Analysis Is the Swiss Army Knife of Business Planning Tools

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What is SWOT Analysis?



While SWOT analysis can be used for personal development, it's most commonly used as a business planning tool.

I call SWOT analysis the Swiss army knife of business planning tools because it can be used for so many different planning purposes. For small businesses, for instance, SWOT analysis can be used for:

How to Do a SWOT Analysis

1) Prepare a table such as the one you see at the end of this article.

2) Fill in the boxes, according to the specific purpose of your SWOT analysis.

3) Once you have the table complete, use it to create a strategy or strategies that will make your business more competitive.

I like to use these questions as a thinking/discussion guide:

  • Do strengths open any opportunities?
  • How can we convert weaknesses to strengths?
  • What do we have to do to use opportunities?
  • How do we best neutralize threats?

Don't forget to write the answers to these questions down!

As you'll see in my SWOT Example, I also like to write down the purpose of my SWOT analysis to help me stay focused and add a short results section at the end which tells what the next step or steps are.

Other SWOT Examples

Marketing Teacher lists quite a few example SWOT analyses for well-known real companies such as Amazon, Yahoo, Nike, and Apple.

(Note that these SWOT analyses are overviews of these particular companies, not SWOT analyses that focus on a particular aspect of a business’s operations, as mine does.)

SWOT Analysis Tips

Always choose a specific purpose for your SWOT analysis. Otherwise, you'll just end up with a bunch of generalizations that won’t provide any direction for an action plan.

Realize that SWOT analysis is a subjective process; different groups of people may come up with different SWOT analyses for the same stated purpose or a single person may come up with different SWOT analyses for the same stated topic at a different time.

For this reason, SWOT analysis is not the be-all and end-all of business planning; it's best as a planning starting point for small businesses and/or used in conjunction with other business planning tools, such as PEST analysis which "can help to ensure that you don't overlook external factors, such as new government regulations, or technological changes in your industry" when looking at opportunities and threats.

Other business planning tools you may wish to use in conjunction with SWOT analysis include Core Competency analysis, (definition) and USP Analysis (definition).

The Origin of SWOT Analysis

The creation of SWOT analysis is usually credited to Albert S. Humphrey who led a research project based upon the United States' Fortune 500 companies in the 1960s through 1970s at Stanford University. This is, however, a matter of debate. For more information on the origins of SWOT, see The History of SWOT Analysis.

Here's an example of a SWOT Analysis for a small business .

SWOT Analysis Matrix

 Positive FactorsNegative Factors
Internal FactorsStrengthsWeaknesses
External FactorsOpportunitiesThreats

See also:

Quick-Start Business Planning for Small Businesses

Business Contingency Planning Guide

Harness the Power of an Advisory Board

Create a Business Action Plan for Success

How to Write a Vision Statement

How to Write a Mission Statement