Marketing SWOT Analysis and Segmentation

Here's how to use marketing SWOT analysis to target valuable segments.

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

In business, SWOT analysis is often used to assess organizations in their environment.

But, you can apply marketing SWOT to analyze segments too. The idea is to find target segments with SWOT.

You need to target segments, which produce profits consistently. Target segments are your gold mines. They keep you in business and allow you to grow.

And the way to asses and protect your gold mines is with SWOT analysis.

The first step is to define the criteria for segment SWOT. In target segmentation, you want and need people who,

• Identify with your brand and product positioning
• Want and need your product
• Use your product
• Have money to buy your product
• Buy or influence buying
• Respond to your marketing messages
• Are easy and cost-effective to reach
• Trusts your brand
• Believe your brand helps them functionally and emotionally
• Are loyal to your brand - Don’t switch to competitor brands easily
• Want a relationship with you
• Are viral advocates of your brand
• As a segment, are growing

Your market research focus groups, depth interviews, and quantitative surveys produce the data for each criterion.

Next, for each criterion apply SWOT. And do the same of your competitors. Assess your strengths and weaknesses for each criterion. Then assess the opportunities and threats of each segment against your competitors and the market.

Your segment opportunities are where you have strengths, and where competitors are weak.

If competitors strongly hold a segment where you are weak, it’s not an opportunity. Trying to gain share could be costly.

Finding untouched segments may be tough. But segments with weak competition are opportunities, as long as you have strengths or can build them.

In marketing, your strengths are your positioning. It’s your differentiated value, which customers and prospects believe are important and appealing. It’s why they want to buy your brand, not competitors’ brands.

Use marketing SWOT analysis to help define target segments. Use it as marketing research tool.

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