SWOT analysis is typically conducted early in the innovation process, originally intended to help companies find their position in the business environment and make decisions based on it, and is now more widely used. Among them, SW represents internal factors, while OT represents external factors, all closely related to the company's environment. The purpose of external analysis is to understand the relative position of the company and its competitors in the market, thereby helping the company further understand its internal analysis. The direct result of a SWOT analysis is a set of information tables, with outputs that can be search areas, business plans, innovation points, etc., needed in the product innovation process, accompanied by importance or priority ranking. Of course, this process also applies to researching an internet product. Nowadays, with the popularity of entrepreneurship and MBA courses, McKinsey's SWOT analysis has become commonplace. Even high school students, when choosing between liberal arts and science classes, will spread out a large blank sheet of paper and list strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats one by one. But whether a company is doing business analysis or a product is doing strategic planning, merely writing out SWOT as objectively as possible will not yield meaningful output. The SWOT analysis method is not limited to that. So the real question is: How to use SWOT analysis correctly and comprehensively? As usual, let's take a project as an example and fully replay it. Let's first use a handsome guy as a placeholder to represent that this is a real project. Analysis Participants: A film and television studio, representative work: "Guide to Life in the Heavenly Dynasty" Analysis Goal: To find the company's development positioning in today's market, where there are numerous film and television studios and a market full of video demand. Number of Participants: 8 people, including the founder and production team.

Process Start:

(Preparation beforehand, draw grids)

  1. The host (me, the witty little Xingmei, graduate of Beijing Broadcasting Institute) first leads everyone into the state with emotion, roughly outlining the industry situation (having reviewed various industry reports the day before), and briefly explaining the workshop process, stating that this analysis will take about 2 hours. Then, with a serious face, require everyone to analyze truthfully. We are not doing this analysis to sing praises, but to draw real conclusions.
  2. Before entering the analysis process, everyone first clarifies together: What industry does our company belong to? Then: This step is important. First, everyone needs to have a consensus on basic knowledge as a foundation. Second, when doing SWOT analysis, you will find that most people actually do not understand their own industry. Write it on the whiteboard to provide inspiration when you can't think of anything later.
  3. Enter the formal analysis process, starting with external analysis (OT, i.e., opportunities and risks). Tell everyone that we now have 8 minutes, and everyone needs to maintain complete silence. Each person silently writes down the opportunities and risks that the company's industry environment can bring to the company itself. Note: At this time, you can assume your company is invincible and has all attributes, ignoring internal factors. Often around 5 minutes, the scene falls into awkwardness, and everyone says they can't think of anything. At this time, the host can provide some inspiration, such as asking everyone to refer to the industry overview agreed upon in step 2, or analyze the following questions: a) What are the most important trends in the current market environment? b) What are people's needs? c) What are people dissatisfied with about current products? d) What are the industry champions/competitors doing, and what do they plan to do? After everyone has written and posted, each person talks about what they wrote, and others can add if they have inspiration while listening. After sharing, everyone takes colored pens and takes turns selecting three small notes they think are most important from the opportunities and risks categories, and draws colored dots on them (founders and executives can use different colors to distinguish).
  4. Enter internal analysis, same as step 3, also 8 minutes. Everyone silently writes down their analysis of the company's own competitive advantages, core competitiveness, weaknesses, and shortcomings. Among them, you can focus more on analyzing the company's strengths rather than weaknesses, because we are looking for market opportunities rather than market resistance. After everyone has written and posted, similarly, take turns talking about what they wrote and dot the sacred three points. Most SWOT analyses end here. But since our article title is: How to do a "comprehensive" SWOT analysis? The following is the truly useful and comprehensive part.
  5. See the four quadrants here? Now we enter the part that truly produces results. From here on, you really need to think hard. First, what needs to be written in these four quadrants are all solutions. Participants need to concentrate and combine each point from strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and risks one by one. For example, extract a point from strengths and combine it with a point from opportunities, and if there is a solution, write it down and post it in the SO quadrant. Here we need to give some examples to facilitate understanding: a) The company's strengths include "fast, accurate, and decisive editing skills," and the industry opportunities include "most product companies have demand for short videos, large volume, but requiring refinement." Smart Xiao Ming writes in the SO quadrant: "The company creates a batch of short, fast, and templated small videos." b) The company's weaknesses include "new employees don't understand the industry" and "the company lacks manpower and publicity," and the industry opportunities include "new media is developing vigorously" and "cultural and creative industries are valued." Smart Xiao Ming then writes in the WO quadrant: "Organize students in school to conduct an industry information sharing training session at the company." Among them, you can focus on selecting the small cards that were previously dotted with sacred dots for analysis. This process continues until everyone's thinking is exhausted and they can't think of anything even if they try. As shown in the figure below, there is still potential.
  6. Think it's over here? Not at all! We promised comprehensive! We promised output results! Historical experience shows that having solutions alone is useless; the important thing is to execute. So now the most important thing is to prioritize the solutions. This process is best done only with the participation of the founder and project manager for decision-making.

Sorting Principles:

a) SO (Strengths + Opportunities) is the most important, as this is the company's future core development. b) WT (Weaknesses + Risks) is second in importance, because if not done, the company might die. c) Next, WO (Weaknesses + Opportunities) is slightly more important, because weaknesses can likely be improved by hiring people, but opportunities are rare and hard to come by. d) ST (Strengths + Risks) has the lowest priority. Some solutions in this area may have been planned for a long time. Now you know that here you can slow down and do other things first. Finally, get an execution list, and then, immediately, execute at lightning speed! Above, isn't this SWOT analysis comprehensive enough? Like the KJ method, this is actually a working method that helps everyone brainstorm together while striving to reach consensus. This article is reprinted from: Marketing Department Reply with the following keywords to search and read related professional articles: Sales Supervisor, Second-tier Management, Regional Manager, Distributor Management, New Channels, City Manager, Competition, 2015, Manufacturer-Dealer Game, Product Slow Sales, Terminal Visit Management, Route Management, Deep Distribution, Internal Management, Sales Skills, Profit Improvement, Recruitment, Distribution, Daily Management, Team Motivation, Channel Promotion, Sales Misconceptions, New Product Launch, Township Market, New Product Pricing, Sales Target Achievement, Forcing Orders, Market Visit Inspection, Baijiu, Beer, Sales Increase, Agency Products, Channel Crossing, KA, Terminal Merchandising, New Market, Market Operation, Learning, Book Recommendations, Inventory Management, New Salespeople, Consumer Promotion, Execution, Old Products, Expired Product Handling, Model Market, Investment Promotion, New Media, Distributor Development, Performance Appraisal, Assessment, Annual Planning, Shopping Guide, Morning Meeting, Display, Transformation, Stock Pressure, Holidays, Distributor Cost Control, Channel Operation, Marketing Theory and Laws, Brand Truth, Order Meeting, Team Management, Training, Debriefing, Debriefing Report.