How Using SWOT Analysis Helps You to Write an Effective Commercial

If you ever took a course for a small business or consulted an expert for the growth of your own company, you probably came across the term SWOT analysis. The concept is related to strategic business planning, and it stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Business owners use it to evaluate the general situation in their firms. Through this approach, they can identify the things that their organization does well, the things that could be improved, the opportunities for growth, and the threats from the outside environment.

Commercial writing is an aspect of inbound marketing. The point is to attract a target audience by creating valuable content and tailoring experiences that they would enjoy. As an example, a firm may develop a blog and start publishing posts that require a subscription from potential customers. In addition to blogs, inbound marketing may also include podcasts, white papers, eBooks, social media posts, guest articles, case studies, and more. Commercial texts are an important piece of the puzzle.

How does a SWOT analysis fit in this concept? For each project or campaign, the marketing team will develop and analyze strategies based on the four elements:

This is a category for the things that the brand’s marketing team has already done well. What worked from previous campaigns? Can they reach a large audience through collaborations with influencers that are already formed? What advantages does the product/service have over competitive offers?

In this part of the analysis, the team will think about the things that hold them back from reaching the marketing goals. They consider the things that the product or campaign lack.

For example, the budget may be too small when compared to the one from their last quarter. Maybe they lack employees or other resources. In many cases, the team lacks creativity because they’ve been stuck in the circle of previous campaigns. At this point, they may search for topics ideas for SWOT analysis essay, so they can get inspired and fix those weaknesses. The goal is to enhance the strengths and limit the weaknesses as much as possible during the process of developing a marketing campaign. 

Some of the identified opportunities will be straightforward. But most others will be confusing, since they will have both positive and negative outcome potential. The team has to identify the two sides of each opportunity and get creative to achieve the best advantage for their chosen approach.

In most cases, competitors are the most obvious threat from the outside environment. Each firm has competitive brands with a great reputation and a well-established media presence. The point is to figure out how their innovation record compares to that of this campaign. The team is trying to write commercial texts that would help the brand exceed its share of the market.

But the competition is not the only thing to consider. As a simple example of a threat, let’s mention cultural appropriation. If the team is not careful enough with the text they write and the symbols they use, the audience may find it offensive.

Inexperienced marketers often make a beginner mistake: they don’t clearly distinguish between strengths and opportunities, and they confuse weaknesses for threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors. When analyzing them, you should focus on the product, company, previous marketing campaigns, and team. When analyzing opportunities and threats, you should focus on external factors: the audience, competition, and the economy.  

When a marketing team conducts one SWOT analysis after another, it’s easy to get repetitive. You’ll mention the same strengths and opportunities all the time. The weaknesses and threats are easier to alter based on the current conditions, but they still require marketers to step outside the box.

An in-depth analysis is unlikely to be completed during a single team meeting. The team manager should leave space for each member to get creative. After setting the foundational strategy, they will keep working on the marketing text as new ideas show up. Flexibility is crucial for a successful final result.

The process of writing an analysis is pretty structured. The team leader will separate four sections on the board, each of them for a different aspect of the SWOT concept. But that’s the only structure you should have. Everything you put inside these categories should be creative.

This type of analysis is an intellectual challenge, which should lead the team to better commercials. Instead of sticking to a pattern, they should try to introduce new ideas that would get the attention of their target audience.

On the surface, the concept may seem complicated. Many marketers are confused when they need to use it for commercial writing. But in practice, the idea is straightforward. You only need to look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats before developing a new campaign.  BIO: Joshua Robinson is a copywriter and marketing team leader. He’s focused on exploring strategies that can make product promotion more effective. Paul loves sharing his experience with business owners and marketing teams.