By Michelle Carvill

Okay, times ahead are looking rough - but you’re not going to be shortsighted and pull activity - instead you’re going to consider how you can leverage upon your activity and get your house in order - so that you have a sharp pencil to work with.

You’ve taken a step back and you’ve decided that there are numerous things you can do to improve your business. And, given that ‘implementation is key’ - you now you want to pull together a program to develop and improve your business. But where do you start? How do you select which areas to focus on initially - to ensure that resources, time, financials and effort are allocated appropriately?

SWOT analysis provides you with a starting point. A simple framework for analysing your business designed to help you identify the ‘health’ of your business - looking at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats - hence SWOT.

Like many activities - outcome is dependent upon input. Therefore, it’s essential to look at all aspects of your business; industry dynamics, market growth, product development, culture, customer relationship management etc, etc.  The more analysis you undertake, the deeper your understanding.

How SWOT Analysis Works

Generally, the SWOT analysis framework looks at all areas of your business from 2 perspectives;

Internal Issues: Areas within the business, which the business owner has the ability to influence.
External Issues: The environment within which the business operates. Areas of limited control such as, business climate, legislative issues etc. So let’s look at the practicalities of undertaking a SWOT…

Step 1 - Preparation

Set out what you want to achieve. The SWOT process helps you to highlight areas of greatest concern, and greatest comfort - helping you to identify where you need to take action to resolve any challenges.

It’s not a quick process. Most businesses, regardless of size, have a number of complexities to flesh out. The SWOT process may identify actions you need to take before you can continue with your analysis - you may need to undertake Market Research - a project in itself. Create a timeline, meet with relevant parties regularly and ensure that the SWOT is given the time it requires, to assess, discuss and monitor progress.
Step 2 - External Issues

Opportunities and Threats often focus attention on the External Issues. Perhaps a threat is sited as ‘new technological developments’ - which may influence the sales of your product. However, this Threat could also turn into an Advantage - it could mean that your product would be in demand by those who don’t want to move forward with technology, or it could mean that you develop a new product offering with better features.  The SWOT creates significant opportunity to brainstorm areas such as; trends, the current state of the business, and impact external issues may have on the business - covering 6 key areas:

1. Industry
2. Competition
3. Technology
4. Customers
5. Shareholder circumstances
6. The General Business Environment

Step 3 - Internal Issues

Analysis of your strengths and weaknesses should focus on the relative strength or weakness compared to your competition.  The same principles apply - the current state of your business, trends within your business sector, and scope and impact.

1. Aspects relating to direction of the business

- Vision
- Strategy
- Culture
- Structure

2. Aspects relating to the operations of the business.

- Products and services
- Marketing and sales
- Production and inventory
- People
- Finance

Step 4 - Implementation

Once you get through your SWOT, you will have spent a significant amount of time and resource, discussing, identifying, prioritising and brainstorming. By this stage, having gone through this process rigorously, you will have identified your core initial issues which need to be addressed.

And this is where the fun starts. You have undertaken research on your business - you have a clearer idea of key issues - and how to move your business in the direction you want to take it. There’s still a lot to do - but at least you are off first base.

Michelle Carvill is a Marketing Consultant and has been running http://www.carvillcreative.co.uk for the past 6 years. Working with a number of small and medium sized businesses - she shares her hands on experience - tips, news, view and advice. Visit her blog http://www.carvillonmarketing.com for more.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michelle_Carvill http://EzineArticles.com/?How-Healthy-is-Your-Business?–Do-a-SWOT-to-Find-Out&id=1858865

Powerful Marketing For Free - Strategies
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Leonardo_Wood]Leonardo Wood

Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive, in fact some of the greatest and most powerful forms of marketing cost no money to implement. If you are willing to spend some time working on your marketing it will make a real difference to your business.

When times are hard the phone stops ringing, so what are you going to do about it? Give marketing for free a try before you start sacking people.

Here’s a list of ways you can market your business for free:

Call your previous customers - They are the easiest people to sell your products and services to.

Networking - Get out there, meet people and spread the word, if you are quiet you may feel deflated, but you just need to get out there and promote yourself.

Stop Advertising - I don’t mean stop advertising altogether I just mean stop advertising in the places where you are not sure if its working or not and spend the money you save on testing other forms of marketing and advertising.

PR - Get in the media talking about what you know best, your trade or business etc. You are an expert on what you do and the media will feature you if you have something of interest to say. Check out the stories already in the papers etc to see if you can piggy back any of the stories that are already in the news.

The Papers need stories and there is no reason why you can’t get your business some free publicity.

Upselling - This is a great FREE way of getting more from your sales, at the exact point that someone buys from you they need to be offered something else which will increase the amount of money they spend with you.

You could offer a more expensive version of the original product or maybe an extra service that compliments the original purchase.

What else can you offer your customers at the point of purchase?

Emails - Are you regularly emailing your previous customers and potential customers? It will help you get more work and it costs nothing to implement.

Testing - You need to test and measure your existing marketing and advertising to see if its working or not, it costs nothing to test and it helps to eliminate ineffective advertising and marketing.

You need to keep track of where your calls come from, how many leads are generated from a particular ad, how many sales are converted and how much profit was made as a direct result of each ad.

If you do not have the answers to these questions how are you going to know whether or not you are throwing your money in the bin.

There is no excuse for not implementing the strategies above. Go for it!

Discover very easy to implement marketing and internet marketing strategies to recession proof your business with this free E-Book from Marketing Man. [http://www.ablebusinessmedia.com/marketingmanebook.htm]Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Marketing Man has hundreds of Marketing Tips to help you recession proof your business. If you run a small business visit his website today to get instant free marketing tips to help you fight the credit crunch. [http://www.marketingman.info/]Marketing Man

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leonardo_Wood http://EzineArticles.com/?Powerful-Marketing-For-Free—Strategies&id=1859137

By Leonardo Wood

There are dozens of specific strategies that you could be implementing in your business to help you fight the recession. Here are 6 you might want to consider.

1 - Don’t give up when communicating with your leads or existing customers. People won’t usually buy from you the first time you contact them. These days it can take up to 10-20 points of contact before your customers buy from you. If you leave the enquiry or the quote on the shelf waiting for the calls to come in you will be leaving money on the table.

2 - Guarantees are crucial, especially in the current economic climate. If you offer a cast iron guarantee it is sure to help you get more sales. Most people will never ask for their money back.

3 - Try Google Pay Per Click advertising, (bidding to get high up on Google) it is quick and easy to set up and there is almost no wastage, people will not see your ad unless they search for your products/services, and it doesn’t cost you until someone clicks on your ad and visits your website.

4 - Don’t take too much notice of the depressing news, there is massive opportunity for businesses who are smart in the way they think about marketing and advertising. Most business owners cut back on as much advertising as possible, if you spend wisely in the right areas you will have a much better chance of getting the work that is still out there.

5 - Upsell at every opportunity - This is a great way of instantly boosting your profits. What other product/service or upgrade can you offer your customers at the very point they make a purchase.

6 - Increase the amount of communication you have with your existing customers. Everyone is looking around to save cash, if you are constantly emailing, phoning, mailing your customers they will be less likely to shop around. I takes a lot to get a new customer, do everything you can to keep them.

Discover very easy to implement marketing and internet marketing strategies to recession proof your business with this free E-Book from Marketing Man. [http://www.ablebusinessmedia.com/marketingmanebook.htm]Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Marketing Man has hundreds of Marketing Tips to help you recession proof your business. If you run a small business visit his website today to get instant free marketing tips to help you fight the credit crunch. [http://www.marketingman.info/]Marketing Man

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leonardo_Wood http://EzineArticles.com/?6-Marketing-Tips-to-Help-You-Fight-the-Recession&id=1859152