Marketing Situation Analysis
A situation analysis takes a deep dive into where your business sits right now in the marketplace. It examines your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (a SWOT analysis). It looks at your industry as a whole and the market forces currently influencing it. It can include a brand audit to delve into the difference between what your brand is conveying and what is being perceived. It often incorporates a competitor analysis which uncovers your top competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Done right, it will also include a target market analysis to unearth who your best customers are, and what is important to them.
The marketing situation analysis also has a strong analytics component. It includes a CRM analysis that unearths where your profit centers are (and other key metrics). A website analysis examines how people interact with your website and the AdWords analysis exposes how effective your AdWords campaigns are. And finally, an SEO analysis compares how your website compares to your competitors in search engine results.
When combined, these analyses uncover the opportunities you can leverage and weaknesses you can mitigate. They provide the framework from which you can make more strategic choices so that every dollar you spend is purposeful and tied to a specific, measurable goal.