When we hear SWOT Analysis, many of us think of ONE main SWOT analysis of any company where we just list company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threads.

If you would like to have a SWOT done for your firm, the video above is a must see – brief interesting lecture? on SWOT by Malcolm McDonald, an Oxford Marketing Professor.? It is quite different than from what my Marketing Prof had taught me 5 years ago, when I was doing my Honors in Marketing, but this new ‘SWOT by Segments’ approach surely is a better way to do it.

Unless your company offers just one product, having a single SWOT gives you very general and vague points that are many times useless and sometimes could even be harmful for your company.

It makes more sense when SWOT is done for each different product that a company provides. OR, if a company provides products that cater to specific segments (we are ethnic targeted), then SWOT can be done even for each of these segments.

For us, it just seemed more apt to have SWOT done by-product rather than by ethnic. I looked at our company’s 4 major products – Long Distance, Homephone/VOIP, Mobile Products? & IPTV. There is also ‘Internet’, ‘Conferencing’ and few other products but these 4 were a good start. I have made a template/sample of this new & better SWOT analysis method.

Now, I cannot share that SWOT with you, but I assure you that when it was done and ready, I found it very useful to understand our product in comparison to our competitors and? have a better idea to market it, and gain a competitive edge.