Relax. I’m not going to hit you.
S.W.O.T. is simply a tool to help you with your marketing. It’s an analysis of your Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats. It can give you a clearer picture of where you are and help you get where you want to go.
Before you create a plan of any kind, it’s important to know what you’ve got to work with. Your current reality.
So you sit down with pen and paper or spreadsheet or text editor and you make a list. You can do this for just marketing or for all aspects of your practice.
Start with your STRENGTHS and WEAKNESSES:
- Knowledge (Legal, marketing, market data, trends)
- Skills (Trial, writing, closing the sale, presenting, negotiating)
- Habits (15 minutes of marketing every week day, personal thank you letters to all new clients)
- Assets (Contacts, marketing documents, lists, personnel, testimonials, reputation, location)
- And so on
Your web site might be a weakness or a strength. Or it might be a strength in some areas (i.e., great content) and a weakness in others (i.e., low or low quality traffic). If you advertise, the low rates you have negotiated might be a strength but your copy might be a weakness.
Start recording everything you can think of. What you’re good at and what you need to improve. Talk to your staff, your clients, and other lawyers who know your practice and see what they think. You may be taking for granted something about yourself that is a strength. And, let’s face it, third parties almost always see our weaknesses more clearly than we do.
Next, make a list of OPPORTUNITIES. To some extent, these are derivative of your strengths and weakness. A weakness you want to eliminate, for example, is an opportunity to improve results in that area. Capitalizing on a strength is an opportunity to compound results.
Other opportunities might include contacts you have not yet followed up with, creating a new seminar, or joining a networking group.
Finally, write down any THREATS. If you depend on advertising and another firm is dominating the airways with their ads, this could be considered a threat. If one of your big clients might be thinking of hiring another firm, that is obviously a threat to your income. Anything that poses a challenge and could lead to loss should be identified and added to your list.
Now you have a snapshot of your current reality, and a list of projects to work on this year.
This will help create a marketing plan that really works.
