I need a Strategic Plan – Part 2
Analyze your market with Porter’s Five Step Forces. Perform a SWOT. Define your mission, vision and goals.
Assessing the market: Porter’s Five Forces
- Internal Competition. How many competitors are in the marketplace? How do they behave? How do they go to market? What are their core competencies?
- Threat of New Entries. Who are our existing set of competitors? Are there new competitors who will enter the market? How difficult it is to get in the market?
- Threat of substitution. What other products could meet that need for our customers and substitute our product?
- Buyer power. Are we important company in the industry or are we a small company that is very much dependent on our customers?
- Supplier power. Are we dependent on our suppliers – the companies providing raw materials and inputs to your business. Are they big? Are they small?
Assessing the market with SWOT
Divide a rectangle into 4 equal parts and write down your company strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And typically it’s drawn on a grid. Strength and weaknesses are applied internally to your company and opportunities and threats are from your external market environment.
- Strengths: This is what our company is good at – the internally-facing capabilities of your company. It could be supply chain, or good sales force, good financial management, high skilled employees, or our skills in information technology.
- Weaknesses: Internal weaknesses in our company. For example our information technology department has a lack of experience or we are in need of employees for a digital marketing program.
- Opportunities are potential opportunities that we are presented with in our market. For example, there is an increase in demand for digital marketing employees in Charlotte, NC. An opportunity could be the economy is improving.
- Threats are potential problems that we can face within our market. We have threats that our customers will push down our pricing as they seek designers outside the US; or our competitors may be taking our skillful employees for higher wages.
Analyze your results and see if there is a defined pattern or theme in your market.
Establishing your mission
Write down a mission statement: why your company exists. It should be a cultural reflection of your values, your beliefs, and the philosophy of the organization. The mission statement should be clear, brief, and understandable to everyone. The mission should clearly specify what business your organization is in and where you compete.
Example of our mission: To fill the world with love and a spirit. We want your brand to be truly embraced by consumers, to reach the hearts and minds of consumers, to create an intimate and emotional connection that they cannot live without.
Define your vision:
Write down where would you like to be in three to five years? For example: To provide successful communications solutions at the highest world standards.
Define measurable goals:
For example:
- Customer Acquisitions: 10 per year
- Brand Awareness
- Lead Generation
- Thought Leadership
- Engagement
- Customer Retention / Loyalty
- Website Traffic
- Lead Management Nurturing
- Sales