In order to develop an effective digital marketing strategy, you need to know your business - every aspect of it - inside and out. This kind of understanding shouldn't just be assumed, it takes work, it’s a process, so let’s take a look at some different ways you can approach it.

One way you can go about this is to reflect on your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This is known as a SWOT analysis.

When you’re assessing your strengths and weaknesses, you should be looking inwards at your business’s assets. Think about your USP, your processes, and the technologies you use. Think about all the talented people you work with, and think about your business’s reputation and its existing customer base. When it comes to finding weaknesses, think about where your business falls short. Where is it lacking? And what isn’t working as well as it could?

When it comes to spotting opportunities and threats, you’ll want to look beyond your business at the environment and circumstances around you. Try and anticipate any market changes on the horizon that could have an impact on your business. Can you see a gap in the market, or is there a new competitor emerging that you need to keep an eye on?

Maybe you’re generating loads of promising leads. Maybe you're expecting some favorable news coverage of your business to surface - or perhaps new regulations have been put in place that mean you’ll have to radically change the way you do things.

So, there it is: SWOT. Simple, right? Well, for some businesses in fact, it’s a little too simple, so you might find it useful to analyze your business from another perspective, and yes...it’s another acronym: PESTLE.

PESTLE prompts businesses to assess their status and situation through a Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Legal and Environmental lens. As you can imagine, that’s a lot to take on and there are probably countless ways in which these can impact your business and your digital marketing efforts, but let’s at least take a look at a few examples.

Take product pricing. Prices that are affordable in one area may be beyond the reach of the average disposable income in another. Plus, different regions host different attitudes, concerns, cultures and customs, so you’ll need to think about how this could impact the demand for what you have to offer, and how you hope to sell it. Are there any national holidays or cultural events coming up, and what could they mean for your business? And, let’s say, for example, that your product is sustainably sourced and packaged. How much do audiences care about this, and are their feelings likely to change in the future?

Here’s another one to think about: consider the different social media platforms and search engines used across the world. If you’re looking to market your products in China, for example, you’ll need to be aware that instead of Google, they use Baidu, and instead of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, they use Weibo and WeChat - so getting access to the Chinese market will require investment in these platforms.

SWOT and PESTLE are just two examples of the many different frameworks you could use to perform a situational analysis. But, which one is right for you? Well, that’s for you to decide.

Understanding Your Business

About