One of the first things that marketers do when they come to a new brand is to try and understand how that brand fits into the competitive landscape. This post isn’t focused on a methodology for conducting a competitive analysis, but it does present one model that is a useful by product of that activity. It’s called the SWOT Analysis Model, and it is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your business.

It can be a helpful visualization to keep posted to the wall when you start doing strategy work. You can click on the image below to see a larger version: