Be SMART and SWOT

This post reflects upon readings for Week 3 -- Chapter 7.

Of all the strategy and planning frameworks covered in the text for this week's reading, two stand out in particular for me for their simplicity, elegance and opportunity for practical application in everyday life. They are:

• Setting SMART goals
• Performing a SWOT analysis

SMART is a framework to set reasonable goals/objectives for your PR campaign, and for practically anything else you want to do with life. The acronym stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timeframed

For example, if you need to promote a product as part of a PR campaign, you want teenagers studying in Singapore Polytechnics (specific segment of consumers) to increase purchases by 20% (measurable) in next three months (timeframed). The goal of increasing sales by 20% must also not be too hard (achievable) or too easy (realistic).

Besides being a useful framework by which to check if goals set are appropriate, SMART goals are also instructional of the nature of PR. In the corporate context, PR is a results-oriented marketing and communications discipline. It is used to drive profitability and the bottom-line of companies, whether directly (by increasing sales) or indirectly (by positioning brands in a desirable light).

As the owner of GameSync, a web publication focusing on the video games community in Singapore, I can appreciate setting SMART goals. For example, last year I helped put together an online Team Fortress 2 tournament to attract the TF2 community to my website. Although ultimately successful in drawing more registrations from TF2 players and positioning GameSync as the go-to place for the community, defining a SMART goal would have helped to measure the positive impact of the event!

The SWOT analysis is used to identify key factors which will influence a brand or product. It stands for:

• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threats

Listing all these key points of a brand or product helps to identify areas where the attention should be prioritized. It is helpful to understand the marketing and communications environment in which a product or brand lives in.

Once again taking GameSync as an simplified example, the TF2 community was identified as an opportunity as the game had just recently been launched. No other web publication had yet to actively court TF2 players (a clear lack of threat). GameSync had already established itself as a trusted brand in the competitive video gaming community (strength), although traditionally it was not a type of game that the core audience played (weakness). Clear synergy could be found here and so the decision to go ahead with the organization of a tournament was made.

This is of course a simplified example. In reality, for example, threats would include a much broader range, including other tournaments organized overseas and other general publications such as GameAxis and Playworks.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, SMART goals and SWOT analysis are useful not only in PR, but are also useful in marketing, business and even in your personal life. They're catchy and easy to remember, so try to use them as often as you can!