President Biden easily won the New Hampshire Democratic primary, carrying the traditional first-in-the-nation primary by 39 points over Rep. Dean Phillips. Biden’s comfortable win was more notable because his name did not actually appear on the primary ballot, forcing his supporters to write him in as their preference.
The election was technically an “unsanctioned” primary, as it was held despite the Democratic National Committee’s insistence that South Carolina hold the first Democratic primary this year.
New Hampshire Democrats went ahead anyway, following a state law requiring the nominating contest be the first in a given calendar year. As a result, the DNC announced no delegates would be awarded based on the New Hampshire results.
Biden’s team announced in late October he would not participate, meaning he would not be on the ballot and instead be a “write-in” candidate only. Phillips campaigned heavily in the Granite State but was unable to make significant inroads.
The results of the Fox News Voter Analysis, a survey of more than 900 New Hampshire Democratic primary voters, show the contours of a resounding win for the incumbent. At the same time, the data suggest some areas of division within Biden’s coalition.
Biden won every major demographic group by double digits. He was particularly strong among voters over age 65, those with college degrees and women. The race was somewhat closer among men.
Biden won voters over age 45 by 52 points but was noticeably weaker among younger voters.
The president had strong support from across the center and left of the political spectrum, getting a similar share of the vote from political moderates (62%), those who described themselves as “somewhat liberal” (64%) and “very liberal” voters (58%).
Three quarters of primary voters approved of the job Biden is doing as president.
His job ratings on the economy (80% approve, 19% disapprove) and student debt (73% approve, 25% disapprove) were particularly positive. Primary voters gave him much less glowing reviews on immigration and his handling of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Despite their frustrations on these two issues, more than half (55%) said they would be satisfied with Biden as the eventual Democratic nominee – just 13% would be dissatisfied enough that they would not support him in November.
By contrast, 53% of Republican primary voters would be satisfied with Donald Trump as their nominee, with 35% dissatisfied enough not to vote for him. Fewer Republicans (39%) would be satisfied with Nikki Haley, with 32% unhappy enough not to back her in the fall.
Even if they would be satisfied with Biden as the nominee, Democratic primary voters had clear concerns about his age.
Nearly half felt he is too old to serve another term as president, including more than a quarter (27%) of his supporters in the primary.
Almost all (83%) of those who thought he is not too old backed the president, while Phillips held a small advantage (+3 points) among those who felt Biden is too old for another term.
One thing primary voters could agree on: abortion. Almost all (94%) felt abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Nearly 6 in 10 said it was important the New Hampshire primary be the first in the nation, but the dispute with the DNC did not sink Biden, as he won by wide margins among those who felt it was important to be first (+28 points) and those who disagreed (+53 points).
Methodology
The Fox News Voter Analysis is a survey of more than 900 New Hampshire Democratic primary voters conducted Jan. 17-23, 2024. Full methodological details are available here.
How do you measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns? Do you track ROI? A/B test ads to improve performance? Maybe you use a fancy Google Data Studio dashboard to generate slick reports.
There’s still a good chance you are wasting money, and that’s because most businesses measure the impact of marketing after the fact. While knowing the cost per click of your search or social ads is essential, understanding the overall impact of your marketing campaigns can provide deeper insights into your business.
This is where SWOT analysis comes in handy. SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis for marketing campaigns allows you to see the big picture and face challenges head-on.
What Is a SWOT Analysis?
A SWOT analysis is a framework for analyzing and identifying key challenges affecting your business by considering your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
The goal of SWOT analysis is not just to track metrics or see which ads perform better but rather to get a high-level view of the impact of your marketing so you can improve it.
The framework of what a SWOT analysis is.
What Are the Benefits of SWOT Analysis in Marketing?
If you’ve run a Google Ad campaign or boosted a Facebook post, you already understand how to track the impact of your campaigns. A SWOT analysis looks beyond the standard metrics like ROI, CPC, and CAC to uncover the most crucial factors impacting your marketing—whether that is customer satisfaction, competitors squeezing you out of the market, or failure to promote your assets effectively.
That data can be powerful, especially if it’s available when you need it the most. According to Airtable, 46 percent of marketers say lack of timely data holds their team back. A SWOT analysis can help.
A few other benefits of SWOT for marketing include:
a better understanding of which marketing channels to focus on
helps you address weaknesses in your ads or marketing assets
makes it easier to see threats to your campaigns before they impact your bottom line
enables you to leverage the assets and strengths you already have
improves long-term goal setting for your marketing
The average business spends around 12 percent of its overall budget on marketing—a SWOT analysis ensures your budget is put to good use.
What Are the Drawbacks of SWOT in Marketing?
As much as I like SWOT analysis in marketing, it has some limitations. For starters, if you aren’t honest about your true shortcomings, a SWOT analysis won’t provide useful insights. This type of analysis requires self-reflection and honesty to be useful.
It can also be difficult to analyze very complex factors that could be either a weakness or a strength. For example, running ads on TikTok might have the highest cost and drive higher quality leads, which could be both a strength and a potential weakness.
A few other limitations to keep in mind:
SWOT analyses can be time-intensive. Make sure you have the personnel and the time to invest before getting started.
You might generate too many ideas on how to improve your marketing and get overwhelmed.
It can generate a lot of data but doesn’t tell you how to use that data.
Understanding the limitations of a SWOT analysis can help marketers and business owners better prepare and improve their chances of success. Now that you know its limitations, how do you perform a SWOT analysis?
How to Perform a SWOT Analysis for Marketing Campaigns
The first step in performing a SWOT analysis for marketing is determining the scope. Do you want to look at your marketing as a whole or a specific part of your overall marketing strategy? For example, you might want to focus only on your content strategy, SEO, or a specific ad campaign. Defining the parameters of your analysis helps keep you focused.
Keep in mind, there’s no one right way to perform a SWOT analysis, and that’s because every business has a different marketing strategy and faces different threats.
This guide can help you get started, but feel free to skip questions that don’t make sense for your business and add questions that provide a more thorough view of your marketing campaigns.
1. Analyze Your Marketing Strengths
What do you do well? If you’re looking at a specific campaign, think about what elements of the campaign are really working. For example, does your landing page convert at a higher rate, or are ads with people more likely to earn clicks?
Start by asking these questions and documenting the answers. Adjust the questions as needed to focus on a campaign or your entire marketing strategy.
What does your company (or your campaign) do better than others in your industry?
What do your customers love most about your company/product/services?
What positive attributes do customers associate with your brand?
What is your unique selling proposition? Is it effective?
What resources do you have that competitors don’t? This includes people, financial resources, and expertise.
What campaigns are most successful? Consider not just conversions but also lifetime value and cost per acquisition.
Remember, your answers and the questions you ask might vary depending on whether you are analyzing a specific campaign or your marketing strategy as a whole.
How to Find Strength Data
Don’t answer the questions above off the top of your head. Instead, use data to inform your answers. Depending on your business, that might include the following steps:
Perform a customer satisfaction survey, like a net promoter score, to understand how customers view your business.
An example a net promoter score, which is a useful tool when finding strength data.
Pull campaign data from separate tools into one dashboard, like Power BI or Google Data Studio to better understand the most effective campaigns.
Poll your employees to better understand your resources and how your team views your company.
2. Look for Your Marketing Weaknesses
This is often the most challenging part of a SWOT analysis. That’s because you have to be honest with yourself, and it can be hard to admit where campaigns have fallen short.
Start by asking questions. Again, feel free to adjust the wording to fit your campaign or overall strategy.
What do your customers most dislike about your company or offering?
If you sell products, why don’t customers come back?
What could your campaigns do more effectively?
What are the biggest challenges in your current marketing funnel?
Where in your funnel do you lose the most customers?
Where do your competitors win? (This could be specific strategies or platforms they are doing well with.)
What resources are you lacking?
Nearly 40 percent of marketers report having no documented marketing strategy at all, and that can hold you back. Looking at your weaknesses is the first step toward creating or improving your marketing strategy.
Where to Get Weakness Data
As you look for strengths (through customer and employee surveys, for example), also keep an eye out for weaknesses. Other places to locate weaknesses might include:
Customer reviews on sites like Google, Yelp, etc.
In support tickets. If you constantly get complaints about the same topic, that may need to be addressed.
In a competitive analysis.
Exit interview data, for customers or employees.
Analyze your exit pages in Google Analytics. Why are customers leaving those pages?
Assess time-on-page. Do customers spend less time on crucial pages in your marketing funnel?
3. Find Opportunities
This is my favorite part of SWOT—looking for areas to grow and build on your past successes. Where can you make changes and see the biggest impact? This step will help you figure it out. Begin by asking these questions:
What kind of marketing messaging resonates with your customers? Can you leverage that on more platforms?
Who are your most vocal brand advocates? How can you use them more effectively?
Are your budget, tools, and human resources being utilized to their full potential?
Which marketing channels exceeded expectations, and why?
Where to Find Opportunities Data
By now, you should’ve come across a few opportunities already. While reading customer reviews, looking at support tickets, and digging into GA data, you’ve likely already noted a few areas where you could improve.
Take a step back and try to look at the data with an open mind. What areas, platforms, or strategies are most likely to drive the best results? Make a list. You can also look at:
Sometimes the best way to see new opportunities is to introduce a fresh perspective. If you’d like help considering your options, reach out to my team. We’re happy to offer our thoughts and help you build an effective strategy.
4. Locate Threats
Over the years, I’ve noticed one thing the most successful brands have in common: the ability to see threats coming and adjust before they become a major issue.
For example, many websites were devastated when Google rolled out its Panda update, which targeted thin and spammy content. Those who saw it coming had already made changes and weren’t nearly as impacted. That should be your goal—to see threats on the horizon and take action.
Here are a few questions to consider:
Economic trends: What economic trends can or might impact your industry? For example, rising costs, increases in gas prices, a move to remote work, and so forth.
Marketing trends: How are marketing trends changing? For example, Google is getting rid of third-party cookies—how will that impact your marketing campaigns?
Technology trends: What technological changes are coming? Automation is gaining popularity, but could that go wrong?
Relationships: What relationships do you rely on, such as brand ambassadors, vendors, manufacturers, and contractors? How would your business recover if those relationships ended? Can you work to mitigate the impact now?
Intuition: What is everyone else doing that just feels wrong to you for some reason? Try to get to the bottom of why it feels off to you and whether that may become a threat in the future.
Audience: Think about your target audience—are they aging out of your market? Is the market shrinking or shifting?
Where to Find Threat Data
The reports and surveys you’ve already done may have highlighted threats. Look back over those results and look for threats you might not have noticed. Other places to look for threats include:
Technology blogs or publications.
Competitive analysis reports. What changes are your competitors making and why?
Newsletters and blogs of industry experts. What are they worried about?
Have a brainstorming session with your team. Write down all of the possible threats you can come up with, no matter how unlikely. You can review it later to determine whether action needs to be taken.
Frequently Asked Questions About SWOT for Marketing
How can a SWOT analysis help my marketing ROI?
It provides a high-level view of your marketing campaigns so you can better prepare for the shifting marketing landscape.
What does SWOT stand for?
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
How often should I perform a SWOT for marketing?
Ideally, you should perform a SWOT analysis every 6 to 12 months or whenever you notice changes in your campaign ROI.
Can I use SWOT for marketing at my small business?
Yes, SWOT can be used to analyze the effectiveness of marketing for any sized business. It’s particularly helpful for small businesses to find ways to stand out from their competitors.
Conclusion: SWOT Helps Marketers Make Smarter Decisions
Once you’ve performed your SWOT analysis for marketing, it’s time to put that information to work.
How can you improve your current strengths? What steps can you take to reduce the impact of your weaknesses? What changes can you make to take advantage of the marketing opportunities you uncovered? Finally, how can you prepare for the threats you face?
Whether you use SWOT to analyze your overall marketing strategy or focus on specific campaigns like your content marketing, this approach provides the information you need to launch more effective marketing campaigns.
Have you performed a SWOT analysis before? What is holding you back?
Starting a new paid marketing campaign is no easy feat.
There are logistical considerations, financial considerations, audience considerations, duration considerations.
Let’s imagine you’ve decided to start a new Google Ads campaign. You have a vague idea how much everything will cost, and you’re eager to get started.
Before you hit the green light on your new campaign, you need to know about your future profitability, particularly when your profits will break even with your costs.
Why does that matter?
At that point in your campaign’s lifespan, you’re primed to start turning a profit rather than existing in the red.
How do you determine that point?
By conducting a breakeven analysis.
What Is a Breakeven Analysis?
Whether you’re running a PPC campaign, adding a new advertising stream to your ongoing strategy, setting up an e-commerce store, or even opening a brick-and-mortar store, you need to conduct a breakeven analysis.
As we mentioned above, it lets you know when you can anticipate your endeavor to start paying off.
Beyond that, this analysis lets you know if your endeavor is viable or if it will be impossible to achieve financial success given your business model.
By helping you determine fixed costs (expenses like rent) and variable costs (like materials), you can set prices that reflect these expenses and predict when your business will move into the liminal space between expense and profit.
This stage of in-between profit and expense is referred to as the breakeven point (BEP), the stage when revenues equal costs. Once you’ve identified your BEP, assess all your costs from rent to labor to pricing structure to ensure you’re not spending any unnecessary money.
First, determine if your costs are too high or your prices too low to reach your BEP in a manageable timeframe.
Next, decide if your plan will be sustainable.
Not only does your BEP alert you to a specific event that should signal your move out of the red, but it also lets you know if you need to adjust your business spend.
Why You Should Do a Breakeven Analysis
The breakeven analysis is a hallmark of every good business plan. It allows you to determine cost structures and if you should move forward.
While it may seem like a breakeven analysis can only be completed before starting your business, this process can be helpful well beyond business launch.
By assessing and reassessing your business’ cost structures, you can forecast several different outcomes regardless of where you are in your company’s lifespan.
Benefits to conducting this type of analysis include:
correct pricing of product or service
view of profitability
provides information to adjust strategies for progressing
When Should You Complete a breakeven Analysis?
A breakeven analysis can be conducted at any time. However, there are four distinct actions that should trigger this analysis at your business:
New Business
As we mentioned above, conducting a breakeven analysis for a new business is vital for determining viability and pricing structure.
New Product
If you’re adding a costly new product to your business, you must calculate your BEP to ensure the potential gain is worth the cost.
New Sales Channel
Costs change whenever you incorporate a new sales channel. Whether those costs are contingent on the channel itself or the associated marketing expenses, be sure to conduct a breakeven analysis every time you add a new sales channel.
New Business Model
When you switch to a new business model, your costs can change drastically. To make sure the new model is sustainable, conduct a breakeven analysis.
2 Steps to Run a Breakeven Analysis
Hopefully, we’ve conveyed the value of this type of analysis, regardless of where you are in your campaign or business journey.
Below, we break down the steps to run an analysis.
Aggregate Data
Identify all the expenditures you foresee for your business and divide those costs into two categories: fixed and variable.
Fixed costs: These expenditures refer to any expenses that stay the same, regardless of your business’ success or failure. Categories include rent, labor (if full-time/set), and software subscriptions.
Variable costs: These costs refer to any expenditures that are contingent upon how much you sell. Consider materials, payment processing, labor (if part-time/fluid).
After you’ve identified all of these costs, decide on an average amount for each expenditure. These aren’t set in stone, but they should be within the realm of possibility for each commodity.
Compute
The formula for breakeven analysis is a two-step process.
Calculate how many breakeven units are necessary using this formula: fixed costs divided by (revenue per unit minus variable costs per unit).
Determine your breakeven sales volume by using unit sales price times breakeven units.
This final breakeven sales volume point allows you to determine if your business is sustainable if your goals are reasonable, and how to adjust your pricing and spend accordingly.
How to Track a Breakeven Analysis
While your breakeven point isn’t the final word in the ultimate success of your venture, it’s still a milestone indicative of your business’ growth.
As you launch your campaign, store, or product, keep an eye on your breakeven analysis and adjust as revenue rolls in or unforeseen expenses occur.
To keep your analysis up-to-date, you could use Microsoft Excel to crunch the numbers for you.
Use Excel’s Goal Seek, a tool that allows users to define by either unit or price.
The Goal Seek function allows users to break out specific amounts and conduct auditable adjustments.
To complete this function, follow these five steps:
Enter the terms seen in the image below step two in column A of your spreadsheet.
Key in the below formulas to calculate revenue, variable cost, and profit
Revenue = Unit Price x Unit Sold
Variable Costs = Cost per Unit x Unit Sold
Profit = Revenue – Variable Cost – Fixed Costs
Select Data > What-If Analysis > Goal Seek.
In the open Goal Seek dialog box, please complete the four below actions:
Specify the “Set Cell” as the Profit cell (B7 in this example).
Specify the “To value” as 0.
Specify the “By changing cell” as the Unit Price cell (B1 in this example).
Select OK.
Using Excel’s Goal Seek functionality, you can plug and play different scenarios as they arise. This tool also allows users to forecast what-ifs, enabling planning for eventualities that may or may not occur.
Through experimentation, you can help prepare your campaign, business, or product for any eventuality.
What to Do If Your Breakeven Analysis Was Wrong
While a breakeven analysis can be highly beneficial for assessing the sustainability of your campaign or project, the formula is not without its limitations.
Unanticipated external factors can wreak havoc on your formula, resulting in incorrect projections and measurements.
These five factors can dramatically impact your breakeven analysis.
In addition to these external forces, what if the result of the breakeven formula is unattainable for your budget?
Should you ditch that new advertising channel altogether or give up on your dreams of a brick-and-mortar store?
The answer is no.
Below, we break down three strategies to enact if your breakeven analysis shows unsustainability for your next venture.
Reduce Fixed Costs
Is there an opportunity to reduce your fixed costs? Take it. The lower your fixed costs can go, the fewer units you need to sell to reach your breakeven point.
Increase Your Prices
When you increase your prices, you reduce the number of units you need to sell to break even. A general caveat is to be mindful of the expectations that come with an increased price and what the market will realistically pay. The more you charge, the better product or service your consumers expect.
Reduce Variable Costs
Reducing variable costs can be challenging, but the more you can scale, the more you can lower variable costs. Regardless of what industry you’re in, consider changing your processes, negotiating with your suppliers, or changing materials.
Conclusion
Regardless of whether you’ve decided to start advertising on Instagram for the first time or are opening the doors to a brick-and-mortar store, the accuracy of a breakeven analysis is complicated.
To ensure you get as close as possible to the correct figure, be sure to get into granular detail on the costs and prices that correlate with your business.
In addition to possessing a thorough understanding of the costs associated with delivering your message or product to consumers, you must know the right price to charge for your product. Miscellaneous expenses add up; consider all possible variable and set costs.
To ensure you’re identifying the right price points for these items, analyze every product, service, or resource your business uses, produces, sells, or plans to sell. By organizing these items by profitability priority, you can further reduce costs and potentially reach your BEP sooner.
As you near the breakeven point, be sure to continuously monitor your performance through other metrics—breakeven analysis is just a tool in many that can help your business succeed.
What’s your best practice for identifying all variable and fixed expenses?
Starting a new paid marketing campaign is no easy feat. There are logistical considerations, financial considerations, audience considerations, duration considerations. Let’s imagine you’ve decided to start a new Google Ads campaign. You have a vague idea how much everything will cost, and you’re eager to get started. Before you hit the green light on your …
Data as a service (DaaS) is becoming increasingly popular. New advancements in cloud computing technology have made remote, cloud-based data storage and management easier to use and more accessible.
Businesses using DaaS platforms can see improvements in data collection, usage, and management. Additionally, offloading data management to DaaS companies means more internal capacity for business development.
Interested in getting started with a DaaS platform? Below, we’ll outline the benefits, solutions, and tools you can use to improve your data management strategies.
What Is Data as a Service (DaaS)?
Data as a service uses a cloud computing strategy to make business data readily available to stakeholders and third parties.
DaaS functions similarly to software as a service (SaaS), which removes the need for managing and downloading software locally. Unlike SaaS, which has been popular for the last decade, DaaS has only recently seen widespread adoption, primarily due to advancements in cloud computing technology.
Now, with low-cost cloud storage and bandwidth and cloud-based platforms explicitly designed for DaaS available, more businesses are moving their data storage out of local servers and into the cloud.
With DaaS services, businesses are no longer tied to local servers and storage systems, allowing them to securely store and access data remotely, collaborate with global partners, and find important business insights to drive new growth.
To put it simply, by using DaaS, you can access critical business data from anywhere at any time.
On the Gartner Hype Cycle, data and analytics services have already reached the Plateau of Productivity, showing their staying power in the market.
What Are the Benefits of Using Data as a Service Tools?
Businesses of all shapes and sizes can benefit from using data as a service tools.
Here are a few ways data as a service tools can improve your current data management processes:
Remote collaboration: DaaS allows partners in different locations to collaborate because employees can easily access the data from their devices regardless of location.
Seamless data access: Cloud storage also means team members don’t need to go into the office to download a file or check their analytics, saving individual employees valuable time and energy.
Simple setup: Businesses that adopt these platforms can begin storing and processing their data immediately, with very little setup time.
Crash protection: Cloud infrastructure is less likely to crash than traditional storage methods. This makes working on a DaaS server more secure and less prone to complications.
Improved financial reporting: Data as a service also improves financial reporting as businesses can convert IT costs from capital expenditures into operational expenditures.
Cost-effective: DaaS solutions are more cost-effective, allowing businesses to direct money where it’s most needed. Automated maintenance further alleviates internal management needs.
Insights and improvements: With features like data marketplaces, businesses can buy, sell, and trade data to drive new business growth. Each platform offers different insight and optimization methods to improve overall data management.
Who Benefits Most from DaaS Tools?
Data as a service is beneficial to any business model informed by data.
Whether you’re a marketing company focused on improving consumer insights or a product-based company with a global distribution process, there are many ways to leverage these exciting cloud-based services.
For example, if a company regularly tracks, mines, stores, and implements data insights, they can benefit from DaaS.
Or, if the business’s success is dependent on being aligned with customer needs and product offerings, data services can give important insights into improving this alignment.
Companies with remote teams can benefit from DaaS tools because they allow easy access to data from anywhere in the world.
DaaS also minimizes the need for in-house data management, which is a good strategy for companies looking to divert resources to other departments.
Additionally, companies that want access to data-backed analytics to improve internal processes or enhance customer relations can also benefit from this service.
Data collected by RocketSource has shown one of the greatest benefits of DaaS is improved customer experiences. This is due to the ability of these platforms to simplify data management both internally and externally.
For businesses, DaaS tools make it easy to understand and optimize decisions and campaigns. For customers, it can result in more tailored experiences overall.
Using DaaS Tools in Your Marketing Analysis
Data as a service tools give businesses the ability to segment unique data sets generated from Big Data. This information can be collected from six specific categories:
web mining: data compiled by mining the open internet
search information: data compiled from browser activity and intent behavior
social media: data compiled from shares, comments, check-ins, and other actions taken on social media
crowdsourcing: data collected from the public through surveys, polls, forums, and so on
transactional: data created from financial, logistical, and other such business practices, including withdrawals, deposits, insurance claims, flight reservations, and more
mobile: data compiled from apps and services working in the background of mobile phones
The ability to collect, analyze, and store all of this user-specific data is a huge advantage to marketers, allowing for more cohesive and clear market research.
DaaS makes comparing your performance against competitors easy. With simple, global access to organizational data, marketers can create benchmarking reports to gather data on financials, turnover, and leadership efforts and back everything up with percentile breakdowns. Workday is one data as a service provider offering exceptional benchmarking tools.
Business Intelligence Sharing
Data as a Service tools make data standardization easy by bringing together data sources and analytics with unique data visualizations. Companies can then offer this data to internal users to help facilitate business intelligence processes.
Access to Data Marketplaces
DaaS tools can give businesses access to data marketplaces where users can buy and sell different data sets from multiple sources. This data can then be repurposed and monetized for future business growth.
Consumer Research
Many data as a service platforms offer consumer insights and research options. These insights can alleviate internal research for marketing teams and give more refined solutions to improving consumer relationships.
How to Pick the Right DaaS Tool for You
Getting set up with data as a service is relatively simple, as most setup and preparation work is done through the service rather than on-site.
Most DaaS providers offer technical support solutions that alleviate this management from the business side.
How to Pick a DaaS Tool
Consider your business needs. Depending on your size, growth goals, and team, you may need different features in a data as a service tool.
Points to consider when choosing a data as a service tool are:
price
scalability
reliability
flexibility
infrastructure integrations
team access requirements
existing workflows and needs
Once you have these points laid out, it’s time to choose a data as a service tool and get your business signed up.
7 Great Data as a Service Tools
1. Snowflake
Snowflake offers data engineering, data lakes, data applications, data warehouses, and data sharing. Some of their biggest value propositions include unlimited scale, seamless access across clouds, and near-zero maintenance. Snowflake is a good choice for large, international businesses needing scalability and high-security features.
2. SAP HANA Cloud
SAP HANA Cloud is the cloud-based data foundation for SAP Business Technology Platform. It integrates data from across its enterprise system, creating live data solutions. This DaaS platform offers a low total cost of ownership and high processing performance through hybrid multimodal transactions. Real-time analytic processing allows for quick, data-backed decisions. SAP HANA is best for businesses already working in the AP Business Technology Platform.
3. Oracle
Oracle is the world’s leading converged, multi-model database management system. It offers NoSQL and MySQL databases, simplifies recreational database access, and reduces internal management workloads. Oracle boasts high-level performance, scalability, and availability for its clients. This DaaS tool is optimal for businesses looking for a hands-off approach to data management.
4. Kantar Marketplace
Kantar Marketplace is a data as a service platform designed to deliver market research insights to marketers and agencies. Their platform includes insights into ad testing and development, consumer and retail trends, product development, media planning and effectiveness, and provides custom survey options.
5. D&B M-DaaS
The dun & bradstreet M-DaaS: Master Data as a Service platform allows companies to integrate master data into native workflows seamlessly. Pre-mastered commercial content is delivered through a consistent and dependable platform, allowing brands to improve their master data management programs. This tool is a good choice for large or legacy companies with complex, large data sets to manage.
6. Refinitiv
Refinitiv is a data as a service platform providing risk intelligence data for financial institutions. They offer a centralized view of the legal entity of a company, supplier, or issuer so entity relationships and risks can be easily identified and managed. Regulatory compliance and requirements are the backbones of this service. Refinitiv is an excellent choice for businesses with high compliance requirements and diverse entity partnerships.
7. Dynata
Dynata is the world’s largest first-party data and insights platform, reaching over 62 million consumers and business professionals worldwide. Their service offers real-time feedback loops so marketers can understand what’s working and what’s not. Dynata is driven to maximize ROI at every stage of a campaign for continuous optimization.
How to Use DaaS Tools in Your Marketing Analysis
In Your Competitor Benchmarking Reports:
You can use DaaS tools to gather benchmarking data based on competitors.
In Your Business Intelligence Sharing:
You can use DaaS tools to get images of your brand’s performance across data points.
In Data Marketplaces:
DaaS tools buy and sell audience data from multiple marketplaces.
In Consumer Research:
DaaS tools can offer consumer insights.
Conclusion
Data as a service platforms allow for cohesive and accurate data management that can be accessed anywhere, anytime.
DaaS can also alleviate some internal management and IT needs, allowing businesses to move budgets towards more profitable markets and employees to focus on big picture issues.
Internal platform insights from DaaS platforms can be beneficial to marketers looking to improve consumer research and optimize existing data sets.
With improved data visualization, storage, access, and consumer data insights, data as a service offers growth and ease to partners and affiliates alike.
Once you have a DaaS system in place, you can start levering the data and investing in your marketing strategy. Let us know if we can help you reach your audience!
You may have noticed some small changes to Ubersuggest recently, but now it is time for another major release.
In the last few months, you have seen the application get faster, we are slowly (but surely) working on increasing data quality, and we have even made multiple updates to our Chrome Extension.
But today, we are announcing a new feature that will make finding lucrative keywords even easier.
So, what is it?
It’s a competitor analysis report!
An easier way to find keywords
I want you to head to Ubersuggest and type in the name of one of your competitors.
Ideally, you’ll add a popular one. The more popular the competitor the more keywords it will show you.
If you don’t know of a competitor, just perform a Google search for any keyword that you are trying to rank for and grab the top site.
Or you could just use “neilpatel.com” to see how it works.
At this point, you should see a report that looks something like this.
I want you to go to the sidebar and click on “competitors.”
From there you should see a report that looks something like this.
The top part of the report shows your main competitors in a graph.
You can easily see who is getting more traffic (keep in mind subdomains are counted as separate sites).
And, if you want, you can click on the “more domains” drop-down and unselect some of the competitors or even add more that may not be listed.
As you scroll down you’ll also see a long table.
In the table, you’ll see the competitor domain, the number of common keywords you rank for, keyword gaps (the keywords they rank for that you don’t rank for – this is your main opportunity), their estimated traffic, and the number of backlinks that you have.
So, let’s dive into the keywords.
Common keywords and keywords gap
Within the table you can drill down on the common keywords. All you have to do is click the “view all” button under that table column and you’ll see something like this.
It breaks down the common keywords that both you and your competition are ranking for.
This is useful because it shows you which keywords you are focusing on that they may also be focusing on.
When drilling down on this table, pay attention to volume, position, estimated visits, and CPC.
Volume tells you how many times a keyword is searched.
Position tells you where your competition is ranking on Google.
Estimated visits breaks down roughly how much traffic they get from that keyword.
CPC tells you how expensive a keyword is if you had to pay for it through advertising.
Generally, you want to make sure you rank higher than your competition for keywords with high volume and high CPC. Ideally, they need both. That way you know a keyword can not only drive traffic but also sales.
And my favorite part about this report is the keywords gap. This shows you the keywords that your competition ranks for that you don’t.
To see those keywords, you just have to click on “view all” and you’ll see a list.
Again, you’ll want to pay attention to the same metrics and you’ll want to look for keywords that have a high volume and high CPC.
It means those keywords drive traffic and typically drive conversions as well.
I highly recommend that you go through all of the keywords that each of your competitors rank for that you don’t.
Within the table just keep clicking the “next 10” button to keep seeing more keywords.
Or you can just click “export to CSV” if you want to download all of the keywords.
Now head to Ubersuggest and give it a try to find more keyword opportunities.
So, what’s next?
Well, hopefully you’ll start using the Competitors report because it will give you more keywords.
But over the next few months you’ll see some big changes that will make all of the reports more useful.
More accurate data – from traffic estimations to keyword volume, you’ll start seeing better estimations that are much closer to people’s actual traffic. Our new estimation formulas take much more data into account, so we are able to come up with better data for you.
More link data – over the next few months you’ll see a much more robust link dataset as we are working to expand our database. It will be much more comparable to competing products and the link data will be indexed much faster. So, when you build new links or lose new links, we will pick it up faster.
More accurate metrics – from domain authority to keyword difficulty scores, the data will also be more accurate on that end so you can make better-informed decisions.
Better filtering of keywords – within Ubersuggest and even other SEO tools, sometimes you see keyword recommendations that don’t make sense. We have new logic that is coming out soon that will remove most of these irrelevant keywords so you can focus your efforts going after terms that don’t just drive more traffic, but they also drive sales.
Conclusion
You’ll see big improvements in the accuracy of our data by the end of the year if not in January, worst-case scenario.
We are already starting to slowly roll out the changes over the next few weeks and it will continue until the end of January.
And after that we even have a few cool new features coming out that you haven’t seen on any competing tools yet, which will help you get more SEO traffic faster. 😉
So, what are you waiting for? Go give Ubersuggest a try.
Luckily for you, I’ve got plenty of tips that can help.
And there’s one strategy I’ve borrowed from my business analyst friends, which I’m going to share with you today.
It’s called a SWOT analysis.
A SWOT analysis can help you see a different side to your PPC campaign and improve its performance in the process.
This article will help you carry out your own analysis and take your PPC campaigns to another level.
What is a SWOT Analysis?
A SWOT analysis is a corporate evaluation technique that can be used to assess anything from an entire company right down to a single PPC campaign.
So, what does SWOT stand for?
It stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors, things you control. Opportunities and threats are external factors. These are happening in the market right now, whether you like it or not. You may not be able to change them, but you can react to them.
Typically, SWOT analysis is used at an operational level to help business leaders assess a company’s current position in the market and highlight areas for future growth.
It can also be used to assess your PPC campaigns. A SWOT analysis can show you how well your campaign is performing, what’s holding you back, and how you can improve.
Why Your Company Should Do SWOT Analysis for PPC Campaigns
A SWOT analysis should be considered essential if you don’t want your PPC campaigns to fail.
Too often, when brands try to optimize their PPC advertising, they look at their campaigns in isolation. They only analyze their own keywords, bids, and landing pages. But your PPC campaigns don’t exist in a vacuum.
You are competing with hundreds of other brands for the same cherished three or four spots.
A SWOT analysis will help you to understand external factors that may impact your PPC campaigns. Things like competitors, the economy, and the state of your industry can all affect the performance of your ads and the likelihood that someone will buy when they click them.
You’ll also identify new opportunities for your campaign. That could be doubling down on what you do well, or it could be fixing one of your weaknesses. When you lay out what’s working and what’s not, it’s much easier to put together a plan that involves more than just raising your bids.
Ultimately, it will help you to look at your PPC campaigns in a different way. Despite the wealth of advice out there on optimizing PPC campaigns, it’s easy to get stuck in a routine of researching keywords, testing new ad copy, and creating new landing pages.
There’s much more you can be doing to improve your campaigns, and a SWOT analysis will help you take your PPC campaigns to the next level.
How to Do a SWOT Analysis of Your PPC
All you need to do is sit down and brainstorm each of your campaign’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. They are typically displayed in a 2×2 grid.
But you can just make a list below each header if that’s easier.
It can help to have a goal in mind when starting your SWOT analysis.
By focusing on your PPC campaigns, you have already narrowed your focus, but can you get an even clearer picture of what you want to achieve?
Maybe you want to figure out why your PPC campaign isn’t driving as many sales as your Facebook ads, for instance. Or find ways to maximize what is already a profitable channel.
It’s best to do a SWOT analysis with more than one person. The more views and opinions you can capture, the more complete a picture you’ll be able to develop. You can brainstorm together or complete the analysis individually, coming together at the end to share your thoughts.
Finally, try to keep things as even as possible when brainstorming. If you have 10 strengths, find 10 weaknesses. Find a threat for every opportunity. You get the picture.
SWOT Analysis S: Strengths
Start by making a list of all the strengths of your PPC campaign. Strengths are all the internal positive factors about your PPC efforts.
For instance, maybe you have an excellent ROI or a high Quality Score. Covering hundreds of relevant keywords could also be a strength, as could your CTR or bounce rate.
Think about the advantages you hold over the competition, too. That could be the PPC agency you partner with, for instance. It could even be the quality of your products or the strength of your brand. There’s no reason to limit your strengths to things that are specific to your PPC campaign.
Don’t be modest, here! Now’s the time to boast if ever there was one.
SWOT Analysis W: Weaknesses
Next, examine your PPC campaign’s weaknesses. These are things you are in control of that are stopping you from increasing your ROI and generating more revenue. They could also be things your campaign currently lacks, like A/B testing.
But they could also be broader weaknesses like a small budget or a lack of PPC experts.
Remember to only include things you have control over in this category. Having a bigger, better-funded competitor is not a relevant weakness of your campaign. Operating in a very competitive market is, on the other hand. You can’t control your competitor, but you can choose not to compete. Or at least not compete directly.
When in doubt, look at your strengths section and think about the opposite.
SWOT Analysis O: Opportunities
Now consider any external positive factors that could improve your PPC campaigns in the future. You could be launching a new advertising campaign, for instance, that would increase the demand for your product.
Maybe a competitor is on the verge of bankruptcy or is pivoting their business model.
Take into account the time frame of these opportunities. A new marketing campaign may only increase demand for a few months, whereas ongoing market growth (like the acceleration of e-commerce) may last for years.
Don’t forget to combine what you’ve done so far by including weaknesses that can be turned into strengths.
SWOT Analysis T: Threats
Finally, look at threats to your PPC campaign. These are also external factors that you have little to no control over. And this is where you’d list those bigger, better-funded competitors who are constantly outbidding you.
It’s not just your competitors you need to consider, however. What’s the market like for your current product? Are consumers shopping somewhere other than Google? Could anything change that would impact your success, like one of your employees taking a new job?
It can help to think about your company and your industry at a broader level, too. Does your product risk becoming obsolete, for instance? Or could changes to the market weaken demand for your offering?
Visualizing and Displaying Your SWOT Analysis
There are several different methods to display your SWOT analysis.
As I have shown above, the most common format of a SWOT analysis is a 2×2 chart. This makes it easy to visualize your analysis as a whole, as every section is displayed in relation to each other.
But it’s not the only way you can display your SWOT analysis.
There are plenty of ways to make your analysis more digestible and visually engaging.
Or this creative McDonalds SWOT graphic by Creately.
If design isn’t your forte, Lucidchart has a SWOT analysis generator you can use instead.
Making Your SWOT Analysis Actionable
One problem with a SWOT is that it doesn’t produce actionable results. It only helps you understand where you currently are.
You need to make your analysis actionable.
Start by looking at the relationship between each section. For instance, ask yourself whether you can use your strengths to create new opportunities, or whether you can remove threats by improving your weaknesses.
Let’s start by looking at how you can turn your strengths into new opportunities. Basically, this means doing more of what you are good at. In the example above, we highlighted landing page creation as a strength.
You could turn this into an opportunity by creating more landing pages for your ad groups. Doing so could improve your quality score, decrease your bounce rate, and increase your conversion rate.
Next, identify how you can turn your weaknesses into strengths. Again, in the example above, I listed a lack of a dedicated PPC account manager as a weakness. Assuming you have the budget to hire a new employee, this is a pretty easy one to fix. Alternatively, you could work with a digital marketing consultant.
Now let’s look at opportunities. Is there any way you can capitalize on the opportunities you’ve identified? We listed e-commerce growth and new products as opportunities above. One option is to increase our budget to take advantage of the growth in e-commerce. Another would be to create new ads and landing pages for our new products.
Finally, look at the threats. You probably won’t be able to change any of these directly, but you figure out ways to mitigate the threats. For instance, if you have a larger competitor with a bigger budget, you can maximize your ROI as much as possible or target longer tail keywords.
Examples of SWOT Analysis for PPC Campaigns
Are you ready to start your own SWOT analysis? Hopefully, you can use my examples as a jumping-off point. But just in case you need more guidance, here are a couple of other examples of SWOT analysis for PPC campaigns.
You can see they get very specific listing ad KPIs in both the strengths and weaknesses columns. They also do an excellent job of balancing strengths with weaknesses and opportunities with threats.
This is a much broader approach to PPC SWOT analysis, including things like product prices and availability. They also do a nice job of matching up strengths with weaknesses and opportunities with threats.
Conclusion
A SWOT analysis is a great way to get a different perspective on your PPC campaign. Remember, your campaigns don’t exist in a vacuum, and neither should your optimization efforts.
By thinking about your ads in the context of the broader market and economy, you can optimize your campaigns at a level your competitors can only dream of.
Why stop at creating new ad copy and running A/B tests when you can find out ways to capitalize on new consumer sentiment or shifts in the market.
What have you uncovered with your SWOT analysis? Let me know in the comments!
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