How to Write a SWOT Analysis for a Small Business (Template and Examples)

How do you write a SWOT analysis?

You write a SWOT analysis by drawing four boxes and filling them in order: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal, meaning things about your business you can change, such as your skills, offer, prices, systems, and reputation. Opportunities and threats are external, meaning things happening around you, such as customer demand, competitors, new tools, regulation, and the economy. Keep each point short and specific, back it with something you have actually seen, and finish by turning the grid into a short list of actions.

My strong opinion: most SWOT analyses are useless because they stop at the grid. People fill four boxes with vague adjectives, nod at it, and file it away. A SWOT is only worth the hour it takes if it changes what you do next week. If yours does not end with a list of actions, it is not finished.

What SWOT stands for

The inside and outside split is the part people get wrong most often. "We could launch a new service" is not an opportunity. It is an action. The opportunity is the outside change that makes the new service worth launching, such as more customers asking for it.

Questions to ask for each part of the SWOT

• Strengths. Why do customers pick you? What do they praise in reviews or say when they refer someone? What can you do that a competitor would find hard to copy?
• Weaknesses. Why do people say no, or leave? Where do things break or slow down? What does the business depend on that would hurt if it disappeared tomorrow?
• Opportunities. What are customers asking for that nobody serves well? Which new tools could make you faster or cheaper? Which competitor is getting worse, or leaving a gap?
• Threats. Who is new in your market? Are prices, costs, or customer budgets moving against you? Could a change in platforms, search, or regulation cut off where your customers come from?

Answer from evidence, not from how you feel about the business. Look at your last few months of sales, lost deals, reviews, and support messages before you write anything. If you have not looked at competitors recently, How to Do Competitive Analysis With AI gives you the inputs for the opportunities and threats boxes.

SWOT analysis template

Copy this into a document. Aim for three to five points per box. Fewer than three usually means you have not looked hard enough. More than six usually means you are listing everything instead of what matters.

A SWOT analysis example

Here is an illustrative example for a two-person bookkeeping firm that serves local trades businesses. It is not a real client.

The useful part is what comes next. Strength plus opportunity: package a cash flow check-in as an add-on for existing clients who already trust the firm. Weakness plus threat: start one channel beyond referrals before the bigger firm takes the next wave of new trades businesses. Weakness plus opportunity: use AI to cut month-end hours so the owner has time to sell.

How to turn a SWOT analysis into actions

Pair the boxes against each other. This step is often called a TOWS matrix, and it is where the analysis earns its keep.

1. Strengths and opportunities. How can you use what you are good at to grab an opening? These are usually your best growth moves.
2. Strengths and threats. How can your strengths protect you from what is coming?
3. Weaknesses and opportunities. Which weakness, if fixed, would let you take an opportunity you are currently missing?
4. Weaknesses and threats. Where are you most exposed? Fix these first or accept the risk on purpose.

Pick three to five actions from that list, give each one an owner and a date, and put them into your plan. How to Write a Marketing Plan shows where those actions go next, and How to Write a Positioning Statement is the natural follow-up if your strengths box showed you something you should be leading with.

SWOT analysis mistakes to avoid

• Mixing up internal and external points, so actions end up in the opportunities box.
• Writing vague words like "quality" or "passion" instead of specific, provable points.
• Only listing strengths you wish you had, rather than ones customers actually mention.
• Leaving the weaknesses box polite. It is the most useful box if you are honest in it.
• Doing it alone. Ask a customer, an employee, or a peer what they would put in each box.
• Stopping at the grid without choosing actions, owners, and dates.
• Never repeating it. A quick SWOT once or twice a year shows you what has changed.

How to write a SWOT analysis with Claude

Claude is useful here because it will push back on vague points and spot the internal and external mix-ups. Open the Claude desktop app and give it real material, not "write a SWOT for my business."

1. Paste in your offer, a short description of your customers, a handful of reviews, notes on your last few lost deals, and anything you know about competitors.
2. Ask Claude to draft each box using only that material, and to mark any point it is guessing at rather than reading from your notes.
3. Ask it to rewrite every vague point into something specific and checkable, or to delete it.
4. Ask for the four pairings (strengths with opportunities, and so on) and two possible actions for each.
5. Pick the actions yourself, then ask Claude to turn them into a dated checklist with an owner for each.