By examining your business's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats you may find a path to new brand growth that you never suspected. That's where a SWOT analysis can help you. A SWOT analysis is an incredibly easy but effective method used to identify the components that help a business thrive or contribute to its development. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors, where as opportunities’ and threats are external factors.