Rapid Fire Marketing (RFMK) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Advertising
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Rapid Fire Marketing (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Rapid Fire Marketing is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Rapid Fire Marketing
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Rapid Fire Marketing can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Rapid Fire Marketing, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Rapid Fire Marketing operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Rapid Fire Marketing can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Rapid Fire Marketing
2. Improving business portfolio management of Rapid Fire Marketing
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Advertising sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Rapid Fire Marketing
Strengths of Rapid Fire Marketing | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Rapid Fire Marketing are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Rapid Fire Marketing has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Rapid Fire Marketing has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Strong track record of project management in the Advertising industry
– Rapid Fire Marketing is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Rapid Fire Marketing has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Advertising industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Rapid Fire Marketing have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Rapid Fire Marketing comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Advertising industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Digital Transformation in Advertising industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Rapid Fire Marketing digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Rapid Fire Marketing has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Rapid Fire Marketing has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Rapid Fire Marketing staying ahead in the Advertising industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Rapid Fire Marketing has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Rapid Fire Marketing to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Rapid Fire Marketing is one of the leading players in the Advertising industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Learning organization
- Rapid Fire Marketing is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Rapid Fire Marketing is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Rapid Fire Marketing emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Rapid Fire Marketing is one of the most innovative firm in Advertising sector.
Ability to lead change in Advertising
– Rapid Fire Marketing is one of the leading players in the Advertising industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Advertising industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Rapid Fire Marketing in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Analytics focus
– Rapid Fire Marketing is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Advertising industry. The technology infrastructure of United States is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Weaknesses of Rapid Fire Marketing | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Rapid Fire Marketing are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Rapid Fire Marketing has high operating costs in the Advertising industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Rapid Fire Marketing lucrative customers.
Skills based hiring in Advertising industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Rapid Fire Marketing has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Rapid Fire Marketing supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Rapid Fire Marketing is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Rapid Fire Marketing vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Advertising industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Rapid Fire Marketing is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the Advertising industry.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Rapid Fire Marketing, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Advertising industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Rapid Fire Marketing has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Advertising industry over the last five years. Rapid Fire Marketing even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Need for greater diversity
– Rapid Fire Marketing has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Rapid Fire Marketing, in the dynamic environment of Advertising industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Rapid Fire Marketing has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Rapid Fire Marketing needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Advertising industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Rapid Fire Marketing can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Rapid Fire Marketing is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Rapid Fire Marketing is one of the leading players in the Advertising industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Advertising industry in last five years.
Employees’ less understanding of Rapid Fire Marketing strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Rapid Fire Marketing don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Rapid Fire Marketing Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Rapid Fire Marketing are -
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Rapid Fire Marketing can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Buying journey improvements
– Rapid Fire Marketing can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Advertising industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Rapid Fire Marketing has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Advertising sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Rapid Fire Marketing to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Rapid Fire Marketing to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Rapid Fire Marketing in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Advertising industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Rapid Fire Marketing can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help Rapid Fire Marketing to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Advertising industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Rapid Fire Marketing can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Rapid Fire Marketing can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Rapid Fire Marketing to increase its market reach. Rapid Fire Marketing will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Rapid Fire Marketing to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Rapid Fire Marketing can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Rapid Fire Marketing can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Rapid Fire Marketing to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Advertising industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Rapid Fire Marketing in the Advertising industry. Now Rapid Fire Marketing can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Rapid Fire Marketing can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Threats Rapid Fire Marketing External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Rapid Fire Marketing are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Rapid Fire Marketing has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Advertising industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Rapid Fire Marketing needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Advertising sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Rapid Fire Marketing can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate Rapid Fire Marketing prominent markets.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Rapid Fire Marketing may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Advertising sector.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Rapid Fire Marketing business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Rapid Fire Marketing needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Advertising industry regulations.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Advertising industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Rapid Fire Marketing can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Rapid Fire Marketing
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Rapid Fire Marketing.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Rapid Fire Marketing can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the Advertising industry.
Environmental challenges
– Rapid Fire Marketing needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Rapid Fire Marketing can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Advertising industry.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Rapid Fire Marketing needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Advertising industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Advertising industry are lowering. It can presents Rapid Fire Marketing with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Advertising sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Rapid Fire Marketing high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Rapid Fire Marketing Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Rapid Fire Marketing needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of Rapid Fire Marketing is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of Rapid Fire Marketing is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Rapid Fire Marketing to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Rapid Fire Marketing needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.