5MK510 Digital And Social Media For Employment Of The Analytical Tool

The assignment constitutes of a report providing an in a detailed analysis of the Digital Marketing Audit of the chosen organisation that is McDonald's a food retail chain operating in the UK and worldwide. The report includes the internal and external audit of the organisation through the employment of the analytical tool including SWOT analysis, evaluation of the competitors, and identification of the key customer’s presentation of the customer journey flowchart. Further, Digital Marketing strategy of McDonald's is prepared that includes the TOWS analysis. Based on the audit and TOWS analysis, recommendations on the digital strategy will be provided. This is done through the employment of the chosen digital marketing tool. A digital plan is also prepared within the report that includes the consideration of required resources. The strategic activities are presented through an excel sheet as well. The report aims at the understanding of the significance of the digital marketing and delivers the essentialities in digital marketing. This is done through the deep investigation of the company McDonald's and its analysis.

A digital marketing audit is required to be done on McDonald’s owing to the decrease in the sales of the company. Digital marketing audit is essential for the development of a company and in the case of McDonald’s digital marketing audit can help it to analyse the services and products that the company provides to the customers. The advantage of using digital marketing audit is that a proper and through accessibility of the services and products is done with the help of technology (Seth, 2015). Therefore, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of McDonald's are presented hereafter with competitive analysis and key customer groups.

Strengths

• Strong Global Brand: Most recognizable brand all over the world with consistency in its food products. It avails food as per the cultural diversity of the location making it world’s largest food chain (Seth, 2015).
• Diversified Income: Operating in nearly 120 countries the total sales from different locations offset one another making it strong. This allows McDonald’s not to rely on any one key source unlike its competitors like Burger king relying on it up to 98% (Jurevicius, 2018).
• Market power over suppliers: Owing to the market power, it has power over suppliers and the business deal with Coca-Cola makes it the lowest priced drink not made available in other restaurant chains.
• Economies of Scale: The Company can share its fixed costs over the restaurants in various locations that make it one of the cheapest food retail chains (Seth, 2015).

Weaknesses:

• Negative Publicity:The analysis of the nutritional value of the food items of McDonald's is a weakness. As the food products are found to be high calorie with high sugar content. The documentary “Super-Size Me” is a negative publicity that focused on the deteriorated health of Morgan on consumption of McDonald’s food items for 30 days (Jurevicius, 2018).
• High Employee Turnover: Low skilled labour is hired for low payment that leads to the high rate of employee turnover. This incurs cost on the recruitment process, training and other impacting the company’s bottom line.
• Lack of improvement in Food Quality: Another weakness of the company is lack of improvement in the quality of food. The company has not instigated to make changes in the quality standards or to improve the quality of its products which can be regarded as the major weakness of the company. As customers need quality products and the low-quality food item could be ignored by them.

Opportunities

• Expansion Plan: The Company has always ventured for expansion. Therefore, it must go for the expansion in North America and Europe where the market is fairly saturated. The expansion of business in other nations will bring new prospects for M.C. Donald's (Roy, 2018).
• Upgraded menu:The food menu must include healthy alternatives for health consists of customers of today that constitutes a considerable number worldwide (Publishing, 2018).
• Social media:In the modern world, social media plays an important role for the promotion and success of a product or company. In the case of McDonald’s, the existence of the customers in social media can help the company to maintain its reputation and provide opportunities to promote new products in the market.

Threats:

• High competition:The food retail and restaurant industry have transformed into a very high competitive industry. The competitors have started gaining a competitive edge in the market. The number of competitors has increased who are also expanding from small café to restaurants like Starbucks. The competition is multifaceted based on price, variety in menu, service delivery, product quality among which in terms of the later one, McDonald's is weak (Publishing, 2018).
• Increase in health-conscious consumers: People now days are moving towards healthy food. This has imposed rejection of the calorie food items that constitutes majorly of the menu of McDonald's (Publishing, 2018).

The major competitors of McDonald’s include KFC, Burger King, Subway, Starbucks,

Identification of two key customer groups and development of personae’s, Pizza Hut, and others among these the evolution evaluation of KFC and Burger King in using social media is done hereafter:

Table 1: Use of Social media by KFC

(Sources: Created by self) 

Table 2: Use of Social Media by Burger King 

Porter’s five competitive forces can be used to understand the competitors of McDonald’s. The model helps in analysing the new entrants in the market along with the substitutes. For example, Burger King can be considered as a substitute to McDonald’s. At the same time, the threats of the buyers and suppliers need to be mitigated so that the bargaining power does not hamper the progress of the company.Two key customers groups and development of personae’s: 

The name of the customer is Wilson, a 21-year-old college student with pocket money of $500 per month. He is a college student who loves to participate in billiards and swimming. The goal of the person is to consume healthy food just to maintain his energy. Wilson uses online mode to make purchases and is a frequent use of the website of McDonald’s. The reason behind being loyal to the company is to try out various dishes that are manufactured by the company. Burger King is a well-established company that serve similar type of food as McDonald’s.

The name of the customer is Joana who is a 32-year old married women and a mother of two children. She works in a reputed organisation and earns about $35,000 per month. She purchases products manufactured by McDonald’s due to the demands made by the children. She visits the stores while returning home and at time uses online method of placing orders. At the same time, Joana considers KFC as a suitable alternative to McDonald’s so that a change in eating habit can be implemented.

 A consumer flowchart is presented hereafter that depicts the stages Customer Journey in the purchase of any product or services. Every single customer has a unique way of approaching the outlet in order to consume food. Categorising each of them is not possible. However, the nine stages of archetypal customer’s journey are a framework that is applicable to all types of customer journey that are discussed hereafter:

• Need:Customer’s realisation of need that is eating out here.
• Seek the selection of the product or service provider that customers narrow down from different options.
• Choose:Customers narrow done the option available for the particular provider of product or services out of multiple options (Tuten and Solomon 2017).
• Give:Decided with the option, customer opts for payment or seeks information, value-added services and other they are interested in using.
• Use:Finally, the customer consumes or uses the product of service
• Fix:Customers are helped to solve issues if any.
• Love: Decision of the customers to further purchase from the same provider and build a relationship
• LeaveDecision of the customer not to continue with the service provider. 

The digital marketing tool used by McDonald’s include

Model 1: RACE

Model 2: Ten C’s of marketing

Recommendations based on the analysis

As evident from the analysis, it is very important to strategize digital marketing plans by the marketing department of McDonald's so as to minimise the impact of threats and be able to utilise the opportunities making the strength. The recommendations include the following:

• Increase the level of food items making them healthier.
• New product development
• Strategies for retaining the employees

Focus on effective communication strategies with customers rather than advertisements only.

TOWS matrix and commentary on the analysis

Table 3: TOWS analysis

(Created by author) 

There are different types of Digital marketing model that can be used for the implementation of the recommendations. The most appropriate in this case is the RACE framework of digital insights. The implementation of the recommended strategies is applied to McDonald’s:

Reach: The activities in relation to McDonald’s need to consider the brand awareness through its products and services. The new products or the heightened quality of the products developed by McDonald’s need to be promoted both online and offline media reaching the customers (Ryan, 2016)

Act: The implementation of the promotional activities related to McDonald’s must include engaging content and participatory activities that are more attractive to the identified customer groups. McDonald’s may include lunching offers, direct marketing and the like. Interaction is required here.

Convert: This alludes to the conversion of sales through digital marketing used by McDonald’s while giving the customers quality services for which they prefer to continue transaction efficiently through e-commerce sites (Ryan, 2016).

Engage: This includes building a long-term relationship with the customers as well the employees which is a weakness in McDonald's. For customer relationship management (CRM), the company must provide a feedback system using social media networking; opt for direct-marketing with the existing and active customers (Leeflanget al. 2014). For employees, their salary must be standards one with training sessions and motivational leadership management towards them.

The planning of marketing objectives is to be done initially in order to implement the recommendations. The objective is to

• Develop new healthier products
• Build Customers Relationship
• Retain employees

The SMART model for the objectives of McDonald's includes the following:

• Sell: To increase the sales of the company by more than 20% within 2020
• Speak: In order to increase sell by 20% it is necessary to indulge in aggressive social media involvement so that effective promotion can take place
• Serve:A personal application can be created from which customers can order food
• Save:Finance of the company can be saved as social media sites are cheaper to use for the method of promotion.
• Sizzle:The objectives of the company can help it to extend its products in social media (Hallahan, 2015).

Digital marketing in an organisation is an important aspect that was be provided properly in order to ensure that every business work operation is in response to the general train that is operating society. Evolution of work and process related to the authority in an organisation must be in accordance with the requirement of the marketing department. The providing of the digital marketing plan will also ensure that there is enough opportunity for an organisation to increase their productivity and sales. For future development of an organisation like McDonalds or KFC, one must understand that resource allocation in terms of digital marketing plan proves to be an important aspect that must be and clearly evaluated by the management of the organisation (Tuten and Solomon, 2017). Opportunity will provide the current business contribution that can be gathered from digital channels which would help in refining the dashboard in order to speech feature objectives that can be evaluated on the basis of objective development. In the context of work and possibility, we observe that McDonald's have ensured their operation in large space because it is clear and most obviously seeing that they have ensured is a successful business plan in marketing department to digital communication and digitalization of social media. The strategy that was implemented by put the organisation was related to the implementation of digital channel forecast operation (Anderson, 2012). Digital channel forecast operation was clearly based upon the feedback of the customers in the society. The proper evaluation of the requirement the customer had in the society fuelled the very requirement of the organisational. Every aspect of McDonald's well in accordance to their environment of the customers in society by keeping in mind the general trend in the market which would ensure in understanding the objectivity of the customer need. There will be a possibility in organisational work where we will understand the importance of customer destination. Every prospect of the action considered by McDonalds has been in consideration of process development. Their marketing objectivity has always been to ensure the highest possible operative concerns related to product development and consumer satisfaction (Ryan, 2016).

Every operation related to business fact must be considered properly eligible in order to make sure that objectivity in the developer options is taken care of by initialised business class associate (Wong, Radel and Ramsaran-Fowdar, 2011). Another word it is noticed that their activities that must be considered before making sure that the digital marketing as well in the market with the opportunity to succeed in future. Prime objectivity of every organisation is to identify the fact that would ensure the information related to buyer personality. This remains to be the elementary upset that is to be fulfilled by every Organisation in order to ensure they are strong stay in digital marketing (Carter, 2012). Digital marketing requires proper networking which can be observed if and only if an organisation has a proper source of the building by buyer personality factor. The most obvious consideration that has been placed by both McDonalds has been to understand the demographic information related to their customers. The utilisation of internet marketing and digital marketing format have brought forward you the opportunity that has helped every organisational word to identify the location, age, income and the job title of the customers who wish or who actually goes for enjoying it services and the food provided by McDonalds and KFC (Ryan and Jones, 2012). In order to gain information related to psychographic formalities, there was my information which directly ensures successful opportunities development. Factors which organisations like McDonalds must keep in mind to bring out the best among the opportunities which they have in order to bring out the marketing opportunity in digital factor (Roy, 2018). Social media marketing required information related to the actual goal that they want to achieve. The identification of challenges and the evaluation of hobbies and interest must be properly sorted out (Deiss and Henneberry, 2017). In terms of KFC and McDonalds, we have observed the prime opportunity that they have in order of hobbies and interest is to understand the native language of the customer and therefore they have provided their internet marketing Customer Service Department with every opportunity to learn the colonial languages in the place they are situated. An organisation cannot gain success until and unless they play priorities in front of their objectivity (Schaffer, 2014). To ensure the priority the organisation need to be clear about how they want to ensure their work process in front of customers.

Next step is the identification of goal to ensure digital marketing tool. Digital marketing cannot be placed until unless there is proper selection of tool which will help them in understanding the way they want to make sure there opportunity around the world. Every valuation of information that the organisation process provides all due to the objectivity of overreaching goal. The organisation need to maintain its strategies based on the customer base that it has. The presentation of customer base they have will directly have an impact over the digital strategy that they won't be utilised in order to make sure that the business is dependent upon their cold and not dependent upon the objectivity of the organisation (Schein, 2010). Structure of business in case of McDonalds has been to clearly justify the required marketing objective. Marketing objective of the organisation has always been to ensure that the sales data are always having parity with their production (Carter, 2011). Having parity in production and sales data in an organisation suggest that they have a proper source of operation they would guide them to success. Evaluation of the actual existing digital marketing channels would also support an organisation to ensure that their strategies are well into a position that would help them to ensure the objectivity to incorporate new proposition. The presentation of the digital asset would result in earning media the operation presented by the organisation will attract media by considering the feedback from the customers by ensuring their Customer Service Department directly. Every option that is to be followed must be in order to ensure that the website or the publication group or directly related to customers. For the presentation of the experience work, there must be a positive review where the people get their information related to the content of social media and it must be related to everyone can text which would help in determining the relation of the organisation with a marketing department. Positive work environment must also have a greater media consultant. Activities also include auditing of existing content that would help in justifying whether there is any requirement of new changes in the business opportunity is required or not. Existing contents need to be audited because customer requires Innovation and creativity which can be observed if and only if there is proper auditing of the existing content provided by any of the organisation in society (Leeflanget al. 2014).

As evident from the above analysis, it is quite clear that a proper research through the employment of the above-used tools is highly crucial in planning marketing strategies that are the determinant of the decision making in relation to the marketing tactics. The recommendations that are mentioned above are applicable for the availability of the resources. Moreover, there is a need to monitor the effective execution as per planned targets and schedule. Without proper management of resources (financial, human and others) the effective execution of the prepared marketing will not be possible. Consequently, the expected outcome as per the plan will not be achieved. Gaining competitive advantage through digital marketing plans and techniques will not be possible. To conclude, a well-planned research, a proper analysis through tools and an effective plan is going to provide organisations like McDonald's who venture to employ digital marketing plan will be able to achieve sustainability within the market.

Every possible factor which must be considered in an organisation is well provided by the management team of McDonalds and KFC. Personalised media must be provided in order to make sure that the digital app that is well in accordance with their company need. Having their own digital asset, organisation have their open opportunity to provide media profile, Blood content and imagery which does not have any issue of copyright from other organisation. Presentation of the subjective includes of that contains that would be hosted as own operation. 

Anderson, D. (2012). Strategic marketing planning for the small to medium-sized business. [New York, N.Y.]: Business Expert Press.

Carter, B. (2011). Digital marketing for dummies. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Carter, B. (2011). Digital marketing for dummies. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Chaffey, D., Ellis-Chadwick, F., Isaac, H., Mercanti-Gue?rin, M. and Volle, P. (2017). Marketing digital. Montreuil: Pearson.

Deiss, R. and Henneberry, R. (2017). Digital marketing. Hoboken, NJ: For Dummies®, a Wiley brand.

Denecken, S. (2016, 10 24).Effects Of Digital Transformation On Businesses. Retrieved 3 20, 2018, from www.digitalistmag.com: https://www.digitalistmag.com/digital-supply-networks/2016/10/24/effects-of-digital-transformation-businesses-use-cases-04593153

Fine, L. G. (2009).The SWOT Analysis: Using Your Strength to Overcome Weaknesses, Using Opportunities to Overcome Threats.CreateSpace.

Hallahan, K., 2015. Organizational goals and communication objectives in strategic communication.The Routledge handbook of strategic communication, pp.244-266.

https://www.ibtimes.com.au/consumers-react-kfc-australias-dirty-social-media-ad-short-lived-campaign-may-have-done-job-1512808

Huntmello.com. (2018).Social Media Strategy at Burger King | Huntmello. [online] Available at: https://huntmello.com/2015/10/14/social-media-strategy-at-burger-king/ [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].

Jurevicius, O. (2018). McDonalds SWOT Analysis (5 key strengths in 2018). SM Insight., Available athttps://www.strategicmanagementinsight.com/swot-analyses/mcdonalds-swot-analysis.html [Accessed April 2018]

Leeflang, P.S., Verhoef, P.C., Dahlström, P. and Freundt, T., 2014.Challenges and solutions for marketing in a digital era.European management journal, 32(1), pp.1-12.

Li, H., Sheopuri, A., Yi, J. and Yu, Q., International Business Machines Corp, 2017. Feature learning on customer journey using categorical sequence data. U.S. Patent Application 15/095,850.

Meri.(2016, 8 8).A SWOT analysis of publishing. Retrieved 4 17, 2018, from www.meripaterson.com: https://www.meripaterson.com/a-swot-analysis-of-publishing/

Morrisson, M. (2011, 9 1).Strategic Analysis. Retrieved 3 20, 2018, from www.rapidbi.com: https://rapidbi.com/strategicanalysis/

Nestle, M. (2010). Safe Food.University of California Press.

Publishing, V. (2018). McDonald’s Corp.: A Short SWOT AnalysisValueline.com. Available at https://www.valueline.com/Stocks/Highlights/McDonalds_Corp___A_Short_SWOT_Analysis.aspx#.Wt0whbpuIjY [Accessed 23 April 2018]

Roy, R. (2018). Consumers react to KFC Australia’s dirty social media ad; short-lived campaign may have done the job. [online] International Business Times AU. Available at: https://www.ibtimes.com.au/consumers-react-kfc-australias-dirty-social-media-ad-short-lived-campaign-may-have-done-job-1512808 [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].

Ryan, D. and Jones, C. (2012). Understanding digital marketing. London: Kogan Page.

Ryan, D., 2016. Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation.Kogan Page Publishers.

Schaffer, N. (2014). Social Marketing Digital Book Set.Wiley.

Schein, E. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Seth, C. (2015). Swot analysis. Namur: 50minutes.

Shulver, M., Clark, G., & Johnston, R. (2012).Service Operations Management (4 ed.). Willy.

Social Media London. (2018). SOCIAL SMACKDOWN: McDonald's vs. Burger King #smlondon. [online] Available at: https://socialmedialondon.co.uk/mcdonalds-vs-burger-king/ [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].

Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing.Sage.

Warner, A. G. (2010). Strategic analysis and choice. New York: Business Expert Press.

Wong, H., Radel, K. and Ramsaran-Fowdar, R. (2011). Building a marketing plan. [New York, N.Y.]: Business Expert Press.