Marketing Analysis Of Facebook
Facebook still remains the most used social media portal with billions of monthly active users, despite the repeated disputes over the last few years. The company has a few dominant strengths on which it has been building its business for the past 15 years, but unfortunately, they are followed by set of weaknesses, which only means that the company has to continue innovating to ensure its steady market position. Despite the big competition and the threats that the business is overcoming every day from other social networks and advertising services, Facebook’s strengths help it remain the leading social media platform in the whole world. Let’s look at Facebook’s SWOTT – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Facebook remains one of the world’s leading social media platform. It used to be just a social media portal for people to stay connected and be able to catch up on things but, nowadays it is so much more than that. On one hand, family and friends are sharing their thoughts, statuses and exchange messages, on the other hand, businesses sell their products through the Facebook advertising and sponsored posts. The popularity of the social network is due to its strong image of the brand, which is one of the strengths in the context of SWOT analysis. The company is developing its business as reliable provider of social media services. A big team of professionals is working on making the website and mobile app more attractive and user friendly to a new members and advertisers, and at the same time more difficult for new startup social media companies to compete with. Another strength that the company uses to its advantage is their lucrative database. Information about user’s location, likes and dislikes, connections and interests can be very important for advertising companies as they can target the right audience.
A growing problem for all technology companies is data breaches and privacy issues. Facebook is not an exception here. The company has been under the microscope for the past few years. A couple of years ago Facebook hit the headlines with data management issues and confidentiality of user data. It faces a lot of criticism and complaints over its user data related policies. Over the past two years the company failed to meet some of its important revenue targets due to the decline in popularity over the recent data breach. User privacy related concerns tainted the brand image of the social media, and that is what it takes to ruin a successful business. Many users have lost faith in the company and closed up their profiles due to the news that were all over the internet about the government using the Facebook’s database and have access to our information. Where are the policies that suppose to protect personal data, policies that owe us confidentiality and so on? Facebook must address its weaknesses to reduce its exposure to market risk and increase potential business growth.
As the owner of a several platforms, including WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, Facebook has the opportunity to reach various audience in different forms. It has been noticed that mostly young adults are using their Instagram accounts, everyone from families, friends, to business is using WhatsApp to stay in touch and communicate. The company may be looking into purchasing other products, as it has the funds to transform it to something everyone will use, as it did with Instagram. Additionally, Facebook runs adds which are very popular. At this moment it is not for all business types, but there is an opportunity for a growth in that direction as well.
