What should Meta strategy be for the next 2 years?

Facebook product strategy question: Facebook Strategy for the next 2 years

Clarification Questions 

To narrow down the scope, are we talking about the Facebook strategy from a business perspective?

Or does your business have particular objectives to achieve in the next 2 years? 

For this exercise, I would focus on what should be the objectives of Facebook as an organization for the next 2 years. 

Facebook Strategy 

To understand what should be Facebook’s next strategy, we need to understand the dynamics of the market and position of the Facebook products in these markets. 

I will classify markets based on “Highly attractive”, “Medium attractive” and “low attractive”. 

I will classify the position of the Facebook products as “High Strength”, “Medium Strength”,  “Low Strength” 

1. Social Media Market 

   1. Facebook Community, Whatsapp, Instagram

2. Virtual Reality Market 

   1. Facebook Oculus 

3. eCommerce Market

   1. Facebook Marketplace 

4. Digital Ads Market

   1. Facebook Ads 

The attractiveness of the Markets

1. The attractiveness of the Markets

   1. Based on competitive rivalry 

   2. Total Market Size 

   3. Ability to differentiate 

   4. Market Growth 

   5. Market Cost 

Rate each market based on the parameters 

1. Positive - If factor encourages the companies to enter into the market

2. Negative - If factors discourage the companies to enter into the market

3. Neutral - If factors do not affect much to the companies 

Facebook Strength in the Market

1. The strength of the market is based on

   1. Market Share 

   2. Technology 

   3. Brand awareness

   4. Customer Loyalty 

   5. Cohesiveness to the products 

Rate each market based on the parameters 

1. Positive - If a product has won the factor. 

2. Negative - If a product loose to the factor 

3. Neutral - If a product is neutral to the factor 

GE Mckinsey Matrix       

Observations  

Based on the analysis of the Facebook products and their strengths in their individual market, I could make the following recommendations 

1. Virtual Reality Market 

   1. Facebook should invest more in acquiring the VR market 

   2. Facebook should invest more in product development as this market has capabilities where a differentiate product will win the market

   3. Facebook should focus on increasing the revenue or investment as VR market is investment heavy 

2. Social Media Market 

   1. Facebook should invest more to make customers loyal to its platform. 

   2. Facebook should keep on addressing the unmet needs of the user base to defend as competitive rivalry 

   3. Facebook should figure out the new customer segments with unmet needs as the current segment is reaching the saturation point of adoption. 

3. Digital ads Market 

   1. Facebook should do more to retain the facebook ads customers 

   2. Facebook should invest more in product development to make a differentiated product to win the market 

   3. Facebook should focus more on generating revenue or investment as digital ads market is investment heavy 

4. eCommerce Market 

   1. Facebook should strictly focus on the retention of the current user base 

   2. Facebook should harvest more from the current user base 

Business Objectives of 2020-2022

1. Virtual Reality Market 

   1. Increase the customer acquisition rate from 28% to 40%. 

   2. Increase the product adoption rate from 20% to 40%

   3. Increase the revenue from 250M to 450M 

   4. Increase the Customer Lifetime Value ( LTV ) from 100$ to 250$

2. Social Media Market 

   1. Formulate the product strategy to increase the cohesiveness of the platform 

   2. Formulate the product strategy to identify the unmet customer segments

   3. Formulate the product strategy to identify the new customer segments with unmet needs 

3. Digital Ads 

   1. Increase customer retention on the platform from 

   2. Formulate the product strategy to address the unmet needs of the customer segments 

   3. Increase the customer lifetime value (LTV) of the customers from 400$ to 600$

4. eCommerce 

   1. Increase the average order value from 23$ to 35$.

   2. Formulate the product strategy to increase customer orders from the Facebook marketplace. 

1. Clarifications:-
   1. Any specific objective which Facebook has in mind for the next couple of years? which I shd keep in mind? 
   2. Any specific problem which Facebook is facing as a org, or products are facing? No specific problem.
2. Description:
   1. Facebook is the most popular social media platform that helps users connect and engage with content, loved ones that matter to them most.
   2. It has a family of products like Facebook core platform, messenger, Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus etc. All the products are focused on the social experiences.
   3. Mission of the organization is to enable users to build communities and bring the world closer.
   4. Strengths:-
      1. A huge influential network of users - around 2.7 billion monthly active users
      2. Engaged audience
   5. Weakness
      1. Dependence on targeted ads for monetization that is possible by allowing facebook to track data which with increasing awareness on privacy is not something liked by users
   6. Based on the above I would like to choose monetization as the goal for facebook so as to reduce dependence on ads.
   7. Market trends:-
      1. Due to pandemic:-
         1. more and more users switching to digital mediums for getting things done be it sellers, buyers, users trying to connect with loved ones etc.
         2. Many small medium businesses drastically impacted since offline foot falls have almost reduced to 0. Business owners don't have money to pay rents of their shops
         3. Many sectors have been impacted like mobility as users are not commuting from one place to another
      2. Users are becoming more and more aware about privacy and want more control on how their data and information is being used.
      3. Many new engaging social media platforms are coming up like Snapchat, Tik tok that are attracting young users and thus this is eating away in the engagement of Facebook and its famitly of products like messenger, Instagram.
3. Facebook strategy choices for next 2 yrs
   1. Providing tools to help support resolving pain points of small medium businesses --> as there business is impacted the most in the last one yr and thus would be interested in such tools
      1. Customer experience
         1. SMBs are worse hit via pandemic as their shops are closed, they don't know how to increase footfalls or sales. 
         2. Considering Facebook has huge user base, is already one of the best targeting platforms for discovery, if it builds for tools focused on SMBs then it will help resolve their issue.
         3. Impact - high 
      2. Monetization - med
         1. This will increase revenue from targeted ads
         2. Also help in introducing one more revenue line i.e. commission from Sales of products.
      3. Effort - med 
         1. Facebook already has certain tools for discovery, payments, checkout --> these experiences need to be tweaked for SMBs.
      4. Size of opportunity - High considering Facebook (specially Instagram) has visual first approach best suited for discovering and show casing products. Also it already has engaged users who like to explore and discover content on the platform and du to pandemic there is a huge base of smbs wanting to move online. India alone has 63 million smbs. (smbs ~ upto 250 employees)
   1. Providing features to help users interact with each other in as human manner as possible 
      1. Cust experience - high
         1. Specially in times of pandemic where users cannot connect with each other physically, they are depended on social platforms for connecting virtually and they want these connections to feel as close to real life as possible.
      2. Monetization - low
         1. Customers look for free platforms and this option might just add additional platform on which ads can be shown.
      3. Size: med
         1. Alternatives available so competition will be high
         2. Every user is not looking for such a way to communicate, will be used by specific segment of populations
4. Evaluation
   1. Customer experience
   2. Monetization
   3. Effort
   4. Size of the opportunity
5. Based on this would like to prio, SMB tools as they are better aligned in helping us meet the goal of monetization.
6. metrics
   1. % increase in Ads revenue from SMBs
   2. Month on month revenue from transaction fees