Bottoms Up!

In my last post, I covered a bit about the role of marketing, highlighting the balance between art (creative output) and science (data insights). In this post, I want to delve a little deeper into the kinds of data that can make us smarter about our current audience and opportunities to grow share among users who’ve yet to move to Firefox.

At the highest level, virtually anyone who uses the Internet at home, work, school, in an Internet cafe or on a mobile device is a potential Firefox user. While some marketers may be accused of overstating the viability of a sizable market — like say, a beverage maker who cites “anyone with thirst” as a potentially huge target market — in this case, if you use the Internet, you probably really do need a web browser.

Thus, huge markets beget opportunity. In fact, according to Internet World stats, the worldwide market is closing in on 1.5 Billion Internet users (last updated in June 2008). Wow…When you stop to really think about that, it can be somewhat paralyzing to know that there are that many people out in the world who have a fundamental need for your product. So how do you even begin to think about who the target audience is?

The answer starts with data. First, let’s break it down by region.

Source = http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Worth noting here:

• The combination of North America, Europe and Asia make up 83% of the WW Internet population.
• Asia represents the single largest share of users — and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Now let’s look at Internet World stats’ penetration data — the percentage of the total population with Internet access.

source = http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Interesting, but what’s the takeaway?

• In terms of overall Internet penetration, North America (74%) and Europe (50%) are much more mature regions than Asia, which still hovers around 15% penetration. There are obviously a variety of factors at play, but without question Asia has loads of growth potential (not surprising given all the attention paid to China and India over the past few years).

• What is somewhat surprising in looking at the charts above is that Latin America, which represents just under 10% of the world’s user base, actually has higher Internet penetration today (24%), as well as a faster growth rate than Asia over the last several years (+669%).

Ultimately this begs a question of focus — if we lack the resources to promote Firefox everywhere in 2009, why not place some educated bets? Should we bet on where the market is today (Europe and North America) or where it is emerging tomorrow (Asia and Latin America)?  To get a clearer picture, let’s break this down further between mature and emerging markets.

Here I’ve created a simple chart that combines the % penetration and % growth from Internet World stats with NetApplications‘ most recent browser marketshare data. Then, I’ve categorized into general buckets for an at-a-glance comparison among countries. The rough buckets are as follows:

• Penetration % – under 20% = Low; from 20-50% = Moderate; over 50% = High
• Growth  %- under 150% = Low; from 150-400% = Moderate; over 400% = High
• Firefox Share %- under 15% = Low; from 15-20% = Moderate; over 20% = High

Here’s a look at the mature markets — those with greater than 50% Internet penetration:

Source: Internet World stats, Netapplications, oct 2008

As you can see:

• The US is by far the largest of the mature markets in terms of raw Internet population (220M*).
• The US, Japan and Germany are “High” in terms of % penetration but “Low” in terms of growth rate over the period 2000-2008.
• Firefox share ranges from “High” in Germany (38%) to “Moderate” in the US (18.5%) to and “Low” in Japan (14.5%).

While much could be made of each of these data points, for now let’s just compare to the “emerging markets” — those with below 50% Internet penetration:

Source = Internet World stats, NetApplications

• All of the markets above are in the “High” growth bucket, several +1000% over the last 8 years, thus signaling continued opportunity to make inroads over time.
• In terms of raw size, China not only dwarfs the other emerging markets, but also bests the US in total Internet population today. Important to note that this is with just 19% penetration vs. 72.5% in the US.
• But perhaps most interesting and notable is the range of Firefox share by market — from the lowest in China (5.6%) to highs in Indonesia (55%) and Poland (47%).

Looking at this kind of data can help get our arms around potential opportunity areas. Of the mature markets, the US has to remain a strategic focal point given raw size and high penetration today. Germany and France remain are among the strongest footholds in mature markets of significant size, while the UK and Italy could use a boost.

Of the emerging markets, we obviously can’t ignore China, and have begun to take some marketing action in Brazil and consider future activities in India and Russia. But beyond the BRIC nations, who’s next? Mexico, Argentina? Vietnam? Poland? All of the Above?

While we can certainly build on and continue to grow our active communities in all of the markets above, we’re also looking for markets where specific marketing activity–either via events or word-of-mouth evangelism — can ignite or at least accelerate the organic growth they are already experiencing. Where is Firefox spreading totally organically (Indonesia?) or poised to top 50% because of an active community (Poland?). If we hone in on only the markets with greatest potential, are they large enough to swing overall WW market share points or are we better off battling for another 3-4 points in the UK?

These are all the insight-driven kinds of questions that help us think about concrete marketing strategies to grow Firefox market share in 2009. Once you can boil down the 1.5 Billion users in the WW market, we can begin to understand where we have real traction and where we lack it. We can also start to better understand the unique dynamics of those markets, what we know about our users there — and what we need to know about the “other 80%” of users not currently using Firefox.

In the coming days and weeks, Alix will be sharing some interesting survey data conducted in a few high-growth markets to better understand awareness and Firefox adoption trends. And I’ll be posting more about some in-depth market research conducted in the US to better understand our core user base and where we might expand to reach new consumer audiences. IMHO, surfacing data-driven insights can only help to inform and inspire our marketing efforts in 2009 and beyond.

* [Note: 220M US Internet users is significantly larger than sources like Comscore tracking "active" Internet users at 190M in Sept 08, but for purposes of comparison, I've used InternetWorld stats here].