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].

This post will be the first in a series about what I’ve been up to since joining Mozilla just after Download Day. Lots has happened since then– and my intent is to get better about more frequent posts. Now that I’ve worked through a quarter’s worth of projects, I’ve gotten to know the team, their areas of expertise and a bit more about how things work around here. (David, John, Alix, Jay and Tara did a great session on open source marketing, at the Summit btw). But before I get into marketing at Mozilla, I want to discuss a few thoughts on marketing in general.

So what is “marketing“ anyway? It’s a relevant discussion starter because the role can vary widely from place to place, even within the same vertical industry (consider Google vs. Yahoo!). The role and tactics can also vary depending on the stage of the product life cycle or breadth of offering (think start-up vs. Fortune 100 enterprise). Marketing strategies demand a fairly fluid set of activities that should change from quarter to quarter, year over year. And the function should evolve to reflect both the maturing of products and services, as well as the audiences and potential use cases.

I generally think about marketing as the functional fusion of art and science.  There’s the creative, consumer-facing stuff people often associate with marketing -– logos, taglines, t-shirts, trade shows, and in some instances, advertising. Then there’s the science – the quantitative market research and analysis used to identify who we are talking to or should be trying to reach. This includes insights into the core user base, what they expect from the products that matter most, and how to effectively connect with them across different channels and touchpoints.

It’s the combination of the art and science that generally leads to the best “marketing.” If the objective is to deliver the right message via the right channel to the right user at the right time, the end result should be prompting some desired action (like switching to Firefox). But if you think I’m talking about advertising, think again. Mozilla is unique in that our “right” message about why to try Firefox is much more often delivered first hand by our current users via word-of-mouth conversations than by our own web site, a Google search, a press article, or an ad.

In fact, Laura Mesa just posted some of the initial results of our first quarterly customer satisfaction survey, where 55% of users responded they heard about Firefox 3 from a friend’s recommendation. Moreover, when asked to rate their likelihood to recommend Firefox – arguably the simplest but most telling metric for how satisfied users are with a product – the top-2 combination (adding the 4s and 5s) totaled 89%. When you factor out the negative ratings, you still wind up with a baseline  Net Promoter score of 86.

Granted, this survey may reflect own most engaged users, the ones who actually took the time to take a simple survey. But still, this is really, really powerful stuff. Especially in the digital era when people are constantly bombarded with intrusive ads instead of contextual conversations that people can participate in. One of my favorite descriptions of the role of marketing is from Doc Searls in the preface to “The Cluetrain Manifesto.” He writes:

…my brief philosophy of marketing:
•    Markets are conversations; and
•    Conversation is fire. Therefore,
•    Marketing is arson.

I just love that. Our job as marketers is less about launching campaigns and more about starting conversations that can impact markets. In a nutshell, we should all be thinking about how can we make our product more worthy of conversation? Seth Godin has a beautiful description of making marketing remarkable in his book called Purple Cow. This philosophy tends to play out on the creative side, but equally important is where and with whom those conversations need to happen in order to grow our share of mind and market.

Which brings me back to the blend of art and science. As armchair pop culture critics can attest, the “marketing department” often gets the called out for misguided attempts to position and promote products to audiences that have little interest, desire or incentive to engage in the conversation. (Anyone read about the Seinfeld campaign for Windows?). Often times it is less about bad creative (the art part) and more about limited insights (the science part). Marketers who have a better handle on the science–who the target is and the attitudes they exhibit–have a much better chance at delivering on really compelling art.

So when I started at Mozilla back in June I went through a simple planning exercise that entailed asking questions, identifying gaps in understanding the marketplace, and assessing what we’ve been doing to move the needle. I’m pleased to say we’re doing pretty darn well by a number of performance measures, but I’ll save this discussion for another post.  For now I’ll leave this one with an open call to keep participating in the marketing of Firefox – visit SpreadFirefox.com and start a conversation.

I’m Dave Bottoms (aka “db”), one of the newest — yet oldest — fans and supporters of Mozilla. I officially joined the MoCo marketing team in mid-June, the day after the Firefox 3 launch and all the buzz around Download Day. What an amazing time to start! And while i’ve been super-busy meeting new people, getting up to speed and planning for the coming quarters, I can’t help but dwell a bit on some past experiences.

I got hooked on how cool and utterly essential the browser is back in ‘95 (note: i’m at the non-technical end of the spectrum, having studied English Lit vs. Engineering). I’d been toying with the Web and hosted the occasional forum discussion on (a-hem) Compuserve. The first couple dozen issues of Wired were probably the most influential reading of my post-collegiate years. Then on August 9, 1995 a few seemingly unrelated things happened: Jerry Garcia died, Netscape had a groundbreaking IPO, and i turned 25. For a young journalist based in Cleveland, the allure of the Bay Area was like a gravitational force. Not only did i want to hang with the Deadhead faithful in Golden Gate Park, but with SF quickly becoming the hub for budding webheads, i wanted in on the action.

By October, i was driving down highway 101 to Mountain View to visit Netscape. It was my first official day as the Silicon Valley bureau correspondent for IndustryWeek and i’d scored a plum assignment: write a cover story featuring Jim Clark as the magazine’s “Technology Leader of the Year.” Not only was i just plain glad to be *in* Silicon Valley, but got to spend a couple hours listening to Clark wax poetically about how Netscape had come to be, where the Internet was going and how the browser was truly transformational software.

Fast forward a dozen years and pretty much no one i know remembers IndustryWeek. More to the point, it wasn’t Dr. Clark who had the biggest influence my personal trajectory; it was actually Chris Holten, one of the workhorses of Netscape’s PR corp. She essentially told me: ‘you can either write about the Internet from the sidelines, or dive in and get involved.’ A few months later, I joined Netscape’s PR team.

Sure, i learned a few things about PR. But more broadly, Netscape taught me about the process of software development, the importance of open standards, security, and user privacy, as well as the critical role of public policy in the Internet era. I eventually moved into product marketing for Communicator and was lucky enough to have a front row seat for the creation of mozilla.org and the release of the source code in ‘98. (I still have “Code Rush” in my video library).

The Silicon Valley phase of my career began at a time when the browser was the great enabler of people (both developers and users) and emerging business models; it was (and still is) an incredibly strategic piece of software in an increasingly web-centric world. But like many friends and former colleagues, i left Netscape after the AOL acquisition in ‘99 to try the the start-up thing for a few years at Tellme Networks.

Then i spent 6 years at Yahoo!, driving marketing programs for a number of products including Y! Toolbar (then called “Companion”), the My Yahoo! redesign (complete with RSS), the front page redesign, the launch of the Ajax-powered Y! Mail and a stint with the Advanced Products team in the SF Brickhouse (i do miss south park). Yahoo! was a really great place to develop as an Internet marketer because the company is generally data-driven and values consumer insights. I went a lot broader and deeper in understanding the many dimensions of marketing thanks in large part to some really smart folks there.

So it was somewhat ironic that i “rediscovered” Mozilla. I’ve been a Firefox user / fan / advocate since 1.0, and have nursed a mild aversion to IE for at least a decade. The more i thought about it, i relize just how dramatically the browser landscape has changed in recent years. A decade ago we simply couldn’t imagine a world with north of 1.4 BILLION Internet users — that’s what makes NOW a really exciting time to join Mozilla. We can only begin to wonder what the landscape will look like in another 10 years.

…Hopefully by now the “what’s old is new” cliche makes sense. While the game may have changed since my Netscape days, i’ll (probably) try to to run some of the best marketing plays i’ve picked up along the way. A lot of my near-term focus will be on better understanding untapped market segments (your thoughts & opinions welcome), how to raise awareness and drive downloads, and identifying new growth opportunities in the US as well as emerging markets.

One month in and it feels like a sort-of homecoming — i “sort of” know what’s going on (bear with me) but still have a lot to learn. What I love about Mozilla is the smallness of the physical space but the largeness of the virtual space it occupies. I am truly excited about the mission, the open source development philosophy and believe it is the vibrant, participatory community that really differentiates Firefox (the product) and is embodied by thousands of contributors and millions of users (the people) around the world.  Look forward to working with you all to spread Firefox.

BOTTOMS UP!