Share of Voice (SOV) is a well-known powerhouse metric when it comes to marketing and advertising. It helps businesses understand their competitive landscape by measuring their visibility against rivals.
Traditionally known only for paid media, the Share of Voice metrics have been expanded to organic search and social media. The metric essentially enables you to answer:
1. Are your organic efforts making a significant impact, or are they overshadowed by others in your industry?
2. Which channels are driving the most visibility for your brand, and where do you need to improve?
3. How does your social media presence stack up against key competitors, and what can be done to amplify your reach?
4. Are your PPC campaigns effectively capturing the market, or is there untapped potential?
Let us dive deeper into this metric, its importance for organizations, and how to calculate it.
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Share of Voice (SoV) is a metric that measures the extent of a brand's presence within its industry compared to its competitors. It's a way to gauge brand visibility and dominance in relation to others in the same field. This metric can be applied across various marketing channels, including social media, organic traffic, and advertising.
According to Google, "Share of Voice" is a metric often used in the advertising industry to represent the relative portion of ad inventory available to a single advertiser within a defined market over a specified time period. Let's look at different channels where the Share of Voice metric is useful.
Advertising Share of Voice, popularly known as PPC Share of Voice, measures the proportion of advertising presence that a brand holds within its market. Tools like Google Ads make calculating the Share of Voice PPC easier. This metric considers various forms of paid media, including display ads, PPC campaigns, and video advertisements.
As mentioned earlier, you can use Google Ads to find out your Share of Voice for PPC. All you have to do is go to “Modify” under “Campaigns” in your Google Ads account. Now, under your competitor metrics, click on the boxes you want to compare your PPC Share of Voice against. And voila! You can now start tracking your impressions data.
Use the below formula to find PPC Share of Voice:
One of the drawbacks of manually calculating the Share of Voice for PPC is that manual entry increases the risk of data errors and consumes a long time to complete the analysis.
Social media Share of Voice is calculated by evaluating the volume of conversations and mentions a brand garners compared to its competitors. This includes both organic and paid social engagements. With advanced social listening tools, you can track brand mentions, sentiment analysis, and engagement rates. A high social media SoV often reflects strong brand awareness and a loyal customer base.
The easiest way to calculate Social Media Share of Voice is to use Social Media Share of Voice tools. You can also do it by first figuring out the total number of brand impressions you have received and then finding the same for all the competitors. Calculate the sum of all the brand mentions in your industry. Now divide your brand mentioned by the entire industry’s brand mentions and multiply by 100.
In case you want to figure out the engagement your brand garners on Social Media, you do that by using likes, comments or share instead of brand mentions.
SEO and Organic Search Share of Voice indicate a brand's visibility within search engine results pages (SERPs) for targeted keywords. Factors such as keyword rankings, domain authority, organic traffic, and click-through rates are integral in this assessment. Organic Share of Voice, or SEO SoV, can be calculated in two ways: manually or with available tools such as SEMRush or Ahrefs.
The manual calculation of Share of Voice for SEO involves several steps: identifying competitors, selecting keywords, tracking keyword rankings, collecting CTR data, estimating traffic, summing up the traffic, and finally, calculating the Share of Voice using the provided formula. This process requires keyword research, ranking tools, and CTR estimation to quantify your visibility relative to competitors.
For manually calculating the Share of Voice SEO, the below formula is used:
Manual calculation of SEO Share of Voice is a lengthy process often barred with limitations such as broad-level keyword insights and the inability to take all the competitors into account while calculating.
Share of Voice and Share of Market are used interchangeably at times in marketing but the strategic implications of both differs significantly. The fundamental difference between the two is that Share of Voice measures brand awareness, whereas share of market measures the revenue percentage or number of customers.
Share of Voice helps brands define how much of their marketing campaigns reach their target audience, whereas share of market defines the brand's sales in the marketplace. Choosing a metric between SoV and SoM should depend on the specific objectives of the business and the current stage of the brand's lifecycle. Balancing both can provide deeper insights into brand performance and competitive positioning.
Share of Voice is complex metrics but also an equally rewarding one.
Measuring Share of Voice (SoV) is crucial for businesses aiming to dominate their market. SoV provides a clear understanding of your brand's visibility compared to competitors, revealing where you stand in terms of reach, engagement, and influence.
By analyzing SoV, enterprises identify gaps in the marketing strategy and areas for improvement. It highlights whether the brand is resonating with the target audience or if competitors are outshining it. This insight allows you to adjust your strategies—whether it’s ramping up content production, refining your messaging, or investing in new channels.
Brands with higher SoV often enjoy greater market dominance, as consistent visibility leads to stronger brand recognition and customer loyalty. Regularly measuring SoV ensures you're not just competing but leading the conversation in your industry. It’s not enough to participate; you need to outpace your competitors, and understanding your SoV is a critical step in achieving that leadership.
Let us closely look at the benefits of measuring Share of Voice.
Measuring your Share of Voice for organic, social media, or PPC primarily enables you to gauge your performance relative to competitors. By understanding where you stand, you can identify gaps and opportunities to improve your SEO efforts, engagement, and budget allocations.
According to Sprout Social, 85% of companies rely on social media engagement rates as a primary source of business intelligence. And, 77% of the consumers will choose a brand over a competitor after a positive experience with a brand on social media. The stats underscore the need for businesses to outshine their competitors on such platforms.
SOV serves as a quantifiable metric for assessing how visible a brand is across various channels, including social media, PR, and advertising. Generally, a higher SOV correlates with elevated brand awareness. This measurement helps assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and PR efforts, allowing businesses to pinpoint which strategies are successfully boosting their market visibility. As a result businesses can make informed decisions on how to amplify your brand's presence in crucial regional markets, demographics, and beyond.
A clear view of your SOV helps you make data-driven decisions regarding resource allocation. By knowing which areas yield the highest returns, you can prioritize investments in SEO initiatives that maximize ROI. This ensures that both time and budget are used efficiently.
By identifying which channels contribute most significantly to SOV, businesses can fine-tune their spending and focus resources on the most effective platforms and strategies, ensuring a higher return on investment.
By monitoring SOV, companies can uncover trends in consumer preferences and behaviors, gaining valuable information about which brands, products, or services are gaining or losing market traction. This also enables the early detection of emerging competitors and shifts in the market landscape, allowing businesses to proactively adjust their marketing strategies and product offerings to maintain a competitive edge.
By analyzing which content types, themes, and formats are resonating most with your audience, you can tailor your content creation efforts to better align with audience preferences and market demands. This insight allows for a more targeted approach, ensuring that the content you produce is compelling and impactful.
For example, if data indicates that video content is driving higher engagement and contributing more to your SOV, you can allocate more resources towards creating high-quality videos. Similarly, identifying which keywords and topics are yielding the highest SOV can guide your SEO and content marketing strategies, ensuring that you are consistently addressing your audience's interests and staying ahead of competitors.
Let us explore expert ways to increase the Share of Voice in each channel mentioned above.
Identifying your Share of Voice will give you insights into the channels where you need to improve it. Below are some proven ways to increase the Share of Voice for Social media, SEO, and PPC.
To effectively amplify your Share of Voice (SOV) in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns, precise bid optimization is paramount. This involves leveraging bidding strategies offered by platforms like Google Ads, which use real-time data and machine learning to adjust bids for optimal positioning. Start by closely monitoring your campaigns to identify high-performing keywords and adjust bids to ensure they receive priority.
Implement Enhanced Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) to allow the system to adjust bids for clicks that seem more likely to lead to conversions. Segment your campaigns to tailor bidding strategies to different audience groups or geographical regions, ensuring that budget allocation aligns perfectly with areas demonstrating the highest potential for return on investment (ROI).
Enhancement of ad quality directly influences your ad position and click-through rate, both crucial for increasing SOV in PPC. Focus on refining all aspects of your ads - ad relevance, landing page experience, and expected click-through rate. Begin by conducting thorough keyword research to align your ad copy closely with search intents. Craft compelling, concise, and action-oriented headlines and descriptions that resonate with your target audience. Ensure that your landing page offers a seamless user experience, with fast load times, mobile responsiveness, and clear call-to-actions (CTAs) aligned with the ad content.
Regularly perform A/B testing to experiment with different ad creatives and landing page variations, analyzing performance metrics to iterate and enhance both engagement and conversion rates. By maintaining high ad quality scores, you'll secure better ad placements at a lower cost, effectively boosting your share of voice in the competitive PPC landscape.
The rule with social media is simple: the more people talk about your brand, the greater your Share of Voice is. However, while building content worth sharing, it's important to avoid crossing the line between content that resonates and content that hurts sentiments.
Some easy ways to get more people talking about your brand include:
1. Capitalize on Trends: Stay updated with trending topics to create timely and relevant content.
2. Invest in Influencer Marketing: Collaborate with influencers whose followers match your target demographic.
3. Engage Through Contests and Giveaways: Run contests and giveaways to boost interaction and visibility.
What works on LinkedIn may not resonate on Instagram. Understanding your audience on each platform is vital. For example, on LinkedIn, you might aim to connect with industry experts and executives, while on Instagram, your target audience could be younger consumers or parents. Tailoring your content to fit the preferences and expectations of each platform's user base can significantly enhance engagement and amplify your Share of Voice.
Quick Tip: Use LinkedIn for thought leadership articles and professional insights. Use Instagram for visually appealing content and behind-the-scenes looks.
Consistency is essential for building an active social media presence. A well-planned content calendar ensures you regularly engage with your audience, helping to maintain and increase your Share of Voice. Regular posting keeps your brand top-of-mind, encourages ongoing conversations, and fosters a loyal community that continuously talks about your brand.
Creating and continuously optimizing high-quality content is a powerful way to enhance your organic Share of Voice. Start by doing thorough keyword research to find the topics your target audience is interested in. Then, create topic clusters and pillar pages on those topics to organize your content logically to drive more user engagement and boost your search engine rankings.
Diversify your content formats to include blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, and whitepapers. Different content types can engage various segments of your audience.
Whether like it or not, backlinks are the cornerstone of SEO for any website. Start with guest blogging on high-authority websites; creating accounts on such websites might take longer, but is worth the effort.
With social media, we do not mean creating engaging posts on trendy topics but leveraging these platforms for various content distribution activities. Engage with users who comment or share your posts to build a community.
Encourage your audience to create content related to your brand, such as reviews, testimonials, or social media posts. UGC (user generated content) not only adds credibility but also amplifies your reach.
Below are some of the top tools to measure the Share of Voice for each channel.
When it comes to PPC campaigns there is hardly any tool that come close to Google Ads. Google Ads is a highly effective tool for managing PPC campaigns . It offers Keywords Management, Quality Score Optimizations and Automated bidding strategies to enhance your PPC campaigns. The impressions share metric can be used to define your brand's PPC SoV.
Sprout Social offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to monitor and enhance your brand's presence across multiple platforms. With Sprout Social's social listening capabilities, users can track brand mentions, sentiment, and competitive analysis in real time. This functionality provides invaluable insights into how your brand stacks up against competitors and identifies trending topics that can be leveraged for strategic advantage. Its Smart Inbox feature allows users to monitor specific keywords, hashtags, and brand mentions across various social media channels.
Mention is a useful tool for understanding your brand's presence on social media. With Mention, you can easily monitor brand mentions across different platforms, see how people feel about your brand through sentiment analysis, and compare your performance with competitors. It highlights important mentions, offers detailed analytics, and tracks data quickly. But remember, setting it up correctly is key to capturing the most critical mentions. Overall, Mention helps you get a clear picture of your Share of Voice on social media.
SEMrush is a fantastic tool for understanding your brand's presence in organic search results. With SEMrush, you can monitor how well your website ranks for important keywords and compare your performance with competitors. It offers a position-tracking tool that can estimate the share of audience attention your brand gets based on keyword rankings. SEMrush also highlights new competitors and allows you to measure the Share of Voice by location or topic. While it has a good keyword research tool and comprehensive site audit features, it does have a steep learning curve.
Ahrefs is another excellent tool for grasping your brand's visibility in organic search results. With Ahrefs, you can track how your website ranks for important keywords and see how you stack up against competitors. The tool offers a Rank Tracker feature that estimates your share of audience attention based on keyword positions. Ahref's Share of Voice also helps you discover new competitors and assess their strategies. It has a powerful keyword research tool and detailed site audit features.
Quattr's Market Share Metric is a step ahead when it comes to analyzing your Share of Voice against any competitor. It is a self-learning metric that models your website's data directly from tools like Google Search Console and Google Ads. Unlike other tools where the performance is measured on broad-level keyword data, Quattr's Market Share Metric offers actual performance data in terms of clicks and impressions and offers the ability to filter out branded vs non-branded searches. And that's not it; you can filter out the data in terms of demographics and languages so cultural nuances do not hold your enterprise back from capturing the market share.
Quattr's Market Share Metric extends beyond simple visibility scores, offering a set of tools for comprehensive analysis, reporting and optimization. With its powerful features, businesses can secure a competitive advantage in their SEO and marketing initiatives.With capabilities like detailed rank bucket analysis, insightful competitive benchmarking, and forward-thinking seasonal planning, Quattr enables brands to adeptly navigate the intricacies of search visibility with precision and assurance.
By leveraging this powerful metric, you can gain actionable insights that drive smarter strategies and impactful growth. Embrace a better way to analyze your Share of Voice and pave the way for your brand toward unparalleled success. Talk to our experts to dive into the depth of your market dynamics with Quattr and shape your future today.
Don't just watch the market—dominate it.
A Share of Voice (SOV) report measures the visibility or presence of a brand, product, or service in comparison to its competitors within a specific market or context. This metric is often expressed as a percentage and can be analyzed across various channels, including social media, SEO, paid advertising, and media coverage.
Share of Voice measurement includes media coverage, social media mentions, and advertising presence, providing a comprehensive view of a brand's influence and market standing.
A "good" Share of Voice percentage varies widely depending on the industry, market size, and competition. Below 10% of the market share could mean an emerging presence, higher than 30% means a competitive presence and more than 50% means dominating the market.
Quattr is an innovative and fast-growing venture-backed company based in Palo Alto, California USA. We are a Delaware corporation that has raised over $7M in venture capital. Quattr's AI-first platform evaluates like search engines to find opportunities across content, experience, and discoverability. A team of growth concierge analyze your data and recommends the top improvements to make for faster organic traffic growth. Growth-driven brands trust Quattr and are seeing sustained traffic growth.
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