》Share of Voice: Why It’s Important And How To Measure It Correctly
Thousands of companies worldwide are running marketing campaigns every day. To measure how successful their campaign is, they need to track various metrics, which can sometimes be challenging. But which is the most critical metric? Introducing Share of Voice!
Given that paid advertising accounts for a significant amount of your marketing budget, it’s only reasonable to compare your advertising expenditure to the market’s overall spending.
What is Share of Voice?
Share of Voice, or SOV, is a metric that compares a company’s media spending to the total media spending in the market for a product, service, or category.
The term is frequently used to refer to general online visibility, such as organic search, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and social media. To put it simply, Share of Voice measures how many people know about your brand. Brands like Adidas, Apple, and Ikea have a massive Share of Voice since millions of people are familiar with it.
Why Share of Voice is Important
As a marketer, you should be aware of SOV since it can help you determine how well your brand is performing compared to your competitors. Moreover, you can also use this metric to see how well your advertisements, social media mentions, and even website visitors stack up against the competition. You’ll be able to observe how much of your industry’s discourse you dominate.
Calculating your Share of Voice can help your business in a variety of ways, included but not limited to:
1. Customer insights
Share of Voice metrics on social media platforms derives information from real-time interactions. They listen to what people say about a certain brand or issue and utilize that data to evaluate customer preferences and opinions.
You might be able to figure out why people prefer your brand to the competition or vice versa using the Share of Voice data.
2. Competitor research
Knowing your competitors is essential to distinguish your brand. You can develop a strategic approach to catch up or get ahead by identifying your strengths and weaknesses.
With the help of SOV, you can accurately understand your competitiveness in the competition and then tweak your strategy accordingly. Once you know where you’re lacking, it’s much easier to improve on it rather than shooting arrows in the dark.
3. Market Share
There is a close relationship between SOV and market share. More often than not, your SOV value is roughly equal to your market share.
However, you should aim for more SOV than market share. This is called excess Share of Voice (eSOV), and it is a crucial long-term factor in increasing your market share.
Many brands have increased their market share by improving their SOV. This is particularly common in small brands.
4. Public Relations
Calculating your news Share of Voice can help you see how effective your media strategy is in comparison to your competitors’.
It shows which media outlets cover you or your competitor the most, as well as what they cover more frequently. So you’ll also get an idea of what type of content they are interested in the most.
5. Improve future marketing campaigns
With information about your SOV, you can better target future marketing campaigns and improve your results.
This way, you can make sure that your marketing budget is going to the right place. By looking at your SOV for each campaign, you can see which campaigns are performing the best and know why. Businesses can also look at their ad spend across different platforms to see which has the most impact.
How to Calculate Share of Voice
This is how you measure the basic Share of Voice.
SOV= (Advertising of a company / Total advertising in the market) x 100
Now let’s see how you can calculate Share of Voice for PR, social media, PPC, and organic search.
Calculating PR Share of Voice
You can use an analytical tool to measure your PR (Public relation) Share of Voice. It is the calculation of the number of conversations about your brand, divided by the total number of conversations about your topic, industry, or niche.
Calculating Share of Voice for PPC
If you have a Google Ads account, calculating the impact of your brand on PPC is easy. In AdWords, the spend rate is called impression share, and Google defines it as the percentage of the number of impressions your ads actually receive compared to the number of times they might receive.
Calculating Share of Voice on social media
SOV on social media is the voice of the customer, and this is how you calculate it:
This shows how well your brand is known to industry professionals and peers.
The SOV calculation of online media is particularly useful for evaluating your content and public relations strategy and finding new business opportunities.
Calculating Share of Voice for SEO
The way to calculate this is:
You can use any keyword research tool or SEO tool to find out both variables. Once you calculate SEO share of voice, you’ll know exactly where you lack SEO wise and can start creating content around those keywords so you don’t lose to the competition. This is also an excellent way to carry out content gap analysis!
How to increase your Share of Voice: 4 tips!
1. Maintain a constant level of activity and engagement.
Being active on social media is one of the most effective ways of increasing your Share of Voice. By having an active social media presence, you’re increasing your chances of being seen by your audience and connecting with them. Even the most popular international brands have an active social media presence!
But just being on Instagram or Facebook isn’t enough. You have to regularly post content that will interest your audience and engage them. When a post starts performing well, the social media platform increases its impressions and shows it to people who haven’t followed you.
Hence, new people get to know about your brand, which is how you increase the Share of Voice.
2. Create your own branded social communities
When running specific social or marketing campaigns, it’s a good idea to come up with a hashtag that can entice your audience to use it. It allows you to be at the forefront of social conversations and grab people’s attention with whatever your campaign demands.
3. Add social proof to your brand
Favourable social validation, such as positive reviews, comments, industry awards, and other community interaction, demonstrates the success of your work.
All of these are effective at attracting and retaining users. When users identify and support your brand, your company gains a competitive advantage. By building authority this way, you can raise the level of trust that your clients (and future customers) have in your company.
4. Create shareable content
Create content that your audience can highly relate to so it resonates with them. This will give them the push they need to share it on their feeds or stories, which will increase your reach and engagement.
Conclusion
Not many marketers are aware of Share of Voice, but it is one of the most critical metrics that you need to measure to calculate where your brand stands in the industry.
Now that we’ve given you the basic information on why SOV is so important and how to calculate, we hope that you’ll put it to good use and use it to improve your marketing strategy. Good luck!
Suggested read: 3 Things You Must Do to Increase Your Instagram Engagement Rate