Share of Voice: What It Is and How To Measure It

Marketing leaders often struggle with understanding whether their company stands out in their market or industry. Even if a marketer has a gut feeling that their efforts are earning the company visibility, it can be difficult to identify quantifiable metrics that support this conclusion.

Businesses need to know how they stack up against their competition when it comes to the visibility of their marketing collateral. Otherwise, it can be difficult to figure out whether you need to spend more or less on marketing.

Enter share of voice. This guide explains what share of voice is, why you should measure it, how to calculate and increase it, and the benefits of measuring it.

Share of voice is the percentage of a market that your brand dominates when it comes to visibility. The more market share you have, the greater popularity and authority you likely have among current and prospective customers.

In the context of social media, for example, share of voice shows how many mentions, follows, likes, or shares your brand's posts earn. With traditional advertising, on the other hand, share of voice could refer to the number of advertisements you have in a publication compared to your competition.

Measuring share of voice helps you see the bigger picture because it gives context to performance data. It also helps you find ways to grow and improve your business. The reasons for measuring share of voice vary from one company to another, but, in general, there are three considerations for why you should measure share of voice.

Brand management

As outlined by Gartner, brand management relies on positioning your brand "in ways most likely to connect with audiences.” [1] It also involves creating a cohesive and clear brand experience. Using share of voice, you can compare your brand visibility efforts against competition. If you need to invest more to boost the frequency with which people experience your brand, share of voice can make that decision clear.

Campaign tracking

While tracking the reach of a campaign, you can use share of voice to figure out whether your campaign is providing visibility to the degree you were hoping for. For example, if you noticed that your competition had 45% more social media mentions than yours, you could use share of voice to systematically measure your mentions as you invest more in social marketing.

Consumer insights

Share of voice can also play a role in figuring out how consumers react to your advertising. You can use it to see if there's a correlation between increasing your share of voice and the number of leads or sales you generate. If, for instance, your share of voice increases by 15%, but your sales remain the same, you may need to adjust your messaging. Consumer panels or custom surveys can help you understand your consumers. [1] Once you have this data, you can make adjustments and then see how your share of voice compares to your sales figures after you've implemented changes.

By measuring share of voice, you not only have the metrics you need to boost visibility, but you position yourself to have a deeper impact on your target market.

Increase brand visibility and website traffic

When you measure and then amplify your share of voice, you get your brand in front of more eyes. As you boost visibility, you can also increase the number of people who visit your website and, as a result, learn about your brand and offering. This makes share of voice a valuable tool while optimizing your marketing funnel.

Increase coverage

Share of voice can also help you increase coverage of your target market because you can use it to establish benchmarks that measure your presence compared to your competition. As you adjust your marketing strategies to increase your share of voice, you can aim to outpace your competition, and as your visibility grows, sales follow.

Increase mentions and engagement

Share of voice can effectively measure the degree to which customers see and mention your brand and products. One way to gauge progress when it comes to mentions and engagement is to use social listening tools. These consist of software that searches social media for mentions and other indications of customer engagement, such as shares and likes.

Even if you find a share of voice calculator, it's often best to crunch the numbers on your own. Calculating share of voice involves first choosing the metric you want to compare and then gathering data for your brand and that of the rest of the market and your competition.

For instance, suppose you run a video game development company, and you want to calculate your share of voice when it comes to brand mentions on social media over the previous month. You would first count the number of mentions your brand had using a social listening tool. Next, you'd make a list of all brands in the video game development industry. Then, you'd use your social listening tool to gather data about each brand's mentions.

Let's say your brand mentions were 400 on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. The total number of mentions for other video game developers was 4,000. That means your share of voice is (400 / 4,000) x 100 = 10%.

You could take your assessment a step further by comparing your share of voice with a specific competitor. For instance, suppose XYZ Gaming had been making inroads into your target market. If their share of voice is 15% and yours is 10%, then you could argue that their performance on social media is 5% better than yours.

This way, you can identify areas where you can improve your marketing strategy.

Increasing your share of the voice begins with addressing where your weaknesses are. As Gartner points out, organizations should ask themselves, "How and when do I adapt brand strategy to a changing external environment?"[1] Once you identify an opportunity to adapt, you can then pivot your tactics accordingly.

For instance, suppose you invest 5% of your marketing budget on social media content creation, and your mentions are 60% fewer than your competition's. You could use that data to decide how to reallocate marketing funds, so you have more to spend on creating content.

For some companies, the most effective way to increase share of voice is to hire someone to manage their social media accounts. Hiring a social media manager may be necessary, especially because you need someone to calculate share of voice once a month. In this way, you have the data you need to constantly adjust your social media strategy. 

In addition to creating social media content, a business can use a social media manager to:

• Reply to posts and comments

• Strategize the most effective hashtags to use to increase brand exposure

• Design social media campaigns meant to highlight a specific product or service

• Explore additional social channels to leverage

You can use the above strategies to evaluate how well your advertising and social media efforts are helping you stand out in the market in comparison to your competition. Using these tips, you can also better understand the impact your marketing investments have on your overall visibility.

If you identify weaknesses, your share of voice numbers can guide your improvement strategy. In addition, share of voice metrics can make it easier to measure the impact of adjustments to your marketing strategy. With this data, you don't have to rely on gut feelings while assessing market visibility. And when your strategies are successful, you have concrete numbers to point to while showcasing your brand's growth with other stakeholders.