TL;DR
Share of Voice (SOV) is a key marketing metric that measures your brand’s visibility in the market compared to your competitors. It quantifies your brand's portion of the conversation across various channels, including organic search, social media, and paid advertising. Tracking SOV provides crucial insights into brand awareness, competitive standing, and the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, acting as a leading indicator for future market share growth.
What Is Share of Voice (SOV)? The Core Concept Explained
Share of Voice (SOV) represents the portion of the market conversation that your brand owns relative to your competitors. In essence, it answers the question: “How much are we being talked about?” Historically, SOV was a term used in paid advertising to measure a brand's ad spend against the total ad expenditure in a market. However, as the digital landscape has evolved, so has the definition of SOV. Today, it encompasses a brand's visibility across a multitude of digital channels, from social media mentions and PR coverage to rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Understanding SOV is critical for gauging brand health and competitive positioning. It's a direct reflection of your brand's presence in the spaces where your audience is most active. A high share of voice often correlates with greater brand authority, recognition, and customer awareness. This visibility is not just a vanity metric; it directly influences consumer perceptions and, ultimately, their purchasing decisions. Consistently owning the conversation helps build the authority and recognition needed to drive long-term growth.
It is important to distinguish Share of Voice from similar-sounding metrics. Share of Market, for instance, measures your percentage of total sales within your industry, focusing on past performance and revenue. In contrast, SOV measures conversation and visibility, making it a leading indicator that can predict future growth. As research from Talkwalker suggests, a higher SOV relative to your market share often precedes an increase in market share. Another related term, Share of Search, is a more specific metric that measures the number of organic search queries for your brand compared to your competitors. While SOV is a broad measure of overall visibility, Share of Search focuses specifically on search engine interest, which is a powerful proxy for brand relevance.
How to Calculate Share of Voice: Formulas and Methodologies
Calculating Share of Voice starts with a straightforward formula that can be adapted to various marketing channels. The fundamental principle remains the same: you measure your brand's performance on a specific metric and divide it by the total performance of the entire market (including your brand and all competitors) for that same metric. Multiplying the result by 100 gives you your SOV percentage.
The general formula is: (Your Brand's Metrics / Total Market Metrics) x 100 = SOV %
While the formula is simple, the specific metrics you track will differ significantly depending on the channel. Manually tracking these conversations is nearly impossible at scale, so specialized tools are essential for accurate measurement. Let's break down how to apply this formula across the most important digital marketing channels.
For SEO Share of Voice, the goal is to measure your visibility in organic search results. This is often calculated by tracking metrics like organic traffic, keyword rankings, or overall search visibility for a defined set of industry keywords. As explained by Ahrefs, SEO SOV shows the percentage of all possible organic clicks your site captures for your tracked keywords compared to your competitors. A higher SEO SOV means you are capturing more organic traffic from relevant searches.
In Social Media, SOV is determined by tracking conversations. This includes direct brand mentions, the use of specific hashtags, engagement rates (likes, shares, comments), and overall reach. Social listening tools are indispensable here, as they can monitor millions of conversations across platforms to quantify how often your brand is being discussed compared to your rivals.
For PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, SOV is most commonly measured using a metric called 'Impression Share' within platforms like Google Ads. Impression Share tells you the percentage of times your ads were shown out of the total number of times they could have been shown based on your targeting settings. A low impression share might indicate that your budget is too limited or your ad rank is too low to compete effectively.
| Channel | Key Metric to Track | Example Formula |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Organic Visibility / Click Share | (Your Website's Clicks / Total Clicks for Tracked Keywords) x 100 |
| Social Media | Brand Mentions / Hashtag Usage | (Your Brand Mentions / Total Industry Mentions) x 100 |
| PPC | Impression Share | (Your Ad Impressions / Total Eligible Impressions) x 100 |
Essential Tools for Tracking Share of Voice
Effectively measuring Share of Voice is nearly impossible without the right software. Manually scouring the internet for every mention of your brand and your competitors is an inefficient and inaccurate process. Specialized tools are designed to automate this data collection, providing real-time insights and comprehensive analysis across different channels.
When choosing a tool, it's helpful to categorize them by the channels they monitor. For SEO SOV, platforms like Ahrefs and Semrush are industry standards. They allow you to track keyword rankings, estimate organic traffic, and directly compare your search visibility against a list of competitors. These tools provide a clear picture of who is winning the battle for organic search traffic in your niche.
For monitoring conversations on Social Media and in PR, social listening and media monitoring tools are essential. Platforms such as Brandwatch, Talkwalker, and Sprout Social offer powerful features to track brand mentions, analyze sentiment, and identify key trends. They scan everything from major social networks to blogs, forums, and news sites, giving you a holistic view of the conversation surrounding your industry.
When it comes to PPC SOV, the primary tool is the advertising platform itself. Google Ads, for example, has a built-in 'Auction Insights' report that directly compares your impression share, overlap rate, and position above rate against other advertisers bidding on the same keywords. This data is invaluable for understanding your competitive position in paid search auctions.
Here are some of the most popular tools for tracking Share of Voice:
- Ahrefs: Excellent for tracking organic keyword visibility and comparing SEO performance against competitors.
- Semrush: Provides robust tools for position tracking and market share analysis in organic and paid search.
- Brandwatch: A comprehensive consumer intelligence platform that tracks mentions across social media, news sites, and forums.
- Talkwalker: Offers powerful social listening and media monitoring capabilities with advanced sentiment analysis.
- Google Ads: The go-to source for measuring Impression Share and other competitive metrics for PPC campaigns.
Strategies to Increase Your Share of Voice and Market Presence
Increasing your Share of Voice is not about shouting the loudest; it's about strategically participating in the right conversations and delivering value where your audience is listening. A common question is, “What is a good Share of Voice percentage?” The answer is that there's no magic number. A 'good' SOV is one that is consistently growing and is competitive within your specific industry. The goal is continuous improvement relative to your rivals, as this is a leading indicator of brand growth.
A powerful strategy for boosting SEO SOV is to focus on content. By conducting a keyword gap analysis, you can identify valuable keywords your competitors rank for that you don't. Creating high-quality, comprehensive content targeting these terms can help you capture more organic traffic. To scale this effort, marketers and creators can revolutionize their workflow with tools like BlogSpark, an AI blog post generator that helps transform ideas into SEO-optimized articles quickly, ensuring a steady stream of content to build topical authority.
On social media, increasing SOV involves more than just posting regularly. It requires fostering a community and encouraging user-generated content (UGC). Launching a branded hashtag campaign, running contests, or simply highlighting customer posts can amplify your message authentically. People trust content from their peers more than from brands, so empowering your audience to share their experiences is a potent way to grow your voice.
Finally, a targeted PR and thought leadership strategy can significantly impact your media SOV. This involves building relationships with journalists, positioning company executives as industry experts, and publishing original research that provides unique insights. When your brand becomes a go-to source for commentary and data, you naturally earn more media mentions, solidifying your authority and visibility in the market.
Here are some actionable, channel-specific tips to get started:
- SEO: Perform a competitive analysis to find and target keywords where your competitors are weak. Create in-depth content hubs or resource centers around these topics to establish authority.
- Social Media: Partner with micro-influencers who have a genuine connection with your target audience. Their authentic endorsements can drive more meaningful conversations than a one-off post from a mega-influencer.
- Content: Develop and publish original research, such as an annual industry report. This type of content is highly shareable and often earns valuable backlinks and media mentions, boosting SOV across multiple channels.
- PR: Actively pitch expert commentary on trending news topics relevant to your industry. This positions your brand as a timely and authoritative voice.
Frequently Asked Questions About Share of Voice
1. What is search share of voice?
Search share of voice specifically measures a brand's visibility within search engine results pages (SERPs). It includes metrics from both organic search (how often you rank for key terms) and paid search (your impression share in ads). It is a component of the overall Share of Voice and indicates how well a brand is competing for attention on search engines like Google.
2. How to find out share of voice?
To find out your share of voice, you first need to define your market and competitors. Then, choose the channels you want to measure (e.g., social media, SEO). Using specialized tools, you collect data on a specific metric (like brand mentions) for your brand and your competitors. Finally, you use the formula: (Your Brand's Mentions / Total Industry Mentions) x 100. For example, if your brand gets 100 mentions out of a total of 1,000 in your industry, your SOV is 10%.
3. What is the difference between SOI and SOV?
Share of Voice (SOV) measures the quantity of conversation about your brand—how much it's being talked about. Share of Influence (SOI), on the other hand, measures the quality and credibility of those conversations. While SOV tracks volume, SOI focuses on the impact of the mentions, considering factors like the authority of the person or publication mentioning the brand. A mention from a major industry publication, for example, would have a higher SOI than a casual social media post.
