Strategies

What is Share of Voice (SOV) and how significant is it?

The term “share of voice” (or SOV) has been in use long before the existing digital era. The share of voice, or SOV, is the percentage of media spent by a company as compared to the total media expenditure for the product, service, or any category in the market. Before the Digital Era, this metric has been used to define the share of your advertising (print, radio or TV) compared to all the competitors’ in your niche. This term has now extended to include all the measurable brand awareness tools like the number and reach of online mentions, PPC, website traffic, and more.

 

Your brand’s share of voice is a great way to help you understand how is your brand’s visibility and measure the results of the marketing efforts, in a specific area or across different channels. An in-depth analysis of your share of the voice will help you understand the impact of your brand on the industry, as well as determine how you can improve your strategy and achieve your business goals. Knowing your brand name share in your industry gives you a strategic advantage and allows you to identify, measure your influence, identify opportunities and implement strategies to increase your brand’s influence.

 

Voice sharing is important on social media because it will help you identify which competitors are mentioned the most so you can analyze what you are doing versus what they are doing. In addition, you can also determine which publications mention your competitors and compare how many publications mention them versus you.

 

Knowing your specified share of your brand in your industry will give you a strategic advantage over your competitors. Knowing your part of the voice is important because it allows you to be aware of your brand’s presence in social conversations in relation to competitors.

 

Knowing how to calculate your voice share allows you to measure brand presence and how prominent the brand is currently in a particular channel. After all, a higher voice share may indicate that you are spending more on advertising than your competitors; however, it will not determine the relevance of marketing to your target audience. By understanding whether your brand is being discussed more or less in your target market than in your competitors, you can determine whether your marketing efforts are effective or if changes are needed. Sorting by platforms or by various demographic data (age, gender, income) it can identify the differences between audiences’ perceptions of your brand.

 

The SOV rating gives you a complete picture of your market landscape based on how much talk about each brand in your niche. In digital marketing, an organization’s voice share (also commonly referred to as SOV) is usually defined as the share of conversations related to its brand, products or services across different channels than its direct competitors. In other words, it is an indicator that allows you to measure brand awareness across various marketing channels in comparison to your competitors.

 

Brands can compare competitors by domain and size by measuring voice shares by channel, customer segment, and voice and market dominance antecedents and factors. Brand SOV can be measured across multiple marketing and awareness subdomains, across different dimensions within domains, each based on a different mix of external and internal data. These SOV measures, from the entire addressed market to specific channels, are indicators of brand awareness, the first step on the consumer journey and also market share itself.

 

 

This, in turn, tells you what percentage of your target audience you will reach with your marketing efforts. This metric will help you determine if you are reaching your target audience.

 

You can use the same tool to calculate your competitors’ vote share, which, just like organic searches, can help determine where your brand is now so you can achieve what you want. Voice sharing can also be used to maximize exposure to a brand through advertising weight, expressed as a percentage of a specific total market over a given period of time.

 

Weight is usually defined in terms of costs, ratings, pages, posters, and more. This concept includes how much is said about your brand compared to other competitors, and whether you have a significant proportion of your customers’ industry associations. The two metrics are similar in concept (calculating your performance versus your competitors), but market share only refers to total market share, and voice share can refer to brand awareness or success across different marketing channels.

 

Whereas voice share measures brand awareness on a given channel, market share is the percentage of the market that one company controls, based on revenue or number of customers. Now that we live in the digital age, the definition of voice share has expanded to include everything from digital public relations, digital advertising, social media mentions, website traffic, in other words, all forms of measurable brand awareness in your specific market.

 

Social media SOV refers to measurable social activity associated with your brand. SOV is one indicator of whether your marketing strategies are working. SOV is important for measuring the results of your PR and PPC campaigns. Businesses need to evaluate various metrics, including social media engagement, traffic etc. to determine their SOV.