Share of Voice: What Is It and How Do You Calculate It?

The number of metrics marketers and business owners have to keep up with seems never-ending at times. And that’s exactly why it’s so easy to overlook key insights and focus on the wrong thing.

One metric that deserves more attention all around is the share of voice. Find out what it is and how to use these insights to enhance your performance below.

What is Share of Voice (SOV)?

Share of voice (SOV) is a marketing metric that enables you to compare the level of brand awareness between you and your competitors in a specific channel or market.

Assuming you and all your competitors use Facebook to promote your products and services, the share of voice would indicate how many users know about your brand and how many know about your competitors.

It’s a way to measure how strong your brand identity is and the level of awareness people have of it. By knowing the share of voice in marketing, you get a better idea of your market impact and can get a full picture of the overall conversation surrounding your brand.

Benefits of Shared Voice Analysis

Identifying the share of voice can give a company a competitive edge in the following ways:

1. Gaining Brand Awareness Insights

Share of voice helps companies understand new levels of their brand awareness efforts. Apart from knowing what is said, this metric is key to assessing how successful your strategies truly are.

It can reveal how your brand is perceived by your target audience and how much of an impact your message is having in contrast to your competitors.

2. Spotting Market Trends

Since the share of voice, by default, keeps an eye on the competition as well, it can help brands identify new trends in their market before they reach widespread adoption.

Therefore, companies can quickly determine which trend may prove beneficial to them and adjust their strategies and communication efforts accordingly.

3. Establishing Competitive Positioning

Share of voice is especially beneficial in highly competitive markets where there are a lot of actors fighting for the attention of the same consumers.

Through it, you can determine your exact position in the market as well as gain a deeper understanding of what your better-performing competitors are doing to gain more traction than you.

Key Elements of Shared Voice

There are several elements that a broad share of voice analysis should include:

1. Social Share of Voice

This measures the share of voice on social media, specifically. It encompasses how strong your brand is on all its social media accounts, as well as on platforms where you’re not present.

The data looks at key social media mentions regarding your brand and competitors to determine your position, but the analysis can also reveal key insights into brand sentiment.

2. Organic Share of Voice

This estimates how much of the existing organic search visibility is assigned to your business and how much your competitors get.

Consumers use search engines like Google and Bing to discover new products and services. The results often feature an array of different brands, all competing for the attention of the user. 

The share of voice analysis of organic traffic showcases how well your SEO efforts are performing and the amount of traffic you’re able to divert from competitors.

3. Advertising Impressions

Paid advertising efforts also have their share of voice metrics, as your ads are competing against those from other companies.

The numbers can reveal key information about how compelling your ad campaigns are as well as how strong your brand awareness is. People are more likely to click on ads from companies they know.

Learn more about impressions with our comprehensive guide here; What is Impression? Why Does It Matter in Digital Marketing? 

4. Brand Visibility

Lastly, the share of voice analysis should also mention data on your overall brand visibility. This includes any other mention or appearance of your brand, such as in news articles or blogs.

How Mandala AI’s Social Media Reporting Tools Identifies the Share of Voice

Since you need to track several sources to determine your SOV, using an analytics tool to measure share of voice is the most efficient way to get an accurate number in just a few minutes.

At Mandala AI, we’ve created a powerful tool that allows companies to meet all their voice analysis needs, from gathering specific data on their mentions across social media platforms to monitoring competitors and even individual posts.

Mandala Analytics relies on AI technologies to help users track and interpret market impact and optimize their marketing strategies using data rather than intuition.

Share of Voice Calculation

Before you can calculate your share of voice, you’ll first need to track the numbers and identify:

1. Your brand’s visibility
2. Your competitor’s visibility

Visibility here refers to a specific element you want to determine your position in, such as:

1. Total organic traffic
2. Paid ad impressions
3. Social media mentions
4. Hashtag uses, etc.

Assuming you want to determine your social media metrics, here’s an SOV calculation example:

1. Your brand receives 1000 mentions on social media
2. All brands in your category received 10,000 mentions in total
3. SOV here is 1000/10,000*100=10
4. Meaning you have a 10% SOV

You can adjust your calculations to be as broad or as narrow as you need. For instance, you can determine your SOV for all social media mentions or a specific network. Additionally, you can also calculate your SOV in relation to a specific competitor only and not the market at large.

Analyzing the Share of Voice Data

Knowing your brand has a 10% SOV on social media or other channels doesn’t mean much without context. To interpret this metric and elevate it, it helps to know the average SOV in your industry or the ones of your biggest competitors.

You can then compare the numbers and get a better understanding of where your brand is placed. Then, this information can be crucial to improving your efforts, like:

1. Marketing strategies: a lower SOV could indicate your brand is not effectively communicating with its target. You may need to adjust your strategies to gain more visibility.

2. Campaign adjustments: SOVs can also reveal how a specific campaign is performing on social, ad impressions, and traffic. Low numbers can help brands pivot their campaigns to enhance their results before exhausting their budget.

3. Competitors analysis: It’s one thing to monitor what your competition is doing, but the SOVs can reflect how successful they are compared to you. The metric helps improve your understanding of the competition.

Share of Voice on Social Media

Using an SOV calculator for social media can be particularly beneficial. More than paid ads and organic traffic, social media platforms generate the most conversations about brands, products, and services.

You may have the most valuable data on social media platforms for determining your brand reputation, customer sentiment, and more. Social media SOV can be calculated for brand mentions, hashtag uses, impressions and reach, and even overall user sentiment.

Brands currently in the dark about their share of voice are missing key insights into their performance that can help them improve their marketing strategies, create more effective campaigns, and gain a leg up on their competition.

With Mandala AI’s social media reporting tool, you can always stay updated on your mentions, customer sentiment, and even what your main competitors are doing.

Make informed decisions when you have all this data delivered to you in real-time by signing up for our platform.