Understanding Share of Voice (SOV) in Marketing: Measurement and Importance

Share of voice (SOV) is a measure of the market your brand owns compared to your competitors. It acts as a gauge for your brand visibility and how much you dominate the conversation in your industry. In this post, we’ll break down exactly what share of voice is, how you can measure it, and why it matters in your marketing efforts.

Back then, share of voice (SOV) was calculated by how influential your brand’s advertising was compared to everyone else in the industry. The rise of social media in today’s digital landscape, however, has completely changed the definition of SOV.

A chart representation of several brands’ share of voice (Image Source)

When we talk about SOV now, it’s more of a brand’s impact on social media channels. How are people reacting to your content? Do your competitors have more followers than you? Are you a thought leader in your industry?

While social media is the dominant digital medium, other marketing channels matter as well in measuring SOV, including search traffic and PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns. All these metrics are summed to evaluate your brand’s SOV which explains why more and more companies are in favor of multichannel marketing.

So, how do you calculate SOV?

Determine a timeline to measure your SOV. It can be a week, a month, or even the whole year. Then, track every mention of your brand and your competitors on relevant digital channels over the period you established earlier. Once you’ve finished tracking, use the formula below to calculate your SOV:

(Number of mentions for your brand / total number of mentions for your brand and competitors) * 100 = Your SOV in percent form

Let’s say your brand is mentioned 54 times in a week while your competitors garnered 121 mentions in the same timeline. Your SOV would be 30.8% based on the formula above.

It’s clear that doing this by hand is complicated and wastes a massive waste of time—let technology do the tedious work for you. Social media listening tools not only measure your SOV, but they also give you context and insights on your brand’s performance in the digital world. We’ll talk more about social media listening in another post.

Your SOV essentially represents the influence of your brand in the market. Influential or popular brands have bigger SOV values and vice versa. It also tells you how your marketing campaigns are performing since successful campaigns would increase your SOV.

You can break down your SOV further to gain valuable insights about your customers and competitors to further boost business performance. Again, use advanced social analytics tools that enable you to assess your brand’s SOV automatically so your employees don’t waste time working on inefficient tasks.

Why Measuring SOV The Right Way Is Crucial

Learn More About Your Competitors

Competitive analysis helps you identify where your brand is standing in the market. Your SOV—more specifically, your business performance and customer satisfaction—allows you to benchmark your brand against competitors.

You’ll be able to understand how far ahead or behind you are relative to other brands and formulate strategies to close the gap. These insights can also be used to determine how well your campaigns are performing so you can make informed decisions about your marketing strategies.

Social media analytics often come along with sentiment analysis features that evaluate customer happiness. Monitoring this metric can provide important details for crisis management and market research which improves your brand’s ability to keep customers happy all the time.

Understand Your Customers

Analyzing your SOV enables businesses to understand their customers from top to bottom. This includes knowing where they’re from, what makes them happy or upset, and what their greatest needs are. For example, a retailer can analyze its SOV to figure out why customers from a specific region are always upset on social media.

Target audience behavior, gender analysis, interests and personalities—these are just some of the priceless information you gain from breaking down your SOV with a social media listening tool.

A better understanding of your target demographic gives your brand the ability to deliver products and services that customers love. This sets you apart from the competition while also mitigating risks when entering new markets or launching new offerings.

Find out Where Your Brand Stands in the Industry

As mentioned earlier, your SOV shows how well-known your brand is and how much it is being mentioned in contrast to your fiercest rivals. This information can then be used to devise campaigns that boost your SOV significantly.

How to Boost Your SOV

Don’t Focus Only on Social Media

Don’t make the mistake of putting all your eggs in the social media basket. Your brand can (and should) improve its SOV through traditional and offline media as well.

If your offline campaigns are executed well, people will talk about it with their friends and families which ultimately leads to online buzz. Pay attention to other digital media avenues like landing pages and newsletters. Improve your SEO and PPC efforts while you’re at it. You will observe a noticeable increase in SOV by doing these thanks to higher SERP rankings and improved brand exposure.

Work With The Right Influencers

69% of leading executives believe influencer marketing is one of the most important strategies for brand recognition in 2019. That alone should give you an idea of how impactful influencer marketing is in boosting your SOV.

That said, not all influencers come equal. The key is to work with the right influencers who have a deep connection with your target audience. If you’re a tech company, work with leading tech reviewers and publications instead of Instagram celebrities—you get the gist. Finding the perfect influencers is also one of Lucidya’s top features which you can check out here.

Create Engaging and Relevant Content

Engaging, relevant content is almost unfair in the benefits it generates for brands. When customers are excited about your content, they’ll share with their social circle, thus improving your SOV organically.

This is why investing in content is important. Delighting customers with the right content creates an evergreen, perpetual cycle that brings in traffic and leads without fail. The best part is, you don’t have to do anything because your customers are doing the marketing for your brand!

If you struggle to come up with content ideas, take a page out of your competitors’ books and see what they’re doing. Better yet, use social media listening tools that tell you the types of content which work best for your brand.

Why Lucidya Is a Must-Have Tool for Brands Looking to Improve Their SOV

In a nutshell, share of voice allows you to listen to the voice of your customers, identify your position in the industry against competitors, as well as providing insights to refine your marketing campaigns. Improving your SOV is only a matter of effectively implementing the tips mentioned above.

Lucidya is an AI-powered social media listening tool that empowers companies operating in Arabic-speaking countries with in-depth, never-before-seen customer insights. With Lucidya, businesses can build profitable products, boost customer satisfaction, execute successful campaigns, and close more sales thanks to our extensive list of social media listening features.

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