How to Measure Share of Voice: Boost Your Brand Visibility

Measuring share of voice gives you one crucial piece of information: a clear picture of how much of the conversation your brand actually owns compared to your competitors. It's a simple idea at its core—track your brand mentions across channels like social media and search, tally them up, and then divide that by the total mentions for your entire industry.

Why Share of Voice Matters for Brand Growth

Share of Voice (SOV) is so much more than a vanity metric. It's one of the most reliable predictors of future market share. Think of it as the pulse of your brand's presence in the market. While market share tells you about past performance (your sales), SOV offers a real glimpse into your future potential.

When your SOV is high, it’s a sign of strong brand awareness and authority. It means your brand is top-of-mind with consumers, and that almost always translates directly into growth. For any brand serious about strategic expansion, getting a handle on share of voice measurement isn't just a nice-to-have; it's a necessity.

SOV Is a Leading Indicator of Success

Let’s look at a practical example. Imagine a new B2B SaaS company launches an AI-powered scheduling tool. For the first three months, their market share is near zero. But they execute a brilliant digital PR campaign, getting featured in tech blogs and having industry influencers review their tool.

Their social listening tool shows their SOV has surged to 15% in conversations about "AI productivity tools," even while their market share is still below 1%. This gap is a powerful leading indicator. It proves the startup is capturing attention long before sales figures catch up. Actionable insight: They can now double down on this successful PR strategy and even use their high SOV figures in investor pitches to demonstrate market traction.

The Evolution from Ad Spend to Digital Mentions

Share of voice wasn’t born in the digital age. The concept actually started in traditional media analysis, measuring a brand's slice of the total ad impressions on TV or in print.

But things have changed. Over the past couple of decades, the metric has evolved to include organic and earned media. Today, we look at SOV as a blend of a brand's presence across multiple channels:

Organic Search: How often do you show up on Google for important industry keywords?
Paid Ads: What’s your impression share on platforms like Google Ads?
Social Media: How many people are talking about you versus your rivals?
PR & Media: Are you getting featured in the publications your customers read?

At its core, share of voice is a competitive metric. It’s not about how loud you are in a vacuum; it’s about how loud you are relative to everyone else fighting for the same customer’s attention.

Understanding this modern, multi-channel approach is key. Your brand might have a low SOV in paid ads but absolutely dominate organic search, or the other way around. By learning how to measure share of voice across this complex environment, you gain a true understanding of your brand's health and can start making much smarter marketing decisions.

Laying the Groundwork for Accurate SOV Measurement

Before you even think about plugging numbers into a formula, the most important work happens. If you don't set the stage properly, you’ll end up with a mess of useless data. It's the classic "garbage in, garbage out" problem. This prep work turns a fuzzy marketing concept into a sharp, actionable metric.

Think of it as drawing the boundaries on the playing field before the game even starts.

Who Are You Really Competing Against?

First things first: you need to map out your true competitive landscape. So many brands get this wrong by only looking at their direct competitors. A solid SOV analysis needs to look at three different types of rivals.

Direct Competitors: These are the obvious ones. If you’re a project management tool like Asana, this is going to be Monday.com or Trello.
Indirect Competitors: These brands solve the same problem with a different solution. For Asana, this could be a communication platform like Slack (where teams manage tasks in channels) or a flexible database tool like Airtable.
Aspirational Competitors: These are the market leaders you want to emulate. For a new B2B SaaS startup, this might be a giant like HubSpot.

Actionable insight: Create a simple spreadsheet listing 2-3 competitors in each category. This list becomes the foundation for every SOV tool you set up, ensuring you're tracking the full spectrum of rivals fighting for your audience's attention.

Pick Your Battles: Which Channels Actually Matter?

Not every channel is created equal. Measuring your SOV on TikTok is a complete waste of time if your audience of enterprise CIOs is living on LinkedIn and in industry trades. The secret is to focus your energy where the real conversations are happening.

Let's make this real. Imagine you're a B2B company that sells cybersecurity software. A smart SOV strategy for this company would zero in on:

Industry Publications & News: Tracking mentions in outlets like Wired, TechCrunch, and niche cybersecurity blogs.
LinkedIn: Monitoring company mentions, discussions in relevant professional groups (e.g., "Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Network"), and the visibility of their C-suite.
Organic Search: Measuring visibility for high-intent keywords like "enterprise endpoint security solutions" or "cloud infrastructure protection."

Actionable insight: Survey five of your best customers. Ask them, "Where do you go online to learn about new solutions for your business?" Use their answers to prioritize the 2-3 most important channels for your SOV tracking. This ensures you're measuring what actually influences buyers.

Defining the Rules of the Game

Finally, you have to get specific about the "what" and "when" of your analysis. This means setting firm rules for what you’ll count as a mention and deciding on a logical timeframe.

First, define what a "mention" is. For yourself and all competitors, decide if you will track:

Brand names only (e.g., "Asana")
Product names (e.g., "Asana Portfolio")
Key executives (e.g., "Dustin Moskovitz")
Branded hashtags (e.g., #AsanaTogether)

A common pitfall is using an overly broad definition of a 'mention,' which can inflate numbers with irrelevant chatter. Your goal is precision, not just volume.

Next, pick a practical timeframe. If you're in a fast-moving industry like consumer tech, you might need to check in weekly or monthly. For more stable B2B markets, a quarterly review is probably plenty. To get a more complete view of your brand's position, it can be helpful to look beyond SOV and understand concepts like measuring brand equity, which offers a complementary perspective on your brand's overall health.

Alright, you've got your competitors mapped out and know which channels matter. Now for the fun part: running the numbers.

Calculating your Share of Voice (SOV) isn't a one-size-fits-all equation. The basic idea is always to measure your brand’s presence against the total conversation, but the specific metrics will shift depending on where you're looking.

This is where we move from theory to action. Let's break down exactly how you can measure your SOV across social media, SEO, and paid advertising with practical examples.

As the visual shows, it always comes back to the same fundamental process: pick your metric, measure your brand, and then benchmark that against the entire market conversation.

Social Media: Who Owns the Conversation?

On social media, SOV is all about the chatter. You're trying to figure out how often your brand gets mentioned compared to your competitors. It's one of the most direct ways to see how your brand awareness is stacking up.

To get this right, you need to be tracking more than just your @mentions. Your net should be wider:

Direct Mentions: Tags like @YourBrand or just "Your Brand Name".
Branded Hashtags: Campaign or brand hashtags like #YourCampaign.
Indirect Mentions: Mentions of your products or key executives.
Engagement Volume: Total likes, comments, and shares on posts talking about your brand.

Once you’ve pulled all that data for a set period, the math itself is pretty simple.

Social SOV Formula: (Your Total Mentions / Total Market Mentions) x 100 = Your SOV %

Practical Example: A new coffee subscription box, "BrewBox," wants to measure its SOV on Instagram for the month of November.

They set up a social listening tool to track mentions of "BrewBox" and #BrewBox. This totals 1,200 mentions.
They also track their two main competitors, "BeanCo" and "DailyGrind," over the same period. BeanCo got 4,000 mentions and DailyGrind got 2,800.
Total market mentions = 1,200 (BrewBox) + 4,000 (BeanCo) + 2,800 (DailyGrind) = 8,000 mentions.
BrewBox's SOV = (1,200 / 8,000) x 100 = 15%.

SEO: How Often Do You Show Up?

When it comes to SEO, Share of Voice is all about SERP real estate. The question you're answering is, "When a customer searches for something we sell, how often do they see us versus the competition?" This goes way beyond tracking a handful of keyword rankings.

The go-to metric here is typically organic visibility or impression share. It shows you the percentage of all possible organic clicks your site is getting for a specific group of keywords.

Here’s a practical approach to calculating it:

Build Your Keyword List: Create a list of 50-100 high-intent keywords that your ideal customers use. For a plumber, this would be "emergency plumber near me," "leaky faucet repair," etc.
Track Your Visibility: Use an SEO tool (like Semrush) to upload this list and get a "Visibility %" score for your domain. This score is based on your rankings and the search volume of the keywords.
Benchmark the Competition: Run the exact same report for your top competitors using the same keyword list.
Do the Math: Add up the visibility scores for your brand and all your tracked competitors to get a "total market" number, then find your percentage.

Practical Example: A local restaurant, "The Brunch Spot," wants to own the search results for "best brunch" in their city. Using an SEO tool, they find their visibility for their 20 target keywords is 30%. They analyze two rivals, who have visibility scores of 40% and 20%. The total market visibility is 30 + 40 + 20 = 90%. The Brunch Spot's SEO SOV is (30 / 90) x 100 = 33%.

Paid Media: Are You Buying Enough Airtime?

In paid media, platforms like Google Ads give you a direct metric called Impression Share. It tells you exactly what percentage of the time your ads were shown out of the total number of times they could have been shown.

If that number is low, it’s a big red flag. It could mean your budget is too small, your bids aren’t competitive, or your ad quality is lagging.

Actionable Insight: If your Google Ads campaign for "AI SEO tools" has an Impression Share of 45%, you're showing up in almost half of the available ad auctions. But it also means you're completely absent from the other 55%. Your immediate action item is to investigate why. Check the "Impression Share lost due to budget" and "Impression Share lost due to rank" columns in your report. This tells you whether you need to increase your budget or improve your ad copy and landing pages.

Share of Voice Calculation Formulas by Channel

This table helps simplify which metrics to focus on for each channel. For social media, digging into related practices like social media reputation monitoring can also add crucial context by revealing the sentiment behind your mentions.

Choosing the Right Tools for SOV Monitoring

Trying to manually keep tabs on every brand mention and keyword ranking is a recipe for burnout. The right tools do more than just collect data; they turn a sea of numbers into actionable strategy. Your choice depends on your needs and budget.

Social Listening Platforms

Think of social listening tools as your ears on the ground. They track brand mentions, hashtags, and keywords across social media, forums, and blogs, often analyzing the sentiment of those conversations.

They're a perfect fit for:

Consumer brands needing to monitor campaign buzz.
PR teams tracking media sentiment and managing brand reputation.
Product marketers hunting for unfiltered customer feedback.

Practical Example: A cosmetics brand launches a new foundation. They can use a tool like Brandwatch to track their product name and see what customers are saying. If they notice a spike in negative sentiment around the keyword "shade range," the product team gets instant, actionable feedback to inform future product development.

All-in-One SEO Suites

These platforms are mission control for measuring your visibility on search engines. They track keyword performance, analyze backlinks, and, crucially, benchmark your organic presence against your competition.

These suites are mission-control for:

SEO specialists managing organic growth.
Content marketing teams looking for keyword gaps and content opportunities.
Digital marketing managers needing a high-level view of search performance.

Practical Example: A travel blog uses Semrush to identify keywords where their main competitor ranks on page one, but they don't. This "Keyword Gap" analysis gives them a ready-made list of content topics to create, providing a clear, data-driven path to stealing their competitor's SEO share of voice. You can apply these same principles to newer platforms by following our guide to AI search engine optimization.

Media Monitoring Services

While social listening tunes into user-generated content, media monitoring services track what established publications, news outlets, and influential blogs are saying. This is the domain of PR and corporate communications.

Choosing the right tool isn't about finding the one with the most features. It's about finding the one that provides the clearest answers to your most important business questions.

Across the globe, services like CisionOne and Talkwalker automate this process. A Brandwatch report revealed that brands commanding over 20% SOV on key platforms often see 15-35% higher brand recall. You can discover more insights on Brandwatch's findings here.

Comparison of Share of Voice Monitoring Tools

Building Your Tech Stack

No single tool does everything perfectly. The most effective approach is to build a stack that covers your unique bases.

For instance, a startup watching its budget can get surprisingly far with free tools:

Google Alerts: Set it up for your brand name and your top competitors. It's a simple way to monitor mentions in news and blogs without spending a dime.
Google Search Console: Dive into the Performance report to track impression share for your most important organic keywords.

As a company grows, it can invest in a more specialized setup. For example, a B2B tech company might combine an SEO suite for search visibility with a media monitoring tool to track mentions in key industry journals, giving them a 360-degree view of the channels that drive their business.

Turning Your SOV Data Into an Actionable Strategy

Collecting share of voice data is just the beginning. The real magic happens when you translate those raw numbers into a smart, strategic roadmap. A simple percentage is interesting, but the insights hiding beneath the surface are what really fuel growth.

Deconstruct the Conversation Themes

First, figure out what topics are driving your visibility. Are people talking about your customer service, a new feature, or your competitive pricing?

Actionable Insight: A B2B software company discovers their SOV is high, but 60% of the chat revolves around a minor, free feature, completely overshadowing their core paid product. This is a clear signal their messaging is off-course. Their marketing team's next action is to launch a new webinar series and create three case studies focused exclusively on the value of their core product, steering the conversation back to what drives revenue.

Analyze the Sentiment Behind the Numbers

A high share of voice isn't always good. A sudden spike in mentions could be a customer complaint going viral. That’s why sentiment analysis is non-negotiable.

A rising share of voice with declining sentiment is a critical early warning sign. It gives your PR and product teams a chance to get ahead of a potential crisis before it damages brand reputation.

Practical Example: A clothing brand sees a 15% jump in SOV. But a sentiment analysis reveals 70% of new mentions are negative, all complaining about the quality of a new t-shirt. Their actionable next steps are clear:

Immediate Action: Post a public statement on social media acknowledging the issue and pausing sales of the item.
Customer Service: Proactively email all purchasers of the t-shirt, offering a full refund or store credit.
Operations: Work with their supplier to identify and fix the quality control issue.

This turns a potential disaster into a demonstration of customer commitment.

Pinpoint Your Strongest and Weakest Channels

Your SOV will never be consistent across every platform. Identifying channel-specific strengths and weaknesses is key to allocating resources effectively.

Actionable Insight: Your analysis shows a competitor owns a 40% SOV on Reddit in a niche community you've ignored. Your next move isn't to run ads there. Instead, task your product expert to spend two hours a week in that subreddit genuinely answering questions and offering advice, building trust and visibility organically. This targeted action directly addresses a weakness with a low-cost, high-impact strategy.

When it comes to presenting these findings, remember that good data visualization best practices can help you tell a compelling story.

Bridge the Gap to Business Outcomes

Ultimately, this all comes back to connecting your SOV insights to real business results. Every data point should inspire a specific action.

Think about how SOV analysis can guide different teams:

Content Team: Discovering a competitor has low SOV on the topic "how to integrate X with Y" provides an immediate, specific blog post idea that is likely to rank well and capture relevant traffic.
Product Team: Negative sentiment and chatter about a confusing user interface is direct, unfiltered feedback for the next design sprint.
Sales Team: High SOV in a specific industry vertical is a powerful data point to include in sales decks, proving to prospects that your brand is a recognized leader in their space.

By translating data into these kinds of concrete tasks, you make sure that measuring your share of voice isn't just an analytical exercise—it becomes a central pillar of your entire growth strategy.

Common Questions About Measuring Share of Voice

Even after you've got the basics down, you'll probably have some practical questions. Let's tackle a few of the most common ones.

How Often Should I Measure My Share of Voice?

This really comes down to the pace of your industry. For a fast-moving B2C brand in fashion or tech, a monthly or even weekly check-in is smart. This lets you react quickly to competitor campaigns or viral trends. For a more stable B2B company, a quarterly review is usually sufficient to spot meaningful trends without getting bogged down by daily noise.

What Is a Good Share of Voice Percentage?

There's no magic number. In a crowded market with a dozen big names, a 15% SOV could make you a major player. But if it's just you and one other main competitor, a 30% SOV might mean you're lagging behind.

Your most important benchmark isn't some industry average; it's your own track record. The real goal is to see steady, incremental growth in your SOV over time. That’s how you know your marketing is actually working to own more of the conversation.

Actionable Insight: Instead of chasing an arbitrary percentage, set a goal like, "Increase our SOV by 2% quarter-over-quarter" or "Overtake Competitor X in SEO visibility within six months." These are concrete, measurable targets.

Can I Measure SOV with a Small Budget?

You absolutely can. While paid platforms offer incredible depth, you can get a solid picture of your share of voice with free or low-cost tools.

Here’s a practical, zero-budget starter pack:

Lean on Google Alerts: Set up alerts for your brand name, your CEO's name, and your top three competitors. This is a free, automated way to track mentions across news sites and blogs.
Dig into Google Search Console: The Performance report shows your "impression share" for your most critical organic keywords, giving you a direct line of sight into your SEO SOV.
Do Manual Social Sweeps: Once a week, spend 30 minutes searching for your brand and competitor names on X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn. It’s not scalable, but it delivers powerful qualitative insights you might otherwise miss.

By piecing these free resources together, you can build a solid foundational understanding of your market position and start making smarter decisions right away.

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