What Is Share of Voice and How to Win It

Ever heard the term Share of Voice (SOV)? At its core, it's a way to measure your brand's slice of the conversation pie compared to your competitors. Think of it as a gauge of your brand's visibility across your entire industry, from social media chatter to search engine results. This guide will give you practical examples and actionable insights to not just measure SOV, but to dominate it.

Understanding Share of Voice in Modern Marketing

Picture your market as a massive sports stadium. Thousands of fans are buzzing, all talking about their favorite teams. Share of Voice tells you how many of those fans are chanting your name versus the competition's. It's a straight-up measure of your brand's presence and authority wherever those conversations are happening.

This idea has been around for a while, but how we apply it has changed dramatically. Originally, SOV was a simple advertising metric, all about ad spend. It measured how much you spent on ads against the total ad spend in your market. For example, if you dropped $5 million on advertising in a market where the total spend was $100 million, your share of voice was 5%. This classic approach was about dominating the ad space on TV, radio, and print. You can read more about the origins of SOV in this Wikipedia article.

But today, SOV has burst out of the ad-budget box. It's now about a brand's entire digital footprint.

The Evolution of Share of Voice From Traditional to Digital

The way we think about SOV has shifted from a narrow focus on paid ads to a holistic view of a brand's presence across every touchpoint. This table breaks down the key differences between the old-school and new-school approaches.

Aspect	Traditional SOV	Modern SOV
Primary Focus	Paid advertising spend	Holistic brand visibility across all channels
Key Channels	TV, radio, print	Organic search, social media, content, PR, and AI-powered search
Core Metric	Your ad spend ÷ Total market ad spend	A blend of metrics like organic traffic, social mentions, media mentions, and AI citations
Strategic Objective	Dominate paid media channels	Earn audience attention and build authority across the entire digital ecosystem
What It Measures	How loud you can shout (budget)	How much people are listening and talking about you (influence)

This evolution makes it clear: what we mean by "share of voice" today is about total market presence, not just who has the deepest pockets for ad campaigns. It's about earning attention, not just buying it.

The New Landscape of SOV

Modern Share of Voice is a much bigger, more dynamic beast. It's no longer a simple contest of who has the biggest ad budget. Instead, it measures how visible you are across all the channels where customers find, research, and talk about brands. This all-encompassing view is essential for knowing where you really stand.

A solid SOV analysis today has to include:

Organic Search Visibility: How often do you show up in search results for your most important keywords compared to everyone else?
Social Media Presence: What’s the volume of your brand mentions, hashtag use, and actual engagement on platforms like X, Instagram, and LinkedIn?
AI Search Citations: How often is your brand mentioned or cited in AI-generated answers? This is a critical new frontier where a tool like LLMrefs provides invaluable, actionable data.
Content and PR Mentions: Are you appearing in news articles, industry blogs, and other online media?

By tracking SOV across all these areas, you get a clear, multi-dimensional map of your brand’s influence. It doesn't just show you where you're winning; it highlights where your competitors are pulling ahead.

This shift means that share of voice is now a question of total market presence. It reflects your brand’s ability to capture audience attention authentically, laying the foundation for real growth and leadership in your industry.

Why Share of Voice Predicts Future Growth

Knowing your Share of Voice (SOV) is more than just a marketing check-up; it's like having a crystal ball for your brand's future. Think of it as a leading indicator of where your business is headed.

While market share tells you how much of the pie you have right now, SOV tells you how much you're likely to have tomorrow.

This isn’t just a hunch—it’s a well-documented pattern. Brands that consistently command a higher share of voice than their market share tend to grow. And those who let their SOV dip below their market share often see their business shrink. It’s a simple, powerful rule of thumb for any marketing team.

So, how does it work? It all comes down to a simple human principle: mental availability. The more people see, hear, and talk about your brand, the more likely they are to remember you when they’re ready to buy. A high SOV keeps you top-of-mind, building the kind of awareness that eventually turns into sales.

Introducing Excess Share of Voice

The predictive power of SOV is best captured by a concept called excess share of voice (ESOV). This is simply the difference between how much people are talking about you (your SOV) and how much they’re buying from you (your Share of Market).

ESOV = Your Share of Voice (%) - Your Share of Market (%)

Let's break it down with a practical example. Imagine a coffee startup has a 15% SOV on social media (meaning 15% of the relevant online chatter is about them), but their current market share is only 5%. That gives them an ESOV of +10%. This positive number is an excellent sign, indicating they're "out-shouting" their current size and are well-positioned for future growth.

On the flip side, a negative ESOV is a major red flag. It means your competitors are drowning you out, and you’re at risk of losing the customers you already have.

This makes SOV an essential strategic tool. By setting a goal for a positive ESOV, you're not just making noise. You’re making a direct investment in your future market position, giving you a clear, quantifiable reason to justify your marketing budget.

The Proven Link Between SOV and Growth

The relationship between SOV and market growth isn't just theory; it's backed by a ton of research. One landmark analysis found a direct correlation: for every 10% of excess share of voice a brand holds, it can expect its market share to grow by about 0.5%. You can dive deeper into these key marketing findings on nielsen.com.

This connection proves that SOV is far from a vanity metric—it's a real lever for business success.

Imagine a startup trying to break into a crowded market. They can use an aggressive SOV strategy to build a name for themselves long before their sales numbers catch up. By securing a high SOV, they're essentially "punching above their weight" to carve out a bigger piece of the market tomorrow. This predictive power is what makes understanding what share of voice is so critical for any brand that’s serious about long-term growth.

How to Measure Your Share of Voice Today

Knowing your Share of Voice (SOV) is good, but actually measuring it is what turns a vague idea into a real number you can track, analyze, and improve upon. The good news is that the core principle behind the calculation is surprisingly straightforward, and it works no matter where your brand is fighting for attention.

At its heart, the formula is always the same:

SOV % = (Your Brand's Metric ÷ Total Market Metric) x 100

The only thing that changes is which specific "metric" you plug into the formula, depending on the channel you're looking at. Let’s break down how this works in practice for the most critical parts of your online presence.

Calculating SEO Share of Voice

When it comes to search engine optimization, your SOV is all about your visibility in the organic search results for keywords your customers are actually using. Think of it as a direct measure of how often people find you instead of your competitors when they’re looking for answers.

You'll want to keep an eye on a few key metrics:

Organic Impressions: How many times your website shows up in search results for your target keywords.
Organic Keyword Rankings: Where you typically land on the results page for a specific group of keywords.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who see your site in the results and actually click on it.

Here’s a practical example: If you run a local bakery and your website gets 5,000 impressions in a month for the keyword "birthday cakes near me," and the total monthly search volume for that term is 20,000, your SEO Share of Voice for that specific keyword is 25%.

Measuring Social Media and PPC SOV

That same basic formula works perfectly for social media and paid ads, too—you just swap out the metrics. On social, you’re measuring your piece of the overall conversation. With PPC, it's all about how much of the ad space you own.

This bar chart gives a great visual for how SOV breaks down, showing where your brand stands against a competitor and the rest of the field.

As you can see, at 40%, "Your Brand" has a strong lead, but there's still plenty of room for competitors to make a move. This is why tracking is so important.

Here's how to apply the formula to these channels with actionable examples:

For Social Media: You can track brand mentions, the use of a specific campaign hashtag, or even post reach. Let's say you launch a campaign with the hashtag #HealthyHabits2024. If your brand gets mentioned 500 times using this hashtag and the total conversation (including competitors using it) adds up to 2,000 mentions, your social SOV for that campaign is 25%.
For PPC: Google Ads makes this easy with a metric they call Impression Share. It literally tells you the percentage of time your ads appeared versus the total number of times they could have appeared. If your impression share is 60%, your PPC SOV for that campaign is 60%.

To make things even easier, this table breaks down the specific metrics and formulas you'll need for each major channel.

Share of Voice Calculation Methods by Channel

Channel	Key Metrics to Track	Example Formula
SEO	Organic Impressions, Keyword Rankings, Clicks	(Your Impressions ÷ Total Search Volume) x 100
Social Media	Brand Mentions, Hashtag Usage, Reach	(Your Mentions ÷ Total Industry Mentions) x 100
Paid Advertising	Ad Impressions (Impression Share)	(Your Ad Impressions ÷ Total Available Impressions) x 100

This table provides a quick, at-a-glance guide to get you started with practical SOV measurement across your most important marketing channels.

If you want a tool to help run the numbers, you can use a dedicated Share of Voice Calculator. And for a much deeper look into the details and advanced strategies behind these calculations, check out our complete guide at https://llmrefs.com/blog/share-of-voice-measurement.

Winning Share of Voice in AI Search

The ground is shifting beneath our feet. With search engines rolling out AI-powered answers like Google's AI Overviews, the very definition of "visibility" is being rewritten. For years, the goal was simple: win the top spot on a list of blue links. That’s no longer the ultimate prize.

The new frontier is earning a citation directly within these AI-generated summaries. This is the next evolution of share of voice. Instead of just showing up near the answer, your brand becomes part of the answer. When an AI model cites you, it positions your brand as a definitive source of truth, building a kind of authority that traditional SEO alone just can't deliver.

This new battleground demands a fresh playbook. The ranking signals we've relied on for years are now just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. AI models are built to synthesize information from the most credible sources, so they prioritize content that screams expertise and trustworthiness.

The New Rules of Visibility

If you want to be mentioned in an AI answer, you have to think beyond just keywords. Success now hinges on proving your expertise consistently and comprehensively across your entire digital footprint. As search evolves, you have to evolve with it; mastering new AI search optimization strategies is the only way to stay ahead of the curve.

This is where guesswork fails and specialized intelligence becomes absolutely essential. You can't just hope your content is resonating with AI models—you need to know for sure.

Gaining visibility in AI-generated answers is the ultimate SOV goal. It's not just about being seen; it's about being recognized as an authority worthy of citation, directly influencing the information users receive.

How LLMrefs Gives You an Edge

This is precisely the challenge LLMrefs was built to solve. It gives you the critical data needed to compete in this new arena, turning ambiguity into a clear, actionable strategy. It’s an excellent tool designed specifically to help you understand and win this new kind of share of voice.

LLMrefs helps you build a future-proof SOV strategy by showing you how to:

Track Your Visibility: See exactly how often your brand is cited or mentioned in AI answers across different models.
Analyze Competitors: Pinpoint which competitors are earning citations and dig into the content that's getting them featured.
Pinpoint Content Gaps: Discover the specific topics and questions where your brand is completely absent from the AI conversation, showing you exactly where to focus your efforts.

Armed with this kind of powerful intelligence, you can finally build a content strategy that’s actually designed for this new reality. A great place to start is to learn https://llmrefs.com/blog/how-to-optimize-for-ai-overviews and begin capturing your share of the future.

Actionable Strategies to Increase Your Share of Voice

Knowing your share of voice is one thing. Actually growing it is how you start to win. It's time to move from simply analyzing the numbers to taking concrete action, and that requires more than just "posting more content." We need a smart game plan.

The real goal here is to dominate the conversations that matter most in your industry. That means becoming the go-to expert in your niche, finding clever ways to join relevant discussions, and capitalizing on the gaps your competitors have left wide open. Let's break down how to do it.

Develop Authoritative Pillar Content

One of the most powerful ways to boost your SOV is to become the definitive resource on a key topic. This is where "pillar content" comes in—think of it as a massive, comprehensive guide that covers a subject so thoroughly that no one else can compete. This one major piece then becomes a central hub that you can link out from with smaller, related articles.

Here’s a practical example: a project management software company could create a huge pillar page titled "The Ultimate Guide to Agile Methodologies." From that single pillar, they could spin off dozens of smaller, actionable blog posts like "How to Run Your First Sprint Planning Meeting" or "Top 5 Tools for Kanban Boards," with each one linking back to the main guide. This creates a powerful content ecosystem that shows both search engines and your audience that you are the expert, boosting your visibility across a whole family of related keywords.

By owning a topic, you're not just competing for a single keyword; you're building a fortress of authority that competitors will find difficult to challenge. This approach naturally increases your organic share of voice.

Leverage Strategic Competitor Analysis

Your competitors are basically giving you a roadmap of opportunities—you just have to know how to read it. A solid analysis shows you what they're doing well, but more importantly, it reveals where they're dropping the ball. You can find content gaps they’ve completely ignored, keywords they’re ranking for with surprisingly weak content, or social media channels they’ve neglected.

For a deep dive into this process, our article on how to do SEO competitor analysis provides a complete, step-by-step walkthrough.

For example, you might find that a major rival is all over LinkedIn but has a ghost town of a profile on X (formerly Twitter). That’s your opening. By concentrating your efforts on X, you can own the conversation on that platform with much less friction, capturing a whole new audience and boosting your social SOV in the process. This is a clear, actionable insight you can implement immediately.

Own Niche Conversations with Social Listening

Stop just shouting your message into the void. The real magic happens when you insert your brand into conversations that are already happening. Use social listening tools to keep an eye on industry hashtags, keywords, and mentions of your competitors. This lets you find relevant discussions as they happen and jump in with something valuable to say.

Here's how that might look in the real world:

Find a Niche Hashtag: A B2B software company could monitor a specific hashtag like #SalesEnablement instead of a generic one like #sales.
Offer Real Value: When someone asks a question using that hashtag, the company’s social media manager can provide a genuinely helpful answer, maybe linking to a useful blog post without any aggressive sales pitch. For instance, replying to "Any tips for improving sales call scripts?" with "Great question! We found that focusing on open-ended questions works wonders. Here’s a quick guide we wrote on it: [link]."
Build Authority: Done consistently, the brand becomes a familiar, trusted voice within that specific community. You're no longer just a seller; you're a helpful expert, effectively owning that niche conversation and growing your share of voice.

Your Share of Voice Action Plan

Okay, let's get practical. It's one thing to understand what share of voice is, but it's another to actually do something about it. Here’s a straightforward, actionable plan to turn all this insight into real-world impact.

First things first: you need to know who you’re up against. Start by mapping out your competitive landscape. Pinpoint your three top rivals and take a hard look at where they’re showing up. List everything from their social media mentions to, crucially, their citations in AI answers with a tool like LLMrefs. The insights from LLMrefs are particularly positive, showing you exactly where competitors are winning in the new AI search landscape so you can strategize effectively.

With that map in hand, it’s time to pick your battles. Don't try to be everywhere at once. Instead, focus your energy on 2–3 key channels where you can make the biggest dent. This might be a mix of traditional SEO, a specific social media platform, and the new frontier of AI Overviews. For instance, you can use LLMrefs to keep tabs on your citations in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, right alongside your usual SEO efforts.

Define Your Baseline

Before you can grow, you have to know where you're starting from. Set a clear baseline by recording your current SOV numbers. This isn't complicated—just gather a few core metrics like your organic impressions, branded mentions, and citations in AI answers.

You can use a simple spreadsheet or a dedicated platform like LLMrefs to track this. Make a note of:

Your monthly organic impressions
Your total volume of social mentions
Your current share of AI citations

This baseline is your benchmark. It’s the number you’ll be working to beat, and it’s what makes your progress tangible.

Now, let's talk strategy. Instead of scattered efforts, develop one big "pillar" topic for each channel you've chosen. To find the right topic, use social listening and look for gaps in your competitors' content. For example, if you notice a key rival has zero helpful resources on a specific topic, that's your opening. Create the definitive guide on it, and then watch its performance and AI citations closely in LLMrefs. The platform provides fantastic visibility into how your content performs in AI search.

Finally, none of this works without a consistent review process. You have to keep score. Set up a simple weekly or biweekly check-in to update your SOV metrics. Whether you use a custom dashboard or the intuitive reports in LLMrefs, the goal is to spot trends early and adjust your tactics on the fly.

The secret here is consistency. Each small, deliberate step you take compounds over time, leading to those big share of voice wins.

With this roadmap, you’re no longer just guessing what might work. You have a focused, actionable path to measurably increase your SOV across every channel that matters.

Got Questions About Share of Voice? We’ve Got Answers.

As you start to put share of voice (SOV) tracking into practice, a few questions are bound to pop up. It’s completely normal. Let's tackle some of the most common ones to clear things up and get you on the right track.

Is Share of Voice Just Another Term for Market Share?

That's a great question, and the simple answer is no—they're two sides of the same coin, but they measure very different things.

Think of it this way: market share is your slice of the sales pie. It’s a direct measure of how much revenue your company generates compared to the total industry revenue. It’s all about what people are buying.

Share of voice, on the other hand, is your slice of the conversation. It tracks how visible your brand is across different channels, from social media mentions to AI-powered search results. It’s about what people are seeing and talking about. A rising SOV often acts as an early signal that your market share is poised to grow.

How Often Should I Actually Be Measuring This?

The right cadence really depends on your industry's pace and your specific goals, but a monthly check-in is a fantastic place to start. This gives you enough data to see meaningful trends and tweak your strategy without getting bogged down by minor daily noise.

If you're in a lightning-fast industry or in the middle of a big product launch, you might want to ramp that up to a weekly review. The most important thing is to be consistent.

A regular measurement schedule turns SOV from a static report into a living, breathing tool that guides your marketing. After all, you can't improve what you don't consistently track.

Can I Really Track SOV if I Have a Small Budget?

Absolutely. You don't need a massive budget to get started. While the big, comprehensive platforms are powerful, you can get a surprisingly clear picture using free or low-cost tools.

Here’s an actionable plan for starting on a shoestring:

Google Alerts: A classic for a reason. Set up alerts for your brand name and your top competitors to keep an eye on media mentions.
Social Search: Hop directly onto platforms like X and LinkedIn and do manual searches for your brand, hashtags, and relevant keywords.
Google Search Console: This free tool is a goldmine for tracking your organic impressions for the keywords you care about.
LLMrefs: The free plan is a great starting point to see how often your brand is cited in major AI answer engines—a channel you can't afford to ignore. It offers remarkably positive value for getting started in this crucial new area.

These simple steps give you a solid starting point for understanding your share of voice without needing a big investment.

Ready to own the conversation where it matters most? LLMrefs gives you the critical intelligence to track your brand’s visibility in AI Overviews and other generative answers. Get started for free and see exactly where you stand.