The digital world is saturated. Standing out from your competitors requires more than just great products or services. It demands strategic visibility. Share of Voice (SOV) is a critical metric that helps marketing and communications pros understand how much of the conversation their brand owns compared to competitors across various channels.
Share of Voice measures your brand’s visibility relative to your competitors within a specific market, timeframe, or channel. It’s the percentage of total brand mentions, coverage, or advertising presence that belongs to your company versus the entire competitive field.
Table of Contents
Share of Voice vs Market Share
The Benefits of Tracking Share of Voice
How to Calculate Share of Voice
How to Improve Your Share of Voice
Reporting & Benchmarking Share of Voice
Key Takeaways
- Share of Voice (SOV) measures how much of the conversation your brand owns compared to competitors across PR, social, SEO, and paid media.
- SOV is a leading indicator of market share – brands with a larger voice today often achieve greater market share tomorrow.
- Different channels measure SOV differently: in PR it’s media mentions, in social it’s conversation volume and sentiment, in SEO it’s keyword rankings, and in PPC it’s ad impression share.
- Tracking SOV consistently helps identify opportunities, benchmark against competitors, and uncover risks to brand reputation.
- AI-powered tools like Onclusive can process millions of mentions daily, providing real-time, multi-channel SOV insights that are impossible to capture manually.
This comprehensive guide will walk you through everything you need to know about Share of Voice:
- What it is
- Why it matters
- How to measure it across different channels
- How to improve it to drive meaningful business results
Whether you’re managing social media campaigns, optimizing SEO strategies, or coordinating PR efforts, understanding and leveraging SOV will give you the competitive edge you need.
What is Share of Voice?
Share of Voice is a visibility and brand dominance metric. It shows how much of the total conversation, coverage, or advertising space your brand captures compared to competitors. In other words, it answers the question: “Out of all the mentions, impressions, or coverage in our market, what percentage belongs to us?”
In digital marketing, SOV applies across multiple channels and contexts:
- PR and earned media: it shows your share of news coverage and editorial mentions.
- Social media: it measures how often your brand is mentioned versus competitors.
- Paid advertising: it reflects your ad impressions relative to total available impressions.
- SEO: it indicates your visibility in search results for relevant keywords.
The beauty of Share of Voice lies in its versatility. It provides a standardized way to measure brand presence across different channels. This gives you a holistic view of your performance. Unlike engagement rates or click-through rates, which measure interaction quality, SOV focuses on presence and visibility. This makes it an excellent indicator of brand awareness and market positioning.
Share of Voice vs Market Share
While Share of Voice (SOV) and Market Share are connected, they measure very different outcomes. Market Share represents actual sales performance – your company’s percentage of total category sales. It reflects revenue and competitive dominance in the marketplace.
Share of Voice, by contrast, measures visibility and presence. It shows how much of the conversation your brand commands compared to competitors across PR, social, SEO, and paid media.
The relationship between the two is strategic. A brand with high SOV but lower market share is often investing heavily in awareness campaigns to capture future customers. Conversely, a brand with strong market share but declining SOV may be at risk of losing ground to more vocal competitors who are shaping the narrative.
Why Share of Voice Matters
SOV is powerful because it helps predict future market share. Research from Nielsen has shown that for every 10% excess in Share of Voice (eSOV) (when a brand’s voice is higher than its market share) companies typically see an average 0.5% annual increase in market share. This proves that visibility today often translates into growth tomorrow.
At Onclusive, we see this dynamic play out daily. Our platform processes more than 28 million brand mentions each day, giving us a uniquely data-driven perspective on how voice translates into influence and impact. Brands that monitor and optimise their SOV gain not only more visibility, but also a measurable competitive advantage.
The Benefits of Tracking Share of Voice
- Builds brand authority and trust: Consistent visibility across media and digital channels positions your brand as a leader.
- Reveals marketing effectiveness: Rising SOV across PR, SEO, and social indicates campaigns are aligned and delivering results.
- Predicts business growth: Brands that maintain SOV above their market share typically expand, while those with declining SOV often contract.
- Uncovers opportunities and risks: Analysis highlights competitor strengths, untapped channels, and potential threats.
- Enables competitive benchmarking: Regular monitoring provides real-time intelligence on market dynamics and competitor activity.
How to Calculate Share of Voice
The basic Share of Voice formula is straightforward:
Share of Voice = (Your Brand Metrics / Total Market Metrics) × 100
However, the specific metrics vary by channel and objective. Here’s how to calculate SOV for different channels:
Social Media: Count brand mentions, hashtag usage, or reach across platforms, then divide by total mentions of all competitors in your analysis.
PR and Earned Media: Count media mentions, coverage volume, or estimated reach from news articles, blogs, and editorial content.
Paid Advertising: Use impression share data from platforms like Google Ads, which shows your impressions as a percentage of total available impressions for your target keywords.
SEO: Measure keyword visibility by tracking rankings for target keywords and calculating the percentage of total search visibility you capture versus competitors.
The key is maintaining consistency in your measurement approach and timeframes. Whether you’re measuring weekly, monthly, or quarterly, ensure you’re comparing like-for-like data across all competitors and channels.
Channel-by-Channel Breakdown
Here’s a quick comparison of how Share of Voice is measured across different channels.
| Channel | What It Measures | How It’s Calculated | Tools / Best Practices |
| PR & Media | Share of media coverage compared to competitors | % of total mentions in news, blogs, and online publications | Media monitoring platforms like Onclusive track volume, reach, sentiment |
| Social Media | Share of conversations and engagement vs. competitors | % of brand mentions, comments, shares, and engagement across platforms | Social listening tools such as Onclusive Social measure volume, sentiment, trend shifts |
| SEO (Search) | Share of visibility in search results for target keywords | % of keyword rankings and traffic compared to competitors | SEO tools (SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Search Console); track keyword rankings and CTR |
| Paid Media / PPC | Share of paid ad presence vs. competitors | % of ad impressions or clicks relative to total available | Google Ads, social ad managers; track impression share and competitive benchmarks |
PR & Earned Media Share of Voice
PR Share of Voice measures your brand’s presence in news coverage, editorial content, and earned media compared to competitors.
Key Metrics: Number of mentions, estimated reach, publication authority, and sentiment. Weight mentions by publication quality and audience relevance, not just volume.
Professional Tools: Onclusive’s robust media monitoring platform provides comprehensive monitoring, sentiment analysis, and detailed SOV analytics. With over 28 million mentions captured across print, online, and broadcast channels every day, it offers exhaustive content coverage.
Strategic Applications:
- Use PR SOV to measure the impact of your campaigns, identify key journalists and publications, and track competitor activities.
- Monitor SOV around key events, product launches, or crisis situations.
Social Media Share of Voice
Social media SOV measures how much of the conversation you own across all social platforms – whether it’s conversations about your industry, products, or brand topics.
Key Metrics: Brand mentions, hashtag usage, reach, impressions, and engagement. Don’t forget that positive sentiment mentions carry more weight than negative ones.
Essential Tools: Onclusive Social offers market-leading social listening capabilities. With sentiment analysis, competitor benchmarking, and robust AI-powered analytics, you have access to the real-time insights you need at the touch of a button.
Strategic Applications:
- Use social media SOV to benchmark against competitors, monitor campaign performance in real-time, and identify trending topics or conversations.
- Track SOV before, during, and after major campaigns to measure impact.
Paid Advertising (PPC) Share of Voice
PPC Share of Voice is sometimes referred to as Impression Share. It measures how often your ads appear compared to the total number of times they could have appeared for your target keywords.
Measurement Method: Google Ads provides Impression Share data directly in your account. It shows the percentage of impressions you received out of the total you were eligible for. This metric is available at campaign, ad group, and keyword levels.
Strategic Value: Impression Share helps optimize bidding strategies and budget allocation. Low impression share might indicate insufficient bids or budget constraints. High impression share suggests strong competitive positioning.
Optimization Opportunities: If your impression share is low due to budget constraints, consider reallocating spend from lower-performing keywords. If it’s due to ad rank, focus on improving Quality Score through better ad relevance and landing page experience.
SEO Share of Voice
SEO Share of Voice measures your visibility in search results for keywords relevant to your business compared to competitors.
Measurement Approach:
- Track keyword rankings across your target keyword set.
- Then calculate the percentage of total search visibility you capture.
- This means you need to analyze both ranking positions and search volumes.
Recommended Tools:
- Ahrefs provides comprehensive keyword tracking with competitor analysis and visibility metrics.
- SEMrush offers similar functionality with additional competitive intelligence features.
- Google Search Console provides first-party data on your actual search performance.
Strategic Focus:
- Monitor SOV for high-intent commercial keywords as well as informational terms that drive top-of-funnel awareness.
- Track trends over time to identify whether your SEO efforts are gaining or losing ground against competitors.
AI Tools for Share of Voice
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how we measure and analyze Share of Voice, making it more accurate and actionable than ever before.
AI-Powered Capabilities: Market-leading tools like Onclusive use AI to automatically categorize mentions, detect sentiment nuances, predict crises, and identify trending topics.
Advanced Analytics: AI-powered tools can process vast amounts of unstructured data from social media, news sites, and forums to provide real-time SOV insights. They can identify context, detect sarcasm, and understand industry-specific terminology that traditional keyword-based tools might miss.
Automation Benefits: AI-driven SOV tools can automatically generate reports, send alerts when SOV changes significantly, and provide competitive intelligence without manual monitoring. This allows PR and marketing teams to focus on strategy rather than manual data collection.
How to Improve Your Share of Voice
Increasing your Share of Voice requires a coordinated approach across multiple channels and consistent execution over time.
Strengthen SEO Foundation:
- Develop content strategies that target both head terms and long-tail keywords in your industry.
- Invest in link-building to improve domain authority and search visibility.
- Create pillar pages and topic clusters on your website to establish topical authority.
Amplify Social Engagement:
- Increase posting frequency and engagement quality across social platforms.
- Partner with industry influencers and thought leaders to expand your reach.
- Encourage user-generated content and employee advocacy to multiply your brand’s voice.
Build Strategic PR Relationships:
- Develop relationships with key journalists, bloggers, and industry publications.
- Create newsworthy content through original research, expert commentary, and thought leadership.
- Respond quickly to industry news and trends with expert perspectives.
Optimize Paid Media Strategy:
- Increase budget allocation to high-performing channels and keywords.
- Improve ad quality and relevance to boost impression share.
- Expand into new platforms or ad formats where competitors have less presence.
Leverage Employee Advocacy:
- Train employees to become brand ambassadors on social media and in industry discussions.
- Their authentic voices can significantly amplify your SOV, especially on platforms like LinkedIn.
Create Consistent, Quality Content:
- Develop a content calendar that ensures regular, valuable content across all channels.
- Focus on topics that generate discussion and engagement, not just promotion.
Reporting & Benchmarking Share of Voice
Effective SOV reporting transforms raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions.
Dashboard Creation:
- Build comprehensive dashboards that display SOV across all channels in one view.
- Include trend lines, competitor comparisons, and alerts for significant changes.
- Tools like Onclusive can integrate data from multiple sources in real-time.
Segmentation Strategy:
- Break down SOV data by channel, geography, product line, or campaign to identify specific areas of strength and weakness.
- This granular analysis helps allocate resources more effectively.
Stakeholder Communication:
- Create executive summaries that highlight key SOV trends and their business implications.
- Use visualizations to show competitive positioning and progress toward strategic goals.
- Include specific recommendations for improvement.
Benchmark Development:
- Establish baseline SOV metrics for each channel and set realistic improvement targets.
- Compare performance against industry standards and top competitors to stay clear on your market position.
Common Pitfalls & Misconceptions
Avoid these common mistakes when measuring and analyzing Share of Voice:
Focusing only on volume: This pitfall occurs when brands track the number of mentions without analysing sentiment or context. Volume alone can be misleading if most of the conversation is negative.
Ignoring channel differences: Each channel calculates SOV differently, and failing to account for this can distort results. For example, PR measures mentions, while SEO measures keyword rankings.
Short-term tracking: Tracking SOV over only a few weeks or months misses longer-term trends. Sustainable insights require consistent monitoring over time.
Benchmarking against the wrong competitors: Comparing yourself to irrelevant or mismatched competitors produces unhelpful insights. Accurate benchmarking requires choosing peers with similar audiences and objectives.
Over-reliance on automated sentiment: Automated sentiment analysis can misclassify sarcasm, irony, or cultural nuances. Manual review or advanced AI models are often needed to ensure accuracy.
Conclusion
Share of Voice is more than just a marketing metric – it’s a lens into your competitive position. By tracking how visible your brand is across PR, social, SEO, and paid media, you can understand not only where you stand today but also where you’re heading tomorrow.
The real value comes from consistency. Monitoring SOV over time gives you early warning signs when competitors are gaining ground, highlights which campaigns are resonating, and shows whether your investment in brand visibility is paying off.
At Onclusive, we help communications and marketing teams turn SOV data into actionable insight. By combining global media monitoring with AI-powered analytics, we provide the intelligence brands need to strengthen reputation, outpace competitors, and grow with confidence.
Book a demo today to see how Onclusive can help you measure, benchmark, and improve your Share of Voice.