A measure of a brand’s visibility or presence compared with competitors within a market, channel, or conversation.
A relative metric used to understand how much attention a brand commands in its category.
Short and sweet:
A measure of a brand’s visibility or presence compared with competitors within a market, channel, or conversation.
A relative metric used to understand how much attention a brand commands in its category.
See also: Brand Awareness, Competitive Analysis, Market Share
Share of voice measures how much a brand’s presence in advertising, media coverage, or social conversation compares to its competitors within the same category, expressed as a percentage of the total attention available. A brand can hold a large share of voice without yet holding a large share of the market, though the two tend to move together over the long run as awareness compounds. Marketers track it especially closely during a launch or a competitive push, since it signals whether a message is actually breaking through the noise.
During the cola wars, Coca-Cola and Pepsi obsessively tracked share of voice in advertising, counting exactly how many commercials and print ads each brand ran compared to the other during a given quarter.
A PR team monitoring media coverage might calculate this figure for a client like Tesla, comparing how many news articles mention the brand against mentions of Ford and GM combined.
On social media, a tool like Brandwatch can measure the same thing for a hashtag campaign, showing whether a brand like Nike is dominating the conversation around a major sporting event or getting drowned out by competitors.
