Practical Insights into Share of Voice Calculation

Drawing upon practical insights into share of voice calculation, brands can strategically enhance their visibility, control their market narrative, and effectively drive their overall growth.

Strategic planning and success are dependent on knowing your brand's position among the competition. Among the metrics that are increasingly important is Share of Voice (SOV). Using SOV, you can determine the visibility and prominence of your brand within your target market. Marketers can use the share of voice calculation to determine a brand's relative market position.

Components of Share of Voice

The 4 most common elements contributing to SOV include advertising spend, reach, brand mentions, impressions, and engagement rates.

1. The advertising spend refers to the financial resources allocated to promote a brand, service or product.
2. Reach measures the number of unique individuals exposed to the brand's message.
3. Brand mentions capture how often the brand is being talked about, while impressions measure how often a brand's message is displayed.
4. Finally, engagement rates track how much interaction a brand's message generates.

These 4 components interact to provide an all-encompassing SOV, allowing brands to gauge their visibility and influence within the market.

Traditional Methods of SOV Calculation

Back in the day, traditionally, SOV calculation primarily focused on a brand's advertising spend relative to the total industry's advertising expenditure. This method, however, has its limitations. It primarily captures only the paid media component and ignores other critical factors such as organic reach and audience engagement.

For instance, a brand might have a high SOV based on ad spend, but this might not translate into an equally high level of engagement or brand mentions. This disconnect can often lead to an inaccurate assessment of a brand's actual presence in the market, blindsiding its success.

Modern Approaches to SOV Calculation

With the advent of digital metrics, the share of voice calculation has evolved to encompass various factors that go beyond just ad spending. These digital metrics include social media mentions, online reviews, search engine rankings, and more. The impact of social media and digital marketing on SOV calculation has been substantial.

For example, a local bakery may have a minimal advertising budget compared to a national chain, but it could potentially achieve a high SOV in its local market through effective social media engagement, positive online reviews, and high search engine rankings. This example illustrates how digital metrics have transformed the share of voice calculation, making it more accessible and relevant for all businesses, regardless of their size or budget.

Introduction to AI and Machine Learning in SOV Calculation

The introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning has further revolutionized the share of voice calculation. These technologies allow brands to analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently, providing real-time insights into their SOV.

Take, for instance, Brew - an AI-powered market intelligence platform designed for marketing teams. Brew leverages machine learning to provide insights into SOV, among other key marketing metrics. With Brew, brands can go beyond traditional methods to understand their SOV in the context of a constantly evolving digital landscape. It captures data from numerous digital channels and presents a holistic view of a brand's visibility and influence.

Delving Deeper into Share of Voice Calculation with Brew

As previously highlighted, Brew is a notable AI-powered platform that facilitates SOV calculation. To further elucidate its capabilities, Brew quantifies SOV based on a company's percentage of all activities within the market. Each company's activities are mapped, tallied, and then measured against total market activities.

To illustrate, if a company registers 100 activities out of a total of 1000 in the market, its SOV score is 10%. This calculation method can also be applied across different parameters such as topic, channel, region, etc.

However, it's crucial to remember that when applying different filters to your view on Brew, the activities taken into account for SOV calculations may change. These calculations only encompass activities matching your selected filters. Thus, the 'total market activity' shifts to 'total relevant market activity', and the same adjustment applies to your company's activities.

Beyond Share of Voice: Brew's Engagement Calculation

In addition to SOV, Brew also evaluates engagement, which forms a critical component of the SOV calculation. However, Brew's approach to engagement measurement varies for different channels and is based on distinct metrics for each.

For blogs, PRs, webinars, and events, Brew gauges engagement via web traffic on the webpage linked to the activity. On Twitter, engagement is measured through the number of likes, re-tweets, replies, quoted tweets, and the company's follower count. For LinkedIn, the metrics are the number of reactions, comments, and the company's followers.

Aggregated Benchmark Scoring for Metrics

These metrics are aggregated to form a score for each activity, which is then benchmarked. The benchmark adjusts based on the filters selected in your view. The engagement scores are calculated relative to this benchmark, highlighting their percentage in comparison.

Brew's engagement benchmark is determined based on all the activities in the selected view. This engagement data is refreshed monthly, making all data for the previous month available from the 11th of the current month. To view engagement for a specific time frame, users can use the date filter on the dashboard or select the graph line view to assess how the engagement scores change over time.

Brew's dashboard also offers various dimensions to view engagement scores per company, topic, audience, channel, or vertical. You can choose to view only SOV or engagement vs. SOV, i.e., SOV rates along with engagement rates against the market benchmark for engagement. To compare your company with the market, you can add your engagement and/or SOV scores to the dashboard. You also have the option to organize values by engagement scores (highest to lowest) or by SOV scores.

Implementing SOV Calculation in Marketing Strategies

Understanding SOV is one thing; effectively using the share of voice calculation results in strategic planning is another. The key is to align your SOV with your brand objectives. For instance, if your brand is aiming for market leadership, you should strive for a high SOV in your target market.

However, one must be cautious of common pitfalls when using SOV to guide marketing efforts. A high SOV does not necessarily equate to positive brand perception or increased sales. It is equally important to ensure the quality of the voice shared, i.e., positive brand mentions, high engagement rates, and a strong digital presence.

What’s Next for Brand’s SoV?

In the age of digital marketing, the importance of accurate share of voice calculation cannot be overstated. The role of technology, particularly AI and machine learning, has made SOV calculations more insightful and accurate than ever before.

Marketers are encouraged to leverage these advanced tools and strategies to make informed decisions. As platforms like Brew continue to innovate in this space, businesses have an unprecedented opportunity to better understand and increase their share of voice.

Key Takeaways to Note

Understanding and utilizing the share of voice calculation is essential for modern marketing strategies. By considering traditional metrics, digital measures, and advancements in AI and machine learning, brands can achieve a comprehensive SOV and use this information to guide their strategic decisions.

Brew allows you to gain insights and optimize your marketing strategies, positively impacting your SOV. Leveraging Brew's capabilities, you can make informed decisions to maximize your visibility and achieve a stronger market presence. In essence, by understanding and controlling your share of voice, you command control over the conversation around your brand in the market.