Turn Share of Voice Growth Into a Strategic Weapon

PR leaders that build brand Share of Voice across paid, earned, and owned media that exceeds actual market share will enable market share growth vs. key competitors.

Analyst Perspective

Use Share of Voice as a Strategic Weapon

Research shows that a brand with a share of voice (SOV) that is greater than its market share will likely gain additional market share. With a greater SOV, opportunity is turned into sales wins and a company can capture a great market share. Excess SOV (eSOV) for small companies is especially important as it creates the conditions to increase market share when sales wins occur against a stronger competitor.

PR leaders are in the driver's seat when it comes to building excess mindshare and measuring the corresponding SOV. The keys to success include understanding your buyer's persona and journey and crafting the right assets activated across all the channels where SOV is measured. Aligning/coordinating with campaigners is key; they focus on buyers, and PR focuses on the other constituents – investors/ shareholders, influencers, media, etc. to keep your brand top of mind.

Our blueprint will enable PR leaders to establish a baseline SOV, identify key audience members and their high-interest topics, and gain C-Suite support for a PR-led program and budget.

Barbara Riedel
Marketing Research Director, Public Relations
SoftwareReviews

Executive Summary

SoftwareReviews Insight
Greater SOV than actual market share is critical to growing market share vs. key competitors. To be effective, PR leaders establish a current SOV baseline in paid, earned, and owned media, and run omnichannel campaigns to grow SOV that exceeds actual market share in order to win share from key competitors.

Why is SOV Important?

SOV directly impacts your brand's position in the marketplace

• Understanding your company's current "awareness."
• Measures how many people know or talk about your company and products.
• Shows how often your company name shows up in online searches in all channels.
• Shows if the audience is reading/listening to your announcements and posts.
• Knowledge of the available SOV and how to gain more.
• Provides a benchmark of your competitor's financial position.
• Can accelerate your growth.
• Give insight into what the audience wants to learn.

Measuring your brand's share of voice helps you see the bigger picture and where your brand fits into it. It adds context to your performance data, allowing you to pinpoint opportunities for growth and improvement.
– Sprout Social Blog, September 1, 2021

SOV and Market Share

Managing SOV has a strategic benefit – improve market share!

What is share of voice?

• Measures the exposure your marketing and advertising has given your company compared to your competitors'.
• Includes mentions in paid, earned, and owned media.

Formula: Total impressions all channels/total available ad impressions = all channels SOV.

What is market share?

• The percentage of a market's total sales earned by one company vs. the market.
• Enables you to set and adjust sales goals.

Formula: Total business revenue/total industry revenue = market share.

Conventionally, SOV was used alongside Peckham's Formula, which, in short, is to set your advertising budget to achieve an SOV at 1.5X what you'd like your market share to be by the end of your company's second year. Simply, by growing your SOV, you'll grow your market share. This was then extended by Binet & Field, who empirically proved that increasing SOV will increase market share when sustained over time.
– Sprout Social Blog, June 24, 2021

Excess SOV (eSOV) Leads to a Rise in Market Share

Excess Share of Voice (eSOV) is an important concept in marketing and media investment planning. The "excess" represents the degree to which your brand's Share of Voice exceeds its share of market. Numerous studies have examined this relationship and consistently found that an excess Share of Voice over share of market is likely to result in brand sales growth.
Source: Marketing IQ International

• SOV and Profits – all things being equal, a brand whose SOV is greater than its market share is more likely to grow.
• Compelling Content – eSOV tends to work much better when built with award-winning creative work.
• Marketing Mix – SOV or eSOV may not be the only explanatory variables in your mix. Analyze all areas, content, channels, etc.
• Product Advantage – SOV and market share calculations may exclude companies (for example Google, Facebook, etc.) who gained early market share through product advantage.

Adapted from LinkedIn

Effective Awareness Campaigns Increase Market Share

Challenger brands need to be 3.5 times more effective

Core Factors

• Small vs. large brand
• Challengers vs. market leaders
• Launch of new brands/product enhancements
• Quality of the content and perceived value of channels used

Key Principals

• Content – must be compelling to truly grow SOV
• Excess SOV (eSOV) – provides faster growth
• New launches or early-stage products – news of value or interest gains greater market share
• Long-game – consistent level of SOV + quality campaigns = stronger brands

Source: Nielsen blog

Case Study

INDUSTRY
SaaS CRM GTM
Platform

SOURCE
Demandbase
TopRank Marketing

How Demandbase Transformed B2B Influencers Into Superhero Story Tellers

Demandbase has been innovating account-based marketing for over 15 years. Now they have gone beyond ABM with a Go-to-Market platform that incorporates AI. The new AI-driven GTM platform points users to in-market accounts and their buying committees. It helps engage across channels with messages that are spot-on for where they are in their buying journey.

Challenges

Demandbase rebranded and launched the evolved ABM solution to solve marketers' longstanding challenges with data silos and spammy marketing messages. The new brand and solution meant an opportunity to break through the hype of the MarTech industry and reach the customers that the new product would help most.

Results

Demandbase hired the external agency TopRank Marketing for a stellar creative hook and a powerful tactical strategy. Within two months of launch, this unique influencer campaign drove superhero results to include the following:

• 8.4M in potential reach via active influencers
• 460+ engagements by industry influencers
• 800% greater page views over the benchmark

Key Results Achieved

An external agency created a stellar creative story and a powerful tactical strategy

Well-crafted content with a compelling storyline, unique creative, and amplification by strategically selected thought leaders

Through custom illustrations, industry influencers were transformed into superheroes

Created investor deck, videos, and sales enablement materials.

Positioned brand as one to watch via targeted messaging and distribution.

Challenges to Growing SOV

Key challenges include a lack of:

Time

• Need time to build SOV
• No baseline SOV or market share
• Limited resources to product assets on a timely basis

Tracking and Knowledge

• No tracking method set-up
• No knowledge of how the industry perceives our company

Budget

• No internal team member has the bandwidth to develop content
• Need to hire external resources
• Need a budget to hire external resources

"We see narrative as the 2022 growth accelerator. It's what wins investor pitches, customers, and top talent. No matter the industry, product, customer type, or size, a company's brand is its single most important asset. Activating and growing it is foundational to businesses achieving their key business targets in 2022 and beyond."
Reva Seth
Shift Communications

Without Strong SOV Sales Growth will Falter

The implications of not building strong brand share of voice are numerous

• Sales has a difficult time winning deals because the company brand is not known, or trusted, so prospects buy from competitors.
• Marketing spend for lead gen fails to deliver ROI if the brand is unknown and brand awareness is low.
• Without sales execution, market share increase is impossible.
• Company name takes more time to explain to prospects and cost of sales increases.
• Retention among existing customers falters as better-known competitors with greater SOV are more appealing.
• Market Share can only be "bought" by discounting, heavy promotion, and dropping prices. Margins suffer as well.

"During recessions, B2B marketers tend to cut their long-term brand marketing first to save on costs...while cutting brand marketing may provide short-term financial relief, it will also hurt their Share of Voice and, therefore, their market share…. In the 2008 recession, brands that… increased their spending to raise their SoV achieved particularly impressive gains in both growth and profit."
LinkedIn blog,
November 17, 2022