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Marketing glossary
What is share of voice?
Share of voice shows how much of a defined field of attention your organisation occupies relative to competitors. It can reveal whether you are visible, but it does not tell you whether the attention is positive, relevant or commercially effective.
What share of voice means
The basic formula is:
Share of voice = your measured visibility ÷ total measured market visibility × 100
The visibility unit changes by channel. Paid-media analysis may use impressions or spend. PR may count weighted media mentions. Organic search may estimate visibility from rankings and search demand. Social monitoring may count relevant brand mentions.
Every result needs boundaries: which competitors, keywords, publications, geography, channel and dates were included? Changing those choices changes the result.
A practical SME example
Five regional law firms collectively receive 200 relevant mentions in monitored business publications during a quarter. One firm receives 30, giving it a 15% share of voice within that deliberately limited dataset.
The firm then examines the mentions. If most concern a data breach or employment dispute involving the firm itself, a higher share is hardly a marketing triumph. If the mentions quote its specialists on issues its target clients value, the visibility may support its brand positioning.
The business should also avoid claiming 15% of “the market”. It measured 15% of the selected publication mentions, not revenue, awareness or demand across every channel.
Why share of voice matters
Used consistently, the metric can:
- benchmark visibility against a stable competitive set;
- show which themes or channels competitors dominate;
- track whether sustained activity increases presence over time;
- identify gaps where the business has credible expertise but little visibility;
- complement direct measures such as enquiries and sales.
It can be especially useful for channels where immediate conversion attribution is incomplete, such as PR and organic social activity. The trend often matters more than one isolated percentage.
Common mistakes
One mistake is comparing incompatible mentions as if they carry equal value. A passing name in a low-relevance article is not equivalent to a detailed recommendation in a publication read by target buyers. Weighting can help, but the method must remain transparent.
Another mistake is choosing a convenient competitor set that flatters the result. Define the commercial market first, then establish a repeatable measurement method. Tool coverage also matters: monitoring software may miss private communities, offline conversations or unindexed publications.
Businesses sometimes chase volume through controversy, generic commentary or irrelevant keywords. Share of voice should reinforce a useful position among the right audience. Pair it with sentiment, message relevance, branded search, qualified traffic and commercial outcomes.
Related guides
Related terms
Is share of voice the same as market share?
No. Share of voice measures a defined form of visibility or conversation. Market share measures a proportion of sales, revenue, customers or another commercial market measure. The two may relate, but they are not interchangeable.
Can share of voice be measured for SEO?
Yes. SEO tools can estimate the share of organic-search visibility across a defined keyword set. Treat it as a model based on selected queries, rankings and expected clicks rather than a complete measure of all search demand.
Who wrote this
Steve Ward.
Steve founded Epitomise in 2017 after UK, international and global marketing leadership roles, most recently as Global CMO of the Vitec Group’s Videocom Division. He works with SME and technology businesses on strategy, positioning and the execution that follows — more about Steve.
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