How much does your brand stand out in the market? Understanding your share of voice (SOV) is directly connected to your success as a brand not only presently, but in the future.
We will break down some key intel relating to share of voice including:
- Defining what share of voice is
- The financial impact of growing share of voice
- Strategies to boost your SOV
And share of voice is critical, of course, because:
- 57% of consumers will increase their spending based on their connection to your brand, and 76% will buy from places they know vs a competitor.
- 62% of consumers share online deals with friends, exposing your brand to an even broader audience
- Emotionally connecting with your audience increases your brand awareness; 65% of consumers shared that being emotionally connected to a brand made them feel like the company cared.
Share of voice reveals how much is being said about your brand, when it’s being said and what is being said. This is critical to knowing where your brand stands in the grand scheme of things and where it’s potentially headed.
For example, the mentions captured (below) for this top CPG company are significant, with potential impressions showing how far these posts will likely travel.
If it’s all good news making the rounds, this is great. And as we explore the conversation, we see most consumers are discussing how this brand’s foods are made. Their cheeses are looked upon favorably, but their condiments are frowned upon for the high sugar content. It’s a virtual cornucopia of food-based intel to inform messaging and address concerns or further amplify kudos.
Any brand’s share of voice can contain mixed emotion, so it’s important to understand what’s beneath the surface. But let’s back it up for second to define what share of voice is, specifically.
What is Share of Voice?
Share of voice reveals the volume of conversation your brand is winning in its category and helps flesh out your understanding of where you are currently in the market, and where you could potentially be. By tracking online brand mentions, campaigns and brand perception it gives you intel on how to increase brand awareness. It offers ways to benchmark your successes and challenges. Share of voice reveals:
- Consumer awareness of your brand.
- How often you’re mentioned online and on which social sites.
- Volume of consumer conversation over time.
- How your brand compares to competitors.
- How your brand fairs by physical location (or consumers and stores).
- Key demographic consumer intel, such as professions, gender, age, interests, etc
- Brand mentions in the medi
Additionally, using social listening, you can discover unexpected information and financial opportunities.
Identifying Financial Opportunities
Tracking your share of voice helps pinpoint financial opportunities. For example, perhaps another brand’s customers wish they would offer a monk fruit sweetened iced coffee, but your rival isn’t responding. This gives you the opportunity to meet unmet needs and win over your competitors’ fans. And this action creates authentic connections by simply giving consumers what they wanted, when they wanted it. When customers feel connected to brands, 57% of consumers will increase their spending with that brand – and 76% will buy from these exceptional listeners over a competitor.
Using social listening is how savvy brands pinpoint consumer wants, needs and wishes. For example, further exploring our CPG brand, by applying a personal narrative theme, we learn a good bit about its consumers. Under ‘I wish,” consumers are unhappy with the price point of this brand’s cheese, and also don’t love the mayo. On the ‘I need’ and ‘want’ spectrum, we see all sorts of love for their boxed dinner:
A competitor might look at this and aggressively market their lower-priced items, targeting these specific cheese-seeking consumers. Or they may come up with their own line of boxed dinners to compete for that product love. By understanding the competitive landscape and how consumers view you and your competitors’ offerings, you can spot areas to work on, and find ideas to tempt even the most loyal of your rival’s consumer base. This grows your market share – and your wallet!
Tracking your share of voice shows consumers that you know them and are actively listening to their online discussions – and taking action. This builds stronger consumer connections, especially on the emotional level. And today consumers make decisions emotionally It affects everything from what they purchase in-the-moment to which brands they support long-term.
Strategies to Boost Your SOV
So how do you increase awareness of your brand and boost your SOV? Social listening tools can help your brand connect with consumers in an authentic manner by discovering what’s important to them. These insights provide actionable results that you can then use along with these social media brand boosting strategies:
Be active on social media:
Do you know where your audience is? And how strong is your share of voice on these popular channels? Once you identify this, you can begin have conversations with consumers in the right places. 83.3% internet users are actively using social media, but where is often a mystery. So, if you’re not actively posting in the right place, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to increase your share of voice. Not to mention, you’re wasting lots of time!
Also, you need to be active so you’re not forgotten. If you’re only posting once per week or just posting at random times with no set schedule, you’re not being seen. There are millions of active users sharing content and engaging every day. And you want them sharing your content as well! 62% of consumers share online deals with friends, exposing your brand to a broader audience. Show up consistently to cut through the noise, get seen and get that well thought-out content shared.
Engage your audience:
It’s not just about sharing content though – you also need to engage. What are consumers saying? Are they discussing something about your brand that they dislike? You can take these detractors and turn them into loyal fans by simply showing empathy and discussing ways to make something better. Most brands shy away from these conversations and it’s a mistake.
Engaging goes beyond just posting something each day. You want to listen in and show you care. Authentic engagement is critical in today’s landscape. Whether it’s responding to a disgruntled customer, thanking a consumer for their user generated content (UGC) or simply liking a post of theirs because its relevant and amazing – all of this makes your brand approachable. This makes your brand real and relatable. And with 72% of consumers saying that they share positive brand experiences with 6+ people, that’s a relationship you want to build. Consumer engagement can be worth much more than the ad spend you’d planned for this month.
It’s about them, not you:
Consumers aren’t too interested in seeing ad after ad by your brand about your brand on social media. Instead, they want actionable, value-based content. This can be an article that discusses your industry, or information on trending topics you’re discovering are important to your audience.
Maybe you just made a promise to be more sustainable, so sharing articles and inspiring quotes about this topic may create a deeper conversation with your audience. And this allows you to emotionally connect. 65 percent of people say that being emotionally connected to a brand makes them feel like the company cares. And when consumers trust you, they talk about you and your share of voice increases, as do your sales.
Watch Word Clouds that capture sentiment to inform your understanding. Positive sentiment is indicated by green and conversation volume is indicated by the size of the word. The Favorite thing consumers are saying about the company below relate to its removal of additives and preservatives from the flavor packets. An ad campaign capitalizing on that love is certainly in order, and conversations about it should be happening on the brand’s social media channels:
A News-worthy Focus:
Your share of voice reaches beyond social media however. News media plays a big part in your brand’s reputation. Monitoring it alongside social conversations, enables you to confirm emerging trends in the market. And by tracking the news, you can be alerted to news media mentions of your brand and competitors. Are there major publications talking about you, or a trend or even a key opinion leader (KOL) you could align yourself with for greater exposure? There are many opportunities waiting.
For a consistent increase in share of voice, a brand must track and reassess efforts often. This isn’t a one-time activity, nor is it quarterly. But once you have benchmarked, you can set alerts to let you know when you’re mentioned in news or consumer conversations, or if you have a drop in sentiment. Then you can play data detective and find out what is behind it and get ahead of conversations and opportunities ahead of competitors.
Stay on top of your brand’s share of voice and never guess where it stands in comparison to your competitors, in the eyes of consumers, and in the market as a whole. Reach out for a demo and we’ll show you how!
