Want to know how many people talk about your brand vs competitors?
The more shoppers mention your brand, the more likely they are to purchase in the future. Plus, it tells you how effective your awareness campaigns are.
So let's explore share of voice, what it is, and how to make your brand more prominent in the conversation.
Let's dive into what share of voice is and what it measures.
Share of voice (SOV) tells you whether people talk more about your brand or competitors. It's not the percentage of sales. It's the percentage of the conversation that features your brand.
SOV tells you how visible and prominent your company is. A high share of voice means you're dominating conversations in your industry.
For example, the makeup brand Maybelline would compare its SOV against companies like L'Oreal, Lancome, and Estee Lauder. If Maybelline makes up 20% of conversations and website clicks, it would have one-fifth of the consumer attention or SOV.
Share of voice is a key benchmark if you want to shut out competitors and become an industry leader. It also signals that you're winning more sales — or, if you're not currently, you're likely to in the near future.
Read more about how you can use benchmarking throughout your social media strategy.
Share of voice can be measured on any marketing channel. Sometimes, it's measured by PR, searches, or website clicks. But in 2025, it generally applies to social media.
Today, influencers dominate the advertising industry, and attention has shifted from traditional channels such as television, trade publications, and news outlets to social media. In fact, social media is now the world's second largest marketing channel.
These metrics are both used for competitive analysis, but there is a big difference: SOV measures visibility and conversational dominance, while SOM measures your percentage of total industry sales or customers.
Put simply, SOV tracks conversations. SOM tracks sales.
The future impact of these metrics is also different. If your SOV is higher than your market share, your brand is gaining traction and likely to grow.
Here's how SOV affects future sales:
On the other hand, if your SOM is higher than your SOV, you're on a downward trajectory. Your SOM will decline and probably be stolen by companies with more SOV.
The "share of voice rule" suggests that B2C brands every 10% gain in share of voice
increases market share by 0.6 % points per annum,
So overlay them to understand how your brand is performing today and whether growth or decline is in your future.
Clearly, SOV is important for the lion's share of marketing channels. But how relevant is the metric for influencer marketing?
The answer: very important.
When working with influencers, the KPIs are often visibility and awareness. These are central to increasing SOV.
If you know exactly what your brand’s SOV is, the better you understand who knows what about your brand. Accordingly, you can use these insights to better connect with your target audience and improve your next influencer marketing campaign.
Plus, of course, you can see what you need to work on or focus on. Influencer ads give you the opportunity to get a better understanding of the current challenges of the market and the position of your competitors and to draw conclusions.
Let's explore some share of voice metrics for measuring campaign effectiveness.
Awareness and visibility are the metrics to track.
Sound difficult to measure?
It's often easy.
Your share of voice is calculated by dividing a brand metric (such as social media mentions) by the total number in your market or industry. To get the percent, you then multiply that number by 100.
Here's the SOV formula, in short:
So, let's take the number of social media mentions. If you're mentioned 300 times compared to 500 times in the entire market, you have a SOV of 60%, making you the market leader.
Other metrics you can analyse to calculate your SOV are:
This process reveals weaknesses in your overall strategy: Which channels need more attention, especially compared to your competitors?
Things only get tricky when you need to find these very metrics. Typically, you’ll need marketing tools. For example, the analytics tools on social media platforms or a social listening tool like Kolsquare.
Social listening tools use AI to analyse your presence on social media.
They allow you to benchmark your performance with the following share of voice metrics:
A social listening module gives brands a real-time understanding of SOV across social media. Instead of sifting through mentions, the platform gives you a clear view of how often your brand is talked about compared to competitors.
For example, Kolsquare uses this data to measure share of voice. Whether you're launching a new product or refining your messaging, it will act as a rank tracker, telling you how you're performing.
Kolsquare’s share of voice measurement tools identify key influencers who shape discussions, uncover engagement spikes, and compare performance against industry benchmarks. It also detects shifts in sentiment.
Try our free demo anytime and make an appointment with our experts today.
Enough theory. Now, let’s go over the five tips that will help you improve your share of voice.
One way to be socially present is to interact actively on social media. Of course, this means posting regularly and engaging with your audience.
Use a content calendar to prepare content for important dates and strategically rotate content styles. Also, post at times when your audience is most active on each network to ensure that you get the most reach and engagement. You can check audience activity on most social media platforms' analytic tools.
Creating high-quality, shareable content tailored to audience preferences boosts SOV.
Sparking discussions organically grows your social share of voice. Taking an unequivocal stand on a hot-button issue can obviously create buzz, but if you stand behind your brand values, ask questions or request feedback from your audience, you can generate engagement.
You can improve your share of voice by boosting visibility and awareness. These essential marketing metrics can be significantly improved, especially through influencer marketing.
User-generated content (UGC) includes social media posts, reviews, and testimonials created by customers, not brands. These posts are organic, authentic, and highly influential in shaping public perception. The content often features real-life product experiences, making it more relatable and credible than branded messaging.
By encouraging and amplifying UGC, you significantly increase engagement, expand your reach, and boost your share of voice. More UGC also means more social proof.
Here are some of the best ways to inspire UGC:
Post images, GIFs, and videos, as those are usually popular and more likely to be shared. That said, as always, quality over quantity is key, and again, you should match the tone of your target audience.
Respond promptly to your followers' tagged posts, comments, and questions. This will help you build a relationship and increase brand loyalty. Empathy and a touch of humanity will also build a positive image for your brand.
Consider boosting awareness by commenting on viral content. For example, Google shared "when someone adds a last-minute meeting to your Google Calendar" to a TikTok of a dog yelping into a cushion.
Another example is Flo Period Tracker, which added "Idc im telling my kids this is the real Sabrina" to a TikTok of influencer Alix Earle (@alixearle, 2.2m followers, TikTok).
Both videos had millions of views, giving the brands easy visibility.
Determining your share of voice will help you allocate your resources effectively in the long run. If your brand is not present on a particular social media channel, investing in sponsored content or working with appropriate influencers can help increase your Share of Voice.
Encouraging employees to share brand content expands reach and adds authenticity, driving higher engagement rates. But that’s just the start—there are plenty of budget-friendly ways to increase your share of voice without big ad spends.
Below are key examples of brands growing their share of voice through social media.
Skincare brand The Ordinary used influencer partnerships and user-generated content to dominate skincare conversations, reinforce brand transparency, and drive sales.
The Ordinary entered the market in 2016, when good skincare still felt confusing and expensive. Shoppers struggled to discern truth from lies and often felt conned.
The Ordinary's simple packaging and low price points shook up the industry. But in part, it was its influencer marketing that made the products credible.
The brand focused on working with micro-influencers and experts like dermatologists to explain why the products contained certain ingredients.
This made The Ordinary go viral, and today, #theordinary is featured in over 1m Instagram posts.
By 2023, the brand was rated the most popular cosmetics brand on TikTok by Cosmetify. At that point, its hashtag had 3.3 billion views. Many posts are UGC, as a community of skincare fanatics share product reviews.
In 2024, cosmetics giant Estee Lauder bought the company for a whopping $1.7 billion. The Ordinary's TikTok account currently has over 1.7m followers. It even has its own subreddit, r/TheOrdinarySkincare, with over 80,000 followers.
Sustainable scent maker Phlur was founded in 2015. They struggled until 2021, when influencer Chriselle Lim joined the team and changed everything.
Since then, the brand has surged in popularity with smart influencer marketing and social media campaigns. The brand's unique mission and carefully selected ingredients resonated on these channels, where they prefer to collaborate with smaller creators with rising profiles.
As a result, the brand experienced a 400% increase in average monthly searches in 2024 (that's 715,400 searches). Plus, a couple of their fragrances, such as Missing Persons, went viral. And over the last three months, influencers have shared 800 pieces of content about the brand.
Welcome to the retro revival. HMD Global re-released the iconic Nokia 3210 (with new features like 4G and classics like Snake) in Y2K colors, including Scuba Blue and Grunge Black. This inspired warm fuzzy feelings in Gen Z and Millenials who grew up texting and playing Snake during school lunchtimes.
TikTokers are posting unboxing videos, Snake high-score attempts, and "dumbphone detox" challenges. The hashtag has been shared 65,000 times globally in the past six months.
In Q4, Nokia saw positive signs of increasing sales after years of decline.
What can be called "a good share of voice" varies by industry and market. In addition, some markets are difficult to break, especially in areas where consumers prefer reliability over novelty.
However, here's a general breakdown of share of voice percentages:
In sectors like technology and e-commerce, SOV benchmarks typically range from 20% to 40%, while industries like healthcare aim for 15–30%.
In addition, if you have a niche product, you may only expect to dominate 1-5% of share of voice.
For example, Hoka only makes up 0.8% of the sportswear market. As a result, even a share of voice of 10% would be positive for this brand. Plus, they have grown from 0.2% in 2019. Much of that growth has stemmed from community building and influencer marketing. They run an affiliate scheme and often collaborate with micro-influencers.
Visibility and awareness matter across a number of channels, particularly web searches, paid ads, and PR.
Organic search remains a major battleground for SOV. Brands that dominate high-intent keywords capture more website traffic, leads, and conversions. With Google handling billions of searches daily, securing top-ranking positions is critical.
This is called share of search (SOS). Changes in SOS also correlate with changes in market share.
Content velocity also plays a role—companies publishing multiple blog posts per week see significantly higher search SOV than those publishing less frequently.
SEO isn’t the only marketing channel where SOV matters. In email marketing, brands with higher open rates and click-through rates (CTR) secure a stronger presence in inboxes, leading to better engagement and conversions. Think of it as inbox share of voice.
Meanwhile, in PR, businesses that secure consistent press coverage and high-authority backlinks improve both search visibility and brand authority. Across all channels, the goal remains the same—more presence, more recognition, and ultimately, more market share.
PPC share of voice tells you how often your ads appear compared to competitors. It’s all about impression share, which is the percentage of times your ad shows up when it could.
A higher share means more visibility, advertising clicks, and ultimately, more sales.
To boost your PPC SOV, increase your budget, refine your targeting, and improve your Quality Score, Google rewards relevant ads with lower costs and better placements.
Strong ad copy and high click-through rates (CTR) also help you win more impressions without overspending. Keep an eye on your absolute top impression share, which tells you how often you land the #1 spot. Plus, watch your overlap rate, which shows how often competitors’ ads appear alongside yours. These data tells you where your brand stands.
In paid media, Google Ads and Meta’s auction systems favour brands with strong Quality Scores and ad relevance. Winning more PPC share of voice isn’t just about bidding higher. It’s about bidding smarter.
Share of voice is currently focused on social media. But what does the future hold?
Let's explore the emerging SOV trends.
Generative AI is now used in 68% of basic content creation. Brands use AI to analyse trends, personalise messaging, and optimise campaigns in real time.
AI-powered insights help marketers identify gaps in their strategy and adjust swiftly. As competition intensifies, those leveraging AI gain a measurable edge in brand visibility and audience engagement.
Social listening tools with AI capabilities, like Kolsquare, will increasingly become essential for marketers.
Many consumers now use voice assistants, and brands must adapt or lose ground in SOV. Optimising content for voice queries ensures that you remain discoverable as search behaviour shifts.
Short, conversational keywords and structured data improve voice search rankings. Companies that integrate voice strategies early will capture more organic traffic and stay ahead.
Consumers are increasingly making choices based on ethics, and brands with strong values are winning a bigger share of voice. Sustainability, fair trade, and responsible sourcing now influence purchase decisions and brand loyalty.
For instance, in the UK nappy market, eco-friendly brands like Kit & Kin are gaining traction as parents seek biodegradable options over traditional disposable nappies. Similar shifts are happening across industries, where brands with transparent, ethical practices are seeing higher engagement and advocacy.
Companies that communicate their values effectively stand out in competitive markets and strengthen their long-term SOV. But avoid greenwashing — when customers figure out that claims are false, it's an uphill climb to win back their trust.
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, offering a data-driven solution that empowers brands to scale their KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing strategies through authentic partnerships with top creators.
Kolsquare’s advanced technology helps marketing professionals seamlessly identify the best content creators by filtering their content and audience, while also enabling them to build, manage, and optimize campaigns from start to finish. This includes measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors.
With a thriving global community of influencer marketing experts, Kolsquare serves hundreds of customers—including Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, Lush, and Hermès—by leveraging the latest Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning technologies. Our platform taps into an extensive network of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers across 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat.
As a Certified B Corporation, Kolsquare leads the way in promoting Responsible Influence, championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations that inspire positive change.
Since October 2024, Kolsquare has become part of the Team.Blue group, one of the largest private tech companies in Europe, and a leading digital enabler for businesses and entrepreneurs across Europe. Team.Blue brings together over 60 successful brands in web hosting, domains, e-commerce, online compliance, lead generation, application solutions, and social media.
Your monthly dose of exclusive insights, strategies and trends shaping the creator economy. For insiders, by insiders.
.png)
%20(2).webp)
