PR Vibes? Share of Voice: Understanding Your Brand’s Reach

Marketing in 2025 isn’t easy; B2B companies have to find a way to cut through the marketplace noise coming from dozens of information channels, generated by reams of competitors and would-be competitors, all coming in at ever-increasing volumes thanks to AI and other emerging tools. Grabbing even two seconds of a target customer’s attention in that environment can be a challenge.

To stand out against this confusing and very loud backdrop, businesses need to understand—and leverage—their influence and ability to capture brand awareness. That means being able to measure “share of voice” (SOV), which, essentially refers to the level of visibility your brand enjoys with the average person in your market versus your competitors.

“Facetime” with your target audience can be coming from any number of areas: digital PR, website ads, social media mentions, sponsorships, trade show booths, website traffic, blogs and columns, media placements, analyst coverage, quotes from your subject matter experts (SMEs), interviews with digital publications, and more. Each building block, however small, contributes to the total amount of awareness your brand has within your market.

And your goal of course is to become as pervasive as possible. Being able to measure SOV can help you understand where your brand can do better on that front: which platforms are doing well for you, and which ones can be improved upon; ROI from specific campaigns; or which of your competitors are breaking through the wall of digital noise more effectively than you are.

Ultimately, knowing your SOV can help you make decisions in terms of where to target your efforts, and how to spend best allocate your resources and marketing budget.

How to Measure Share of Voice

Getting your arms around how much your brand is “seen” in the marketplace likely seems daunting, especially once you start considering all of the different places your brand has a presence, digital and otherwise.

Fortunately, there’s a formula. The basic calculation is simply: (your brand’s activity ÷ total market activity) x 100 = SOV%.

So, to take an example from social media, you could take the total number of your company’s hashtagged mentions (#yourbrand), and divide that by the number of overall market topic mentions (#technologytopic). Let’s say for any given month you have 1,000 mentions, and the general industry hashtag has 5,000; that works out to .2. Multiply that by 100, and you end up with a 20% SOV for that particular area.

Of course, to gather the raw data, you’ll need some kind of social listening tool; there are?dozens of options, both paid and unpaid, for that in the marketplace.

This process can be repeated across each channel, such as media and analyst mentions, SEO and search engine results, and more, with a multiplicity of strategies and tools for building an analytics plan for each. Do a little research, and once you have a clear picture of your brand’s visibility (SOV) across channels, you’re in a much better position to understand where the opportunities are for boosting brand awareness and gaining more customers.

Increasing Your Brand’s Share of Voice

Once you have a good handle on your SOV across channels and have identified any areas of improvement, it’s time to swing into action. Here are a few ways to increase your brand’s share of voice:

• Digital PR: Mentions in trade publications, blogs, newsletters, and other outlets is a key factor in building B2B brand awareness. And once those media mentions are published, make sure you’re sharing them across platforms, with maximum use of hashtags. Consider investing in advertorial—i.e., owned/paid article placement—as well.
• Amplify Customer Reviews, Successes & Testimonials: It’s important to talk up real-world successes for your products and services, and the best way to do that is by?sharing positive customer stories. Try out different formats, like Q&As, articles, videos, webinars and more.
• Improve Your Site’s SEO: Improving your organic search results—i.e., how high up your company appears in Google’s search returns—boils down to a few key pillars. One, ensuring that you have authoritative and trusted content on your site (company blogs, whitepapers and original research all help with this). Two, in any published materials, using the top keywords customers are using to search for products, services, and information in your industry. And three, making sure your site is?optimized?on the back end for SEO.
• Social Media Engagement: If you haven’t found new ways to engage with your followers for at least six months, it’s probably time to?shake up your social media plan. Respond to any comments or activity, explore new platforms, dedicate time to building more followers (which should equal more prospects and customers).
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC): Paid search, banner ads, social media sponsored posts and other commercial advertising can pay off when it comes to awareness you’re your audiences.
• Embrace Thought Leadership & Content Marketing: Your SMEs, be they technical experts or C-level executives, can be your biggest asset when it comes to burnishing a brand’s reputation. Showcase their impressive expertise and insights in columns and blogs, in industry publications, LinkedIn posts, the company blog, webinars, podcasts, with analysts and more!

SOV is a key metric when it comes to guiding your PR, content and social media efforts and measuring the success of your brand awareness efforts. Understanding it and using it effectively should be a priority as you set your marketing agenda for 2025!

Interested in understanding and increasing your brand’s share of voice, and building a brand awareness action plan around any of the bullet points above? We can help! Contact?Calysto?today.