Ever wonder how much of the conversation your brand really owns? That's marketing share of voice (SOV). It's a no-BS metric that measures your brand's visibility against your competitors.
Here's the founder-to-founder take: if your industry is a conversation, SOV is the percentage of that conversation about you. We obsess over it because it's a damn good predictor of where our market share is heading next.
What Marketing Share of Voice Really Means
Let's cut the jargon. For a founder, marketing share of voice is simply how loud your brand is in a very crowded room.
Imagine your industry is a festival. Every competitor is on stage, playing their set. Your SOV is how much of the total noise comes from your stage. Are you the headliner everyone is talking about, or an opening act people can barely hear?
It’s not just about getting noticed; it’s about becoming the default name people recommend. Nailing this is the first real step in building brand awareness that actually drives growth.
A Crystal Ball for Market Share
Truthfully, SOV is not a vanity metric. It’s a shockingly accurate predictor of future revenue. When you consistently grow your share of the conversation today, you almost always see a direct lift in sales tomorrow.
Why? Brands that dominate conversations build familiarity and trust. When a customer is ready to buy, the brand they’ve heard about again and again is the one that pops into their head first. That's why we made a deep dive into SOV a non-negotiable part of our competitor analysis.
The Core Formula Made Simple
At its core, the SOV formula is brutally simple.
(Your Brand’s Metric / Total Market Metric) x 100 = Your Share of Voice %
While market share tracks what people buy, SOV tracks what people talk about—making it the ultimate forward-looking growth metric.
This formula is flexible. You can adapt it to measure visibility across different channels, giving you a practical way to benchmark performance right now.
How We Measure Share of Voice at BillyBuzz
Theory is great, but we live and die by execution. Here’s the exact, scrappy system we use at BillyBuzz to track our own marketing share of voice. We don't have an enterprise budget, so we focus intensely on the two channels that move the needle: Reddit and organic search.
We don't try to measure everything. We zero in on the battlegrounds where we know we can win.
Our Two-Pronged SOV Strategy
For us, it's about owning the conversation in two key areas. We need to be the go-to answer for founders looking for Reddit monitoring, and we have to show up when they search on Google.
To do that, we split our measurement into two categories, each with its own tool.
Social SOV (Reddit): This is our home turf. We use our own dog food, BillyBuzz, to monitor mentions of our brand, our competitors, and problem-based keywords across dozens of relevant subreddits. This gives us a real-time pulse on the conversation where our ideal customers seek advice.
SEO SOV (Organic Search): This is about long-term authority. We use Ahrefs to track our visibility for a curated list of non-branded keywords against a defined set of competitors. It tells us what percentage of organic traffic we're capturing for topics that matter.
Here’s a look at our BillyBuzz dashboard, which gives us a live feed of every relevant mention as it happens.
The dashboard instantly flags new conversations, allowing us to jump in while the topic is still hot. This real-time capability is absolutely crucial for maximizing our social share of voice on a fast-moving platform like Reddit.
Defining the Competitive Landscape
Before you can measure anything, you have to know who you're up against. Our competitive set isn't just a simple list of companies with similar features—we think about it in two distinct tiers.
- Direct Competitors: These are the other tools built specifically for Reddit monitoring. We track their brand names religiously in BillyBuzz to see where they pop up and in what context.
- Indirect Competitors & Alternatives: This is a broader category. It includes general social listening tools (like Brand24 or Mention) that users might consider. For SEO, this also includes blogs and publications that rank for our target keywords, even if they don't sell a competing product.
This two-tiered view keeps us from getting distracted by industry giants while still keeping an eye on the entire conversation around the problems we solve.
The Founder-Friendly SOV Dashboard
We don’t use complex BI tools. All our data lives in a simple Google Sheet. It pulls data from our two main sources and calculates our blended share of voice.
Key Takeaway: You don't need expensive software to get started. A well-organized spreadsheet that combines data from a few targeted tools is more than enough to create an actionable SOV dashboard.
Here's a simplified look at the columns in our tracking sheet:
| Metric | Our Brand (BillyBuzz) | Competitor A | Competitor B | Total Market | Our SOV % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reddit Mentions (Monthly) | 150 | 75 | 45 | 270 | 55.6% |
| SEO Visibility Score | 22% | 18% | 10% | 50% | 44.0% |
The Reddit Mentions are pulled directly from our BillyBuzz alerts. We're simply counting every mention of our brand versus our direct competitors in our target subreddits.
The SEO Visibility Score comes straight from Ahrefs' rank tracking feature. It calculates the percentage of all possible clicks from our tracked keywords that go to our site versus our competitors'.
By updating this simple sheet weekly, we get a clear, concise picture of whether our voice is growing or shrinking in the places that matter most. It’s not about having perfect data; it’s about having a consistent, directional metric that guides our marketing decisions.
Calculating SOV Across Paid, Earned, and Owned Channels
Marketing share of voice isn’t just one number. Think of it as a portfolio across paid, earned, and owned channels. To get a real sense of your brand's visibility, you have to look at how you're performing in each arena.
You can't just count up all your brand mentions and call it a day, either. Each channel requires its own lens. Measuring SOV in an ad auction is completely different from tracking your presence in organic search results. The key is using the right metric for the right context.
Paid Media SOV: The Impression Share Formula
For paid channels like Google Ads, the cleanest way to measure SOV is with Impression Share. Most ad platforms give you this number right in your dashboard. It tells you the percentage of times your ads were shown out of all the times they could have been shown.
It’s a direct measure of your visibility in the ad auction. An Impression Share of 40% means that for every 10 ad slots you were eligible for, your ad showed up in four of them. Your competitors snagged the other six.
- Your Metric: Your total ad impressions.
- Total Market Metric: The total eligible impressions for your specific keywords or audience.
- Formula:
(Your Impressions / Total Eligible Impressions) x 100 = Impression Share %
This is a critical health metric for your paid campaigns. If your Impression Share is low, it’s a red flag that you’re losing out on visibility, either because your budget is too low or your ad rank isn't competitive enough.
Earned Media SOV: Tracking the Conversation
Earned media is the organic chatter—what people say about your brand when you're not paying. This covers PR hits, reviews, and social media shoutouts. Here, your goal is to measure your slice of the overall conversation.
This is where a tool like BillyBuzz becomes indispensable for tracking real-time conversations on platforms like Reddit. For other media, you might start with Google Alerts or use a more specialized media monitoring service.
The calculation itself is pretty straightforward:
(Your Brand Mentions / Total Mentions for You + Competitors) x 100 = Earned SOV %
Let's say your brand was mentioned 50 times in relevant subreddits last month. During that same period, your top three competitors were mentioned a combined 150 times. That gives you a total market of 200 mentions. Your earned SOV on Reddit is 25% (50 / 200). Properly understanding the cost-benefit analysis here is key, as strong earned media can deliver incredible returns. We break this down in our guide on measuring social media ROI.
Owned Media SOV: Winning Organic Search
For your blog and website, SOV is all about organic search visibility. How often do you show up on Google when a potential customer is looking for something? This is arguably the most valuable SOV you can build.
To figure this out, you need to track how you and your competitors rank for a specific list of non-branded keywords.
- Define Your Keywords: Start by identifying a core list of 20-50 keywords that your ideal customers are searching for.
- Track Rankings: Use an SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush to monitor your and your competitors' rankings for that keyword set.
- Calculate Traffic Share: These tools can estimate the percentage of total clicks from that group of keywords that each competitor is getting. That percentage is your SEO SOV.
The chart below shows how we approach this at BillyBuzz. We concentrate our efforts on dominating earned media conversations on Reddit and winning owned media through SEO. This creates a powerful, focused strategy.
This approach lets us own the conversations where they matter most, rather than spreading our resources too thin trying to be everywhere at once.
By calculating SOV across these three pillars, you get a much richer, multi-dimensional view of your standing in the market. For a deeper dive into the different methods and nuances, check out this excellent guide on how to calculate Share of Voice in marketing. This complete picture helps you see where you're strong, where you're vulnerable, and where your next big opportunity is waiting.
Finding and Winning Your Niche on Reddit
As a startup, you can't outspend the giants on a global stage. The trick is to outsmart them. Dominate conversations where it matters—in the niche communities where your ideal customers are already hanging out.
For us at BillyBuzz, that secret weapon is Reddit. It’s where real people ask for real advice, making it the perfect battleground to build authority and punch way above your weight in SOV without a massive budget.
This isn’t about spamming links. It’s about surgically identifying the right conversations and providing so much genuine value that you become the go-to answer. Let's break down exactly how we pull this off.
Identifying Your Subreddit Battlegrounds
First, find where your audience lives on Reddit. We prioritize communities where members are actively talking about the problems our product solves.
Here are the core subreddits we monitor constantly:
- r/SaaS: Packed with founders and operators hunting for new tools.
- r/marketing: Marketers talking shop about social listening, competitor analysis, and lead gen.
- r/startups: A massive hub for early-stage founders sharing challenges.
- r/Entrepreneur: Broader focus on business ownership and growth hacking.
Our criteria is simple: Do members frequently ask for tool recommendations or complain about a pain point we can fix? If yes, it goes on our monitoring list in BillyBuzz.
Our Internal BillyBuzz Alert Rules
Once we have our target subreddits, we set up specific alerts in BillyBuzz that act as tripwires for high-intent conversations. This is what lets us scale our presence and systematically grow our marketing share of voice.
Founder-to-Founder Insight: Your most valuable alerts won't be for your own brand name. They’ll be for competitor mentions and problem-based keywords. That's where the real opportunities to steal share of voice are hiding.
Here’s a peek at the actual alert configurations we use internally.
BillyBuzz Reddit Alert Configuration Example
This table shows the exact alert rules we use to monitor Reddit for SOV growth opportunities, including the keywords, sentiment filters, and target subreddits we focus on.
| Alert Name | Keywords Tracked | Target Subreddits | Action Trigger |
|---|---|---|---|
| Competitor Mention | CompetitorA OR CompetitorB |
r/SaaS, r/marketing | Flags any mention of our direct competitors for analysis. |
| Pain Point Alert | "reddit monitoring" OR "track mentions" |
r/startups, r/Entrepreneur | Identifies users actively discussing the problem we solve. |
| Buying Intent | "tool to" OR "looking for a" OR "any recommendations" |
r/SaaS, r/marketing | Catches posts where users are explicitly asking for a solution. |
These alerts feed directly into our Slack, so our team can jump into relevant conversations within minutes—not hours or days. That speed is our single biggest competitive advantage in a place like Reddit. For a complete walkthrough, check out our guide on how to get customers from Reddit.
Battle-Tested Response Templates for Real Value
Showing up is only half the battle. To win SOV, your comments must provide value. We never lead with a sales pitch. We use a framework to help first, sell second.
Template 1: The Helpful Expert (Responding to a Pain Point)
"Great question. Manually tracking Reddit mentions is a huge time sink. We used to do it with spreadsheets and it was a nightmare. A couple of things that helped were [Tip #1] and [Tip #2]. We ended up building a tool, BillyBuzz, to automate this exact process. Might be useful for what you’re trying to do, but either way, those tips should help you get started."
Template 2: The Honest Comparison (Responding to a Competitor Mention)
"I’ve used [Competitor A] before and it’s a solid tool for general social listening. The main difference we found is that it can be a bit noisy for Reddit specifically. If you need hyper-relevant alerts from specific subreddits without the fluff, our tool BillyBuzz is designed just for that. Depends on your focus, but both are good options."
This approach has allowed us to systematically build trust and become a recognized voice in our niche communities. For startups, this focused strategy is everything. By winning these smaller, high-value conversations, you can build the momentum you need to grow.
Interpreting Your Results and Taking Action
Pulling the numbers for your marketing share of voice is just the start. Data without a plan is noise. You have to know what those percentages mean and, more importantly, what you’re going to do about them next week.
This isn’t about building a pretty report. It’s about creating a living playbook that guides your decisions on where to put your limited time and money.
From Data Points to a Strategic Playbook
Think of your SOV report as a map of the competitive battlefield. It shows where you’re winning, where you’re losing, and where unclaimed territory is ripe for the taking. Your job is to turn that map into a plan of attack.
We organize our moves based on a few common scenarios. Each one triggers a specific set of next steps—our internal SOV playbook. This framework gets rid of the guesswork.
Founder-to-Founder Tip: Don't get paralyzed by the numbers. Each month, just pick one key insight from your SOV report and build a single, focused initiative around it. Small, consistent actions really do compound into massive gains over time.
The BillyBuzz SOV Action Playbook
Your game plan depends entirely on what the data shows. Here’s a stripped-down version of the playbook we use at BillyBuzz to turn insights into action.
Scenario 1: Low Share of Voice
This is where most startups begin. Your voice is getting drowned out.
- If SEO SOV is low: This screams "content gap." Your next move is a content gap analysis. Find the high-intent keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t, then build a content plan to go after them.
- If Social SOV is low: You aren't where your customers are. Launch a targeted Reddit engagement campaign. Use a tool like BillyBuzz to get alerts for competitor mentions and relevant keywords. Your goal isn't to sell; it's to jump into conversations and be genuinely helpful.
Scenario 2: High Share of Voice
Nice work. People are talking about you. The game now shifts from fighting for attention to defending your spot.
- If your SOV is high and sentiment is positive: Double down on what’s working. Pinpoint the channels and topics driving the most positive chatter and pour more resources into them. This is also the time to launch a customer advocacy program.
- If your SOV is high but sentiment is negative: Red alert. You have a reputation management problem. Use your monitoring tools to dig into the root cause. Is it a product bug? A support issue? Tackle the problem head-on and be transparent about how you're fixing it.
Scenario 3: Mixed Results
It's common to be strong on one channel but non-existent on another. Time to make a resource allocation decision.
- If SEO SOV is high but Social SOV is low: You have a solid content foundation, but you're not getting it in front of enough people. Your next move is a content amplification push. Start sharing your best-performing articles in relevant subreddits to connect your owned media with earned media buzz.
This playbook isn’t complex, but it’s powerful. It gives you a repeatable process for turning your marketing share of voice data into smart decisions that drive growth.
Your Top Share of Voice Questions, Answered
As a founder, you're always cutting through the noise. Let's tackle the most common questions we hear from other founders, with practical, no-fluff answers.
How Often Should I Be Measuring This?
For a fast-moving startup, tracking SOV monthly is the sweet spot. It's frequent enough to spot trends but not so often you get buried in reporting.
However, for dynamic communities like Reddit, you need to be listening daily. A conversation can blow up in hours. For that, a real-time tool like BillyBuzz is essential. For SEO, on the other hand, a quarterly check-in is fine since it's a long game. The key is consistency.
What's a "Good" Share of Voice to Aim For?
There's no magic number. A great starting point is to aim for your "fair share," where your SOV equals your market share.
But for aggressive growth, you want excess share of voice (ESOV)—where your SOV is noticeably higher than your market share. If you have 5% of the market, shoot for a 10% SOV. It’s a powerful signal that you’re punching above your weight.
That said, if you're trying to win a niche subreddit, your goal changes completely. You’re not just trying to compete; you’re aiming for total domination. In that kind of focused community, a 50%+ SOV is a realistic and powerful goal. You want to be the only solution people recommend.
How Can I Measure SOV When My Budget Is Tight?
You don't need to drop thousands on enterprise software. Your best resource is focus. Pick one or two channels where your customers are and you can make a dent.
Here's a scrappy, budget-friendly plan:
- Go Manual: Set up Google Alerts for your brand and top competitors. Use native search on social platforms. It's grunt work, but it's free.
- Use Freemium SEO Tools: The free versions of Ubersuggest or Ahrefs' Webmaster Tools are perfect for tracking a core group of keywords.
- Find Affordable Monitoring Tools: For a high-signal channel like Reddit, a specialized tool like BillyBuzz is a game-changer. It was built for startups to automate monitoring without needing a massive budget.
The trick is to be strategic. Pick your battleground, measure it meticulously, and win there first.
What's the Difference Between Share of Voice and Market Share?
This is a critical distinction.
- Share of Voice: Your slice of the conversation. A leading indicator.
- Market Share: Your slice of the sales. A lagging indicator.
The magic is in the connection. A brand that consistently keeps its Share of Voice higher than its market share almost always grows its market share over time. Winning the conversation today leads to winning more customers tomorrow.
Ready to stop guessing and start winning the conversation on Reddit? BillyBuzz gives you the real-time alerts and AI-powered insights you need to find customers, track competitors, and dominate your niche. Start your free trial today and see what everyone is talking about.