“You know the old adage out of sight, out of mind?”asks George Leith. “If you think that’s true about your ex-spouse, consider it amplified ten times in regards to your online presence.
“Even if a customer had a positive experience at your business, say, last year, it’s unlikely you will remain top-of-mind for very long. If, however, they’re looking for breakfast and search “best breakfast [city]” and your name pops up, they’ll be brunchin’ in your booth in no time.”
Leith is a vice president at Vendasta, the online monitoring software platform that we use to track client listings and drive market share your way. He joined us in this newsletter to talk about how their visibility scores are compiled, what they mean, and how to use them to grow business.
He’s back this week, this time to delve into Share of Voice.
Share of Voice
Traditionally, Share of Voice was a metric measured by determining how big your share of advertising is compared to your competitors. The definition is now usually broadened to include online visibility in general, including organic search, pay-per-click advertising (PPC) and social media.
“Word of mouth has always been a local business’s most essential marketing asset,” Leith says, “and that hasn’t changed. In fact, now more than ever, a business is what consumers say it is rather than the other way around. They define your business, not you. And word of mouth can spread like wildfire, for better or for worse. It’s like a game of telephone, except instead of whispering in one person’s ear, someone leaves a review for potentially thousands of people to see. So that telephone starts to act more like a megaphone.”
Calculating Share of Voice back in the era of traditional advertising was an imprecise art. The process of trying to identify and monitor all of your competition’s advertising spend seemed an impossible task.
But in the newer arenas of SEO, PPC and social media, there are now ways to calculate Share of Voice in the online arena much more accurately. Vendasta’s tools will do the number-crunching for you, allowing you to concentrate on more drilled-down levels of marketing. Getting a handle on your Share of Voice helps you stay top-of-mind with existing customers and pull in new ones.
The role that your customer plays in defining your business in the market cannot be underestimated. It is particularly critical in social media, whose very is existence is predicated on giving a voice to all.
“Get engaged customers to help spread your Share of Voice.” Leith says. “But make sure you understand how your brand is perceived before requesting input online” in the form of reviews or other feedback mechanisms. “Just ask J.P. Morgan,” Leith continues. The brand asked Twitter to weigh in with questions using the hashtag #AskJPMorgan. Instead of a friendly old mortgage Q&A, the company got peppered with (extremely public) insults. All live. All in real time. Moral of the story? Know what customers think of you if you want them to contribute to growth in your Share of Voice.”
Tracking Share of Voice over time can be an effective marketing tool to identify opportunities for campaigns and other highly targeted efforts. Better yet, you’ll now be in a position to track and measure the success of your initiatives with the same Vendasta capabilities that helped you to identify opportunities in the first place.
“Make sure your competition doesn’t have a better online voice than you do,” Leith says. “If people don’t find you when they search your industry, they’ll find someone else. Don’t fret, though — fixing this problem isn’t nearly as complicated as it appears. With a combination of earned, owned and paid media, you can make sure you’re speaking through a megaphone, not in your library voice.”
