Your Next Share of Voice Calculator Is a Spreadsheet

The old share of voice formula—your ad spend versus the total market's—is a relic. If you’re still using that calculation, you're measuring a metric that doesn't reflect how customers find and choose brands today.

Modern share of voice (SOV) is about owning the conversation, not just the ad space.

Why the Old SOV Metric Is Obsolete

The classic SOV formula was born in an era of TV spots and print ads. It was a simple measure of who had the biggest budget. That model is broken because customers now discover, discuss, and decide on brands across dozens of channels your ad budget doesn't touch.

True visibility isn't about who spends the most. It's about who shows up most often where it actually matters.

The New Definition of Visibility

Modern SOV answers a much more important question: "Of all the conversations happening in my market, what percentage does my brand own?"

This isn't just about one channel. It's the entire picture:

• Organic Search: How often do you appear on the first page for critical, non-branded keywords compared to your competitors?
• Social Media: Look at the mentions, hashtags, and comments around your industry. What slice of that pie belongs to you?
• Content & PR: Are relevant blogs, news outlets, and podcasts mentioning you more than your rivals?

This updated approach is a far more accurate predictor of market share because it tracks real influence, not just paid impressions. A better formula for today is: (Your Brand Mentions ÷ Total Market Mentions) × 100.

During the iPhone 12 launch, for instance, a Nielsen report showed Apple captured 48% of the social media conversation, while Samsung held just 27%. That's a massive SOV advantage that goes far beyond ad spend. You can find more analysis like this at business resources like Umbrex.com.

Key Takeaway: Share of voice has evolved from a measure of budget to a measure of presence. It’s about being part of the organic conversation where your customers are.

A competitor might have a smaller ad budget but dominate the conversation on Reddit or rank for a handful of high-intent keywords. A modern share of voice calculator uncovers these strategic gaps that old-school formulas completely miss.

How to Build Your Own SOV Calculator in Google Sheets

You don’t need expensive software to get a handle on your market presence. A simple Google Sheet can be a surprisingly powerful share of voice calculator, giving you the insights you need without the hefty price tag.

The goal is to build something you'll actually use.

Start with a new Google Sheet. Create a tab for your main dashboard, another for raw data input, and separate tabs for each competitor. Keeping the data organized from the start is the secret to making your formulas work without a headache.

The concept of Share of Voice has evolved. It’s no longer just about ad budgets. It’s a mix of organic visibility, social chatter, and brand mentions.

This shift means your calculator has to pull information from different places to paint an accurate picture of where you stand.

Define Your Market and Competitors

Your SOV score is useless in a vacuum. First, define the battlefield. Are you a local business fighting for neighborhood customers, or are you competing nationally? Be honest about your scope.

Next, pick your rivals. Don't just list the obvious industry giants. Pinpoint the 3-5 brands actively fighting for your audience's attention. Who appears again and again for the keywords and hashtags you care about?

Your share of voice calculator is only as good as the competitors you track. Choosing the wrong ones will give you a skewed, useless metric.

Once you know who you're up against, decide what to measure. Don't track everything. Pick a handful of high-impact metrics that reflect visibility in your industry. For a deeper dive, check out our guide on how to calculate share of voice.

Select Your Core Metrics

The "voice" in Share of Voice means different things for a B2B SaaS company versus a local coffee shop. You have to measure where your customers are actually listening.

To get a complete view, you'll need data from various channels. Each one tells a piece of the story.

Here’s a look at the data sources for a well-rounded calculation.

Essential Data Sources for Your Share of Voice Calculation

Pulling from these different areas prevents a skewed view. A competitor might be quiet on social media but dominating organic search—you need to know that.

Here are a few actionable data points to start with:

• Organic Keyword Rankings: Start with a core list of 10-20 high-intent, non-branded keywords. Use a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush to export ranking data for yourself and your competitors.
• Branded Search Volume: This is a fantastic proxy for brand recall. It tells you how many people are specifically looking for you. Find this in your Google Search Console or get estimates from keyword research tools.
• Social Media Mentions: Use a social listening tool to count how often your brand and competitors are mentioned on key platforms like X (formerly Twitter) or LinkedIn.
• Specific Hashtag Usage: Is there a hashtag that defines your niche? Tracking its usage is a great way to measure influence within a specific conversation.

Once you've picked your metrics, set up your spreadsheet with columns for each data point, each competitor, and the date. This structure lets you drop in new numbers each month, and your formulas will automatically refresh your SOV dashboard.

Seeing Share of Voice in Action: Real-World Scenarios

Spreadsheet formulas are one thing, but SOV comes alive with real examples. Let's walk through two different businesses—a local coffee shop and a national B2B software company—to show how the data and strategy shift depending on the market.

SOV isn’t just for giants; it’s about owning your corner of the conversation.

Case Study 1: The Local Coffee Shop

Meet "The Daily Grind," a small coffee shop with three locations. Their war is fought on a few city blocks against two main rivals: "Artisan Beans" and "Corner Perk." Their goal is to dominate the local digital scene.

They track a handful of specific metrics in their Google Sheet:

• Local SEO Rankings: How visible are they for searches like "best coffee downtown" or "coffee shop near me"?
• Instagram Presence: Are people using their branded hashtag, #DailyGrind, more than their competitors' tags?
• Local Directory Mentions: Are they showing up on Yelp and local food blogs?

After crunching the numbers, The Daily Grind’s calculator shows they have a 45% overall SOV in their market. While Artisan Beans is ahead on SEO rankings, The Daily Grind owns a whopping 70% of the Instagram hashtag conversation. This insight tells them their community-building is paying off, and they should double-down on social media while making a few tweaks to their local SEO.

A smaller brand can't win on every front. It can pick a channel, go all-in, and build a powerful moat that competitors can't easily cross.

Case Study 2: The B2B SaaS Company

Now, let's pivot to "SyncUp," a project management SaaS tool competing nationally against behemoths like Asana and Monday.com. Their customers are reading industry blogs and searching for specific business tools.

SyncUp's share of voice calculator tracks a different set of signals:

• Organic Keyword Visibility: Where do they rank for keywords like "project management software for remote teams"?
• Industry Blog Mentions: How often do top tech publications mention SyncUp in reviews versus the big guys?
• Paid Ad Visibility: The closest metric is impression share, which measures visibility on the search results page.

The results show SyncUp's overall SOV is a sobering 8%. But the details tell the real story. They discover that while Asana dominates broad keywords, SyncUp has a surprisingly strong 30% SOV for a specific long-tail keyword: "agile tool for software startups."

That one data point illuminates their entire strategy. Instead of burning their budget trying to fight an unwinnable war on broad terms, they can focus their content and SEO to own this high-value niche. For a company like SyncUp, dominating a niche isn't just a good strategy; it's the only way to win.

Turning Your SOV Numbers Into an Actionable Strategy

Getting a percentage from your share of voice calculator isn't the finish line; it's the starting gun. That number is just data. The value is in the story it tells and the moves you make because of it.

A high SOV in the wrong conversation is a waste of money.

Think of your SOV report as a battle map. It shows where you’re winning, where you’re losing, and where your competitors have left a flank completely exposed.

This is how you move from measuring to maneuvering in your market.

Analyze the Story Behind the Numbers

Before you change anything, diagnose where you stand. A single SOV number can hide critical truths. You have to slice the data to see the full picture.

Start by asking these diagnostic questions:

• Channel Imbalance: Where is our SOV highest and lowest? A 60% SOV in organic search paired with a 5% SOV on LinkedIn points to a massive resource or strategy gap.
• Competitor Strengths: Which specific channels or keyword sets are our rivals winning? Pinpoint their strongholds to identify their vulnerabilities.
• Market Gaps: Are there any conversations where no one has a strong voice? This is an untapped opportunity waiting for you to claim it.

This detailed breakdown is the only way to build a smart strategy. Creating a comprehensive share of voice report is a great way to visualize these trends over time and spot patterns.

Mini Case Study: Finding a Strategic Opening

Imagine a project management software company finds their overall SOV is a dismal 12%. But when they dig deeper, they spot something interesting. While competitors own the general "project management" conversation, their own SOV for the niche term "software for creative agencies" is at 45%.

This is the actionable insight. Instead of fighting a losing battle on broad terms, they can double down on their niche. Their strategy immediately shifts to creating targeted content, case studies, and ad campaigns aimed squarely at creative agencies.

Create Your Action Plan

With a clear diagnosis, you can outline specific actions. Your goal isn't just to "increase SOV." It's to increase it where it will actually move the needle.

Here’s what that looks like:

• Exploit Competitor Weaknesses. If your main rival has terrible visibility on a platform where your audience hangs out, reallocate resources to own that channel.
• Fill the Content Gap. Did your analysis reveal high-intent keywords that your competitors are ignoring? Launch a content blitz—blog posts, webinars, templates—that directly answers those customer questions.
• Defend Your Strongholds. If you already have a high SOV for critical keywords, your job is to protect that turf. Set up monitoring to watch for new competitors and keep investing in content that reinforces your authority.

Your share of voice calculator is a compass. It tells you where you are and helps you chart a course. By turning numbers into a focused strategy, you transform a metric into a powerful tool for growth. When evaluating your digital investments, a tool like a DXP ROI calculator can help measure the return on these strategic moves.

That manual spreadsheet has a shelf life.

You'll know you've hit its limits when:

• Your keyword list grows past 20-30 terms.
• You're tracking more than 3-4 competitors.
• You're juggling different regions or product lines.

The real tipping point is when data entry takes more time than analysis. That’s your cue to graduate to an automated tool.

Choosing the Right Tool for the Job

Automating SOV is about matching the tool to what you’re trying to measure. Different platforms track different kinds of "voice."

Brand Monitoring Tools (like Brand24 or Mention) are built to track conversations. They're fantastic for measuring social media mentions, hashtag trends, and PR hits. If your goal is to get a pulse on brand sentiment and public awareness, these tools are your best bet.

SEO Suites (like Ahrefs or Semrush) live and breathe organic search visibility. Their strength is in tracking keyword rankings at scale and estimating organic traffic. If your primary battleground is Google Search, an SEO suite will give you the most relevant data.

Here’s the trade-off: Brand monitoring tools offer incredible breadth across social and news channels. SEO suites provide incredible depth within organic search. Decide which "voice" drives your bottom line before you buy.

Blending Social and Search for a Complete Picture

A truly comprehensive strategy requires understanding both conversational buzz and search visibility. While no single tool perfectly marries these two worlds, you can get clever.

Use one platform as your main SOV calculator and supplement it with data from another. For example, you could use Ahrefs for your core SEO share of voice and pull in high-level social mention data from a tool that offers a decent free plan.

As the market changes, new tools are emerging to track visibility on new channels. To get a sense of how to tackle visibility in AI-driven search, check out our breakdown of the best AI visibility products available today.

The goal is always the same: automate the tedious work so you can spend your time turning numbers into a winning strategy.

Common Share of Voice Questions Answered

Once you have a calculator and a rough strategy, the real-world questions start. Let's tackle the most common ones.

How Often Should I Calculate Share of Voice?

For most companies, calculating SOV monthly is the sweet spot. It’s frequent enough to spot meaningful trends without getting lost in daily noise. This rhythm gives you a reliable baseline to see if your strategy is moving the needle.

But context matters. Sometimes, you need to tighten that loop.

• During a major product launch: Track weekly to get an immediate read on market reception.
• When a new marketing campaign goes live: Monitor weekly to see if you’re cutting through the noise.
• If a competitor makes a big move: Switch to daily or weekly tracking to understand the immediate impact.

What Is a Good Share of Voice Percentage?

The answer is always: it's relative. There is no universal "good" SOV number. What matters is how you stack up against your direct competitors.

In a crowded market dominated by two giants, grabbing even 10% SOV could be a massive win. In a niche market with a few small players, you might need 30% or more to establish yourself as the leader.

Forget about magic numbers. Benchmark against your direct competition and focus on steady, quarter-over-quarter growth. The goal is to become the leader or secure a stable spot in the top three for the conversations that matter most.

Can I Calculate SOV for a Specific Product?

Absolutely. In fact, you should. Calculating SOV at the product or service level is a powerful, granular strategy. It provides surgical insights into what's driving revenue.

Instead of just tracking your company name, aim your share of voice calculator at keywords and mentions related to a specific offering. For example, a SaaS company would track search visibility for a term like "CRM for small businesses."

This approach reveals which products are gaining traction and shows you exactly where your next marketing dollar will have the biggest impact.

Stop guessing where you stand in the AI-driven search landscape. AI SEO Tracker shows you exactly where your brand appears in answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, and more. See your AI share of voice, pinpoint competitor gaps, and get a clear action plan to win high-intent customer prompts. Start tracking your AI visibility today.