Share of Market vs. Share of Voice: A Guide to Sustainable Growth in 2025
Updated January 4, 2026
What's the difference between share of market and share of voice? Think of it this way: share of market is your report card on past sales, while share of voice is a crystal ball predicting your future growth. As we head into 2025 and 2026, where AI-driven search reshapes how customers discover brands, understanding this relationship is no longer just good marketing. It's the core of a sustainable growth strategy. One metric tells you what you've earned; the other tells you how much attention you command right now, setting the stage for tomorrow's revenue.
Understanding the Difference Between Share of Voice and Market Share
Getting these two metrics right is fundamental for any brand. Share of Market (SOM) is the classic, backward looking number. It’s your company's sales as a percentage of total industry sales, giving you a clean snapshot of your historical performance. It's a report card on yesterday's results.
Share of Voice (SOV), on the other hand, is a forward looking indicator of your brand's presence in the market conversation. It measures how visible you are compared to competitors across every channel from social media and paid ads to the critical new frontier: AI search visibility. This now includes getting mentioned in answers from generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews.
Comparing Share of Market vs Share of Voice Metrics
These metrics have completely different strategic jobs. While SOM confirms where you stand today, a higher SOV is a proven predictor of future market share gains. Knowing when to focus on each one is essential. For a full breakdown of the math, our guide on how to do a share of voice calculation gets into the specific formulas.
This table cuts straight to the key differences:
| Metric | Focus & Timeframe | Primary Question Answered | Common Measurements | Strategic Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Share of Market (SOM) | Past Performance (Sales driven, backward looking) | "What percentage of total market sales did we capture?" | Revenue, units sold, customer count | Budgeting, financial reporting, performance review |
| Share of Voice (SOV) | Future Potential (Visibility driven, forward looking) | "How much of the market conversation do we own?" | Ad impressions, brand mentions, keyword rankings, LLM tracking | Growth forecasting, campaign planning, competitive analysis |
This relationship isn't just theoretical; it's backed by decades of data.
According to extensive research from marketing effectiveness experts Les Binet and Peter Field, for every 10% that your Share of Voice exceeds your Share of Market, you can expect approximately 0.5% of market share growth annually.
This rule turns SOV from a simple vanity metric into a powerful lever for driving future revenue. As AI continues to change how people discover brands, tracking your generative SEO and AI driven presence is no longer optional. It's a non negotiable part of mastering your market.
The Proven Link: How Share of Voice Influences Market Share
The connection between how much your brand is discussed and how much it sells is a quantifiable law of growth. Brands that consistently generate more conversation and visibility than their current market footprint are actively building future revenue. This concept is captured by a powerful metric known as Excess Share of Voice (ESOV), which is the difference between your SOV and your SOM. When your SOV is higher than your SOM, you have a positive ESOV, which acts as a powerful predictor of future growth.
Why Excess Share of Voice Is a Leading Growth Indicator
Mental availability precedes physical availability. Before a customer buys your product, they must first think of your brand. A higher SOV ensures your brand is top of mind more often than your competitors, directly influencing purchasing decisions. Think of your market share as your brand's current weight class in a boxing match. Your share of voice is the energy and punch you're throwing. If you're consistently out punching your weight class (positive ESOV), you're positioned to move up. This predictive power applies across all channels, including the emerging field of AI search visibility. For a deeper dive into the specific aspects of creating a memorable brand presence, this guide on defining and building brand voice is a helpful resource.
How to Calculate the Share of Market and Share of Voice Relationship
Calculating and acting on these metrics requires accurate data. The first step is to measure both your SOM and SOV. Then, you can benchmark your ESOV against key competitors to understand your position.
Share of Market (SOM) = Your Company's Sales / Total Market Sales
Share of Voice (SOV) = Your Brand Mentions / Total Industry Mentions
Excess Share of Voice (ESOV) = SOV % – SOM %
A brand with a 15% share of market but only a 10% share of voice has a negative ESOV of 5%. This brand is "underinvesting" in its presence and is highly vulnerable to market share loss. This predictable link empowers marketers to justify investments in brand building and visibility, transforming SOV from a soft metric into a concrete business driver. You can learn how to master share of voice calculation with our detailed guide.
Using AI Search Visibility to Influence Your Share of Market
In 2025 and 2026, the conversation around share of market vs share of voice has been turned on its head by AI powered search. Generative engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews are reshaping how people find brands. These systems synthesize information to deliver a single, concise answer. This makes getting your brand cited in those answers the new frontier of digital marketing. Earning a high AI Share of Voice, your brand’s visibility in AI answers compared to competitors, is one of the most powerful leading indicators of future market share.
The New Competitive Edge in Share of Voice: AI Mentions
Traditional SEO was about winning clicks from a list of blue links. Today, the goal is to win mentions inside a conversational answer. When an AI engine quotes your brand as an authority, it builds immediate trust. This shift demands a new kind of audit. When someone asks an AI about the best solution in your industry, who gets the mention? If it's your competitor, they're winning the first battle for that customer's attention.
Auditing and Improving Your Generative SEO Performance
You can't optimize for AI with random tactics. You need a clear, repeatable workflow that starts with understanding where you stand today. It’s a cycle of auditing key queries, analyzing who the AI cites, and strategically refining your content to become the most logical and authoritative source.
This screenshot from Riff Analytics shows how a platform can visualize your brand’s presence in AI generated answers, giving you an immediate gut check on your visibility.
A dashboard like this connects the dots, clearly showing how your optimization efforts are directly impacting your AI search visibility over time. By systematically making your brand a fixture in AI answers, you're building the authority and top of mind awareness that fuels real growth. To get started, you can learn more in our complete guide to AI search visibility.
Building a Unified Dashboard for Share of Market and Voice Metrics
Tracking your share of market vs share of voice is a start, but siloed data leads to slow decisions. The real goal is to build a single source of truth that connects the dots between your brand’s visibility and its sales performance. A unified growth dashboard pulls these critical metrics into one place, turning abstract percentages into a clear story. It’s not just about reporting numbers. It’s about demonstrating how investments in visibility directly predict future market share.
A Comparison of Tools for Tracking Share of Voice and Market Share
A truly effective dashboard needs a balanced mix of leading and lagging indicators. Leading indicators, like Share of Voice, help you predict what's coming. Lagging indicators, like Share of Market, confirm what has already happened. The objective is to draw a straight line from your visibility efforts to real business outcomes.
| Metric Type | KPI | Purpose in Dashboard | Recommended Tool Stack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leading Indicators | Overall SOV (monthly trend) | Tracks momentum and predicts future SOM changes. | Riff Analytics, Brandwatch |
| Leading Indicators | Channel Specific SOV (AI, Social, Organic) | Identifies which channels are driving visibility growth. | Semrush, Ahrefs, Riff Analytics |
| Leading Indicators | Excess Share of Voice (ESOV) | Measures if SOV is high enough to drive growth. | Calculated Field (SOV% minus SOM%) |
| Lagging Indicators | Share of Market (quarterly trend) | Confirms if visibility efforts are translating to sales. | Internal Sales Data, Industry Reports |
This structure ensures your dashboard can answer the most important strategic questions at a glance. For teams juggling multiple brands, checking out the best AI visibility dashboards can offer great templates for more complex reporting needs.
Visualizing the Connection Between Share of Voice and Market Dominance
If there's one number that deserves the spotlight on your dashboard, it's your Excess Share of Voice (ESOV). A positive ESOV means you're "overinvesting" in your brand's presence relative to its size, a proven strategy for grabbing market share. A negative number is an early warning that your market position is at risk. Visualizing this as a simple gauge or a trend line makes its importance instantly obvious to anyone looking at the dashboard. This is how you prove ROI and justify continued investment in building your brand.
Summary and Final Takeaways
The connection between share of market and share of voice is the foundational principle of sustainable brand growth. SOM tells you where you are, but SOV, and more specifically Excess Share of Voice, tells you where you are going. In an era dominated by generative SEO and AI search visibility, mastering your brand's presence across all conversational channels is non negotiable. By accurately measuring both metrics, setting strategic SOV targets that exceed your market share, and visualizing this data in a unified dashboard, you can turn brand visibility into a predictable engine for market dominance.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between share of market and share of voice?
Share of Market (SOM) measures your company's sales as a percentage of total industry sales; it's a backward looking metric of past performance. Share of Voice (SOV) measures your brand's visibility in the market conversation compared to competitors; it's a forward looking predictor of future growth.
How does AI search visibility affect my overall share of voice?
AI search visibility is a crucial and growing component of total SOV. As users increasingly rely on AI for answers, your brand's presence in those AI generated responses (your AI Share of Voice) becomes essential for discovery. Being cited by LLMs directly contributes to your overall brand visibility and influences future purchasing decisions.
Is it better to have a high share of voice or a high share of market?
While a high SOM reflects past success, a high SOV is a predictor of future success. The ideal state is to achieve an "Excess Share of Voice" (ESOV), where your SOV percentage is higher than your SOM percentage. This positive gap is the proven formula for sustainable market share growth.
How do I calculate Excess Share of Voice (ESOV)?
ESOV is a simple but powerful calculation: ESOV = Your SOV % – Your SOM %. A positive number indicates you are investing enough in your brand's visibility to likely grow your market share, while a negative number warns of a potential decline.
What tools can I use for LLM tracking and measuring AI share of voice?
Tools specifically designed for the new search landscape are essential for measuring your AI presence. Platforms like Riff Analytics provide dashboards for LLM tracking, allowing you to audit how often your brand is cited in AI answers for high value queries compared to your competitors.