Marketers: Stop Giving Share Of Voice So Much Credit

SOV is a deceptive metric that can get in the way of KPIs that drive results more directly.

Many digital advertisers, especially in verticals like consumer packaged goods, use share of voice (SOV) as the only key performance indicator for measuring advertising success.

Audience reach, or SOV, represents the brand’s percentage of available ad inventory; it’s interesting, yes, but not the ultimate goal of a successful campaign. What we as marketers need to know is how our advertising impacts our bottom line.

That being said, social media professionals still rank brand awareness, site traffic, and share of voice as the top three social campaign goals, even above leads generated, conversions, or revenue, according to a 2015 report by Simply Measured and TrustRadius.

In an era where consumers are actively avoiding and blocking ads and CMOs are under increasing pressure to demonstrate results, shouldn’t this be the direct opposite? Shouldn’t performance be the most important KPI for all digital campaigns?

The truth is that SOV doesn’t always align with true performance. From an efficiency standpoint, SOV can be easily manipulated, for example, by increasing bids for all paid search keywords, which can drive up costs, perhaps with no incremental performance to show at all. SOV is a deceptive metric that can get in the way of KPIs that drive results more directly.

Direct-response advertisers have always managed digital campaigns to performance. But advertisers who don’t sell products/services online are particularly susceptible to settling for SOV as their only digital KPI. It’s time for all advertisers to move beyond SOV. We must start optimizing biddable media (search, social, display) to performance, no matter the vertical and even when visualizing end-to-end performance is difficult.

Performance Measurement

When end-to-end measurement is difficult or unavailable, as in verticals like CPG, proxies for performance can be analyzed and incorporated into a measurement framework. Establishing a proper measurement framework will enable you to properly valuate true success to better inform media buying.

For example, for CPG brands without ecommerce, developing a measurement framework starts with an integrated database to manage and report on all relevant performance proxies—including success events like coupon request submission, clicks on retailer buttons like Amazon on product pages, time on site, bounce rate, pages per visit, etc. Some of these metrics, like coupon downloads, indicate clear purchase intent.

Once you’ve established a performance-based measurement framework based on intent, you have a quantifiable blueprint for success customized to your brand, which isn’t merely SOV. Each success element is then custom weighted to create what we call “Orion.” The beauty of Orion is that it’s a composite of various purchase intent indicators. This is particularly useful for branding-focused marketers, including those focused on CPG, because user interactions with their owned assets aren’t always linear. Focusing on a single post-click action or event will not provide a true picture of media effectiveness, but the composite approach of Orion provides a much more relevant measurement based on key business objectives.

It’s critical that paid search campaigns put your brand in front of the right consumers as they seek out information needed to help them move toward purchase. Integrating a site-experience scoring bid strategy not only helps identify the specific keywords that can drive the types of engagements that indicate a higher purchase intent, but it also allows you to increase the efficiency of digital marketing spending with real-time feedback.

Furthermore, advanced success events are now making their way into the composite, including in-store metrics that are bringing CPG advertisers closer to visualizing the direct impact online ads have on the end sale.

A New Approach

Once you create the composite, you can use it to inform smarter media buying—purchasing media based on performance, not SOV.

Audience reach and SOV are important in building brand awareness; digital campaigns should certainly incorporate awareness elements that cast a wide net. But SOV certainly isn’t the only consideration for digital performance, and brands need to stop treating it as the most critical KPI.

When it comes to the last mile—converting consumers that are already aware—brands are better served by optimizing to true performance, which requires rethinking measurement to inform buying.