A retailer especially needs to constantly be aware of how much the product or the brand is being talked about in the market and what is the real-time share of the market that a brand owns in the market. This information can help the business in improving their product and strategies accordingly. Share of Search is one such tool that has now come up in the retail segment that allows businesses to understand what is the actual share that the business or the brand holds in the market without having to go through tons of paperwork, metrics, and confusing graphs and charts.
What is Share of Search?
As a consumer, the first thing we do when we need to find information about the product that we are interested in buying is to search for the name of the product or service on the internet. Take any search engine like google, for example, the first thing an interested or prospective customer is likely to do when in need of a product or information on a product is to google the name of the product or service. This right here is the most powerful tool to analyze and understand the growing preference for a product or service amongst the consumers in the market. Share of search is an online search metric that helps to understand and measure market share of a specific product or brand amongst its competitors in the same industry in a specific region. This data is easily calculable and is one of the most reliable methods of determining the market presence, brand awareness, and the preference of the customer. According to a 2021 survey, the share of search has a direct correlation with sales which means that when the share of search increases for a specific brand or product, the sales of the product are also very likely to increase. Share of search is also directly proportional to the share of visibility in the market – meaning that more customers are aware and view the product or the brand than the competitors of the same segment.
Share of Voice Evolution
Share of Voice was one of the most used tools to understand the market presence and visibility of the brand in the market. Share of Search is one of the many Share of voice tools. It was calculated by estimating the advertising that a brand spends and the total advertising that has been done in that particular segment over a period of time in the given demographic area. This required the brand or the business to pull up the advertising budget that they have spent for the product or service in a given time and area and then divide the same with the entire advertising budget that has been spent by each competing brand. This approach is no longer viable as there are more methods of spending on ads these days and therefore data is not very realistic. On the other hand, the share of search can estimate the share of the market that the specific brand holds on a real-time basis when compared to its competitors. It helps in understanding what is the current share of searches and how brands can increase the same through specific marketing programs.
