Even if we don’t like pizza, we all like it a little…right?
I can talk with you about why your marketing budget needs to go up, or I can ask you how much pizza you want.
I can talk with you about share of voice, or I can ask you how much pizza you want.

Let’s imagine it’s Sunday night, your friends are over. No one wants to cook, and even though pizza isn’t your favorite thing you all agree it’s easy. So, everyone puts their money together and you order some. Not everyone had the same amount of cash to contribute so everyone gave different percentages. One person paid for 10%, another 1%, another 5%, another 30% and so on. Everyone agreed they would only eat the amount of pizza they could afford to buy.

I wonder, do you think the person who only had enough to pay for 1% only ate 1% of the pizza? Were they still hungry?

1% may have sounded like a good amount but when it got cut out of the whole pizza it was mostly crumbs and a few pieces of cheese. Now because y’all are friends, of course, someone shared from their portion with them. More realistically because you’re all nice people, you probably all shared it equally.

I digress. You’re busy and are asking Liliana, what does this have to do with marketing?
Okay, I’ll be quick. This is the easiest way I have found to quickly explain this marketing concept called “Share of Voice.”

Share of voice is the term marketing strategist use when looking at a market to determine what percentage of the conversation a marketing budget equates to.

For example, if all the advertising message in a city add up to $100,000 a month and you are spending $1,000 a month then your share of voice would be 1%. To be at 10% budget you would have to spend $10,000 a month. So on and so forth, you can do the quick math.

In our pizza example, how satisfying was the 1%? It was decent if you weren’t hungry.
Managing our expectations with a marketing budget come down to this. What percentage are we buying? For years what “they” were spending has been a mystery. Now with so much obtainable data, it is easy to do some quick analysis. Thus, giving you a roadmap as to what you can realistically expect out of the budget you put in. (How much pizza you can expect to eat.)

 

Let’s do a real-world example.
Recently looking at a strong competitor in the medical services industry. Their annual spend in marketing was, well…let’s take a look together.

Here’s the thing. In marketing, your competitors aren’t as nice as your friends with the pizza. They aren’t going to give you their share of voice. (The portion of the pizza they paid for.)

In marketing, expectations should be measured against what you invest and the market conditions, not what you want it to do.

And yet, David killed Goliath without the same level of armor, but he did have enough. He had smooth stones and not a handful of sand.

That secret is this… having enough to make the impact. You may not have the big numbers, but you must have enough to impactful.

 

I leave you with a few questions for homework this month.

1. Do you know the advertising spend in your market? Your industry? Your zip code?
2. Do you know where and how those dollars are being spent?
3. What is your Share of Voice? (Your marketing budget compared to the overall.)
4. What do you want it to be?
5. Do you have the right people in place to help you obtain it?

The most important question is how to make your share of voice (slice of pizza) be significantly more impactful and bigger than it is?

The greatest news of all. You absolutely can make your budget feel larger than life, and we see it happen all the time.

For next time, that is the question we will tackle next time.

For now, anyone want to order pizza?

To your success,

Liliana Grace
Owner Founder L Grace Brands