In this video Ryan Dohrn, a sales coach, explains the concepts of share of market (SOM) and share of voice (SOV) for media‑selling professionals and any business. He defines SOM as the proportion of total market revenue a company captures, illustrated with realtor and multi‑company examples. He defines SOV as the proportion of advertising exposure a brand receives within a media channel (magazine pages, TV commercials, radio spots), showing how ad size and frequency affect the split. Dohrn emphasizes the typical positive correlation: higher SOV usually drives higher SOM, though the effect takes time and depends on product quality. He provides a local case study—Windsor Jewelers in Augusta, GA—who dominate the market by saturating all advertising channels, demonstrating the SOV‑to‑SOM link. He then advises salespeople to use SOV as a controllable lever in conversations with advertisers, suggesting recommendation‑based selling: increasing a client’s ad spend raises their SOV and pushes competitors’ SOV down, which can be positioned as a strategic advantage. The video ends with motivational remarks and a call‑to‑action to contact him for coaching.
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What's going on, friends and fans? Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach. And this week we're talking share of voice, share of market. Now this particular video is really designed for all of my friends and fans out there in the media business. I get asked about this a lot— share of voice and share of market. They're 2 completely different things, and we want to use them in the sales process. Now any of you that aren't in the media business, before you tune us out, just Recognize this applies to almost any business that's out there, but it's intimate for my friends that are selling advertising out there. Okay, so let's talk about share of market. A company's share of market is typically defined like how much business do you get out of the market compared to others that are in the market? So for example, if there were 2 companies in the market that did the same thing and each one of them occupied, say, 50% of the market, their share of market would be 50%. Now, in a circumstance like a realtor, for example, there might be 100 that are out there. Well, of that 100, say one is selling $2 million and one is selling $200,000. Well, their share of market for the one selling $2 million is going to be higher than the one selling $200,000. Okay, so it depends upon the category of business, the business that you're in. And so share of market is something that I can influence. But not always something that I can control. However, there is a direct relationship between share of voice in a market and share of market that you occupy as a business. Let me explain. Share of voice is something I can help an advertiser or a customer control within the pages of my magazine, within the number of commercials that run on my broadcast airwaves, or whatever the circumstance is. Now, before I confuse everybody any further, let me try to keep this as simple as possible. So don't go down into the comments of the podcast or the video and be like, well, technically, Ryan, okay, technically, friends, I can make this as complicated as you want me to make it. I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible for those out there so we can learn from this. Okay, share of voice. Now, there can be share of voice within the pages of a magazine. There can be share of voice within the number of commercials running on a TV station. You could actually take the entire magazine share of voice, or you could take a particular category within the magazine and you could monitor share of voice there. Let's first talk about share of voice within the pages of a publication or within all the commercials running on a radio or TV station. If there were only 4 advertisers on that TV station or only 4 advertisers in that magazine or newspaper and they each ran the same sized ad, they would split the share of voice 25-25-25-25. All right, now let's just say in in terms of all the pages of the magazine. If this particular person here runs a full-page ad and the rest of these all run half-page ads, their share of voice of a full-page ad is going to be larger. It's sort of like on a TV station. If a particular advertiser buys double the number of commercials, their share of voice is going to be higher. What's interesting is that typically Someone's share of voice in relationship to advertising directly influences their share of market. Typically in most markets, those that advertise the most, those that have the largest share of voice, those folks typically have the largest share of market. All right, let's talk about my particular city here where I live, Augusta, Georgia. There's a great jeweler here named Windsor Jewelers. Windsor runs TV ads, radio ads, cable ads, magazine ads, you name it. They advertise everywhere. Guess what? Number one jeweler in our town. So when you think about— you can use the share of voice up or down to influence your share of market as well. Here's the really cool part that I love to share with advertisers: you can control your share of voice, it directly impacts your share of market, And so because you can control the share of voice, when you buy more ads, you actually push down the share of voice of your competition. If they want to have the same share of voice as you, they need to buy more advertising. That's why I'm so big on recommendation-based selling. So we know 2 main things. Share of market is how much of the market you actually occupy in terms of dollars and cents. Share of voice is how much exposure are you getting within the pages of a magazine, a radio station, TV station? How much exposure do you have throughout the entire industry of a market? Typically, your share of voice impacts your share of market. Typically, your— the higher your share of voice, typically the higher your share of market. Now, it doesn't happen just like that. I mean, obviously it takes some time. But friends, I'd love for you to use this conversation to be able to create a better conversation with your Advertisers and customers on. You can control this. If you want a greater share of market, now, I mean, unless you have a terrible product, I mean, obviously you need to have a comparable product, but if you want a share of market increase, you probably need a share of voice increase. When your share of voice goes up, almost always your share of market grows as well. Friends, never forget, these types of conversations are not easy. You might have to listen to this or watch this a couple of times to wrap your head around it, but my goal is simple: to help you have great conversations with your customers and help you take your sales life to places you only dreamed possible. Never forget, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're the chosen few out there. This is a great job. It's gonna feed your family for a lifetime. Love to come to your office. Love to speak at your national sales meeting. Love to get your team all pumped up To sell more, reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. All right, we'll see you next week.
