Case Study: Measuring hard to track channels
Most marketers face the same challenge: proving the effectiveness of campaigns that don’t fit neatly into attribution models.
OOH. Radio. Local sponsorships. Grassroots activations. All valuable, all hard to measure.
Marketing mix models (MMM) can help, but they require years of historical data that small and mid-sized brands often don’t have. Third-party tools exist, but they’re expensive and often only measure in silos. None of them capture the cumulative impact of a brand’s marketing — especially in competitive markets where your efforts don’t exist in isolation.
That’s where Share of Search (SOS) comes in.
What is Share of Search?
Effectiveness researcher Les Binet has shown that SOS is a credible predictor of market share. It measures the proportion of searches for your brand compared to all category searches over time.
The value of this approach is that it accounts for both sides of the equation:
The positive lift from your marketing
The negative drag from your competitors’ marketing
Unlike many other metrics, SOS gives you a net view of how your brand is performing in-market relative to the competition.
The Challenge: A Local Hospital vs. a National Competitor
We put this into practice with a regional hospital client facing a unique situation.
They had one primary competitor — a national healthcare brand preparing to launch a major campaign in the same market.
As a local institution, our client wasn’t just another business. They were part of the community, with a mission tied directly to local health and well-being.
Their competitor, on the other hand, was largely motivated by adding to a national company’s bottom line.
The question: how could we prove the hospital’s marketing efforts were protecting and growing their share of attention before the national competitor’s campaign hit?
The Approach: Measuring Share of Search
The hospital’s campaign spanned OOH, radio, social, and activations like household door hangers and DJ giveaways.
Individually, each channel had its own metrics. But what mattered most was the combined effect. To measure that, we tracked Share of Search across branded terms.
The results were clear:
+6 percentage points sustained SOS growth
+20% year-over-year growth in branded search volume
Meanwhile, the competitor’s branded search terms declined 12% YoY during the same period
Why This Matters
For this hospital, SOS provided more than just a metric. It proved that their marketing was driving real competitive impact: not only growing their own visibility, but counteracting the activity of a larger, better-funded rival.
It also reinforced the brand’s position as the trusted, community-centered choice in the market. The data backed up the story they already knew to be true: when given a choice, people preferred the hospital that was truly part of their community.
The Limitations
No metric is perfect, and SOS is no exception.
PR events or news can cause short-term distortions
It takes time to connect SOS growth to revenue impact
B2B/B2C overlap can complicate categories
But as a zero-cost, research-backed method, it remains one of the most practical ways to measure the net effectiveness of campaigns across messy, non-digital channels.
Final Takeaway
For brands that need to prove impact but lack the budget or data for complex measurement systems, Share of Search is a powerful alternative. It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s the clearest, most accessible way to track whether your marketing is truly moving the needle in a competitive market.
