Mindshare

What Is Mindshare?

Mindshare is a marketing term that describes the amount of consumer awareness or popularity surrounding a particular product, idea, or company. Practically, it is the consumer perception of a particular brand or product compared to their rivals as measured by the amount of talk or mentions generated by the public or the media.

Mindshare, also written as "mind share," is an abstract notion akin to market share, another measurement regarding the popularity or penetration of a product or brand.

Understanding Mindshare

One of the primary goals of advertising and promotion is to make consumers think of certain brand names more than others. Given the multitude of choices available to consumers, advertisers can measure their success based on whether the products and services they promote are top of mind. Accordingly, mindshare is a gauge of popularity or consumer awareness as a result of advertising and promotion.

For example, when a consumer decides they want to buy a hybrid vehicle, they may first think of Toyota's Prius even though there are many alternatives. This would be an example of the Prius having greater mindshare than other brands or models. Similarly, when asked to name an athletic shoe company or fast food restaurant, the first answers from many consumers might be Nike or McDonald's — an example of the high salience of those brands. To become mindshare, however, the extra step of associating all types of fast as McDonald's or all sneakers as Nikes would have to occur.

A good way to gauge mindshare is also to think about popular consumer products or services that have become synonymous with its verb. When brand names enter the lexicon as being the exemplar of a certain kind of product, this indicates that the brand has high mindshare.

Q-tip, Kleenex, Advil, Coke, and Google refer to specific trademarked products but also serve to identify a class of products or activities. For example, when someone says to "Google it," they are referring to searching for a certain term, meaning Google has high mind share. Another example is when someone says to Uber to a specific restaurant or destination, meaning to take a taxi or call a ride-sharing service.

Mindshare vs. Market Share vs. Heart Share

Mindshare is difficult to quantify, even with advanced advertising and social media marketing tools and metrics. Market share is more easily quantified; it is the percentage of a market defined either in revenue or units that an item holds compared to a competing item. While increasing market share is the ultimate goal of any business, building mindshare may be part of a means to achieve that objective. Some advertising experts contend that mindshare can be a better gauge of a small company's long-term health than market share because it signifies that a product is always available, is of high quality, and is backed by quality customer impressions.

Similar to mindshare, "heart share" or "share of heart" is the message-driven focus on creating emotional engagement with consumers rather than simply focusing entirely on market share.