Are marketers too focused on market share as a measure of success?
Our Language of Effectiveness survey showed that the majority of marketers believe growing market share is their main objective. But in hunting for share growth are they neglecting a far more important metric: profit.
Ask marketers what the ultimate objective is for their brand and it’s quite likely that many of them will answer ‘grow market share’.
Marketing Week’s recent Language of Effectiveness survey, supported by Kantar, found more than half (50.9%) of the 1,300 brand-side marketers polled believe growing market share is the most important task for a marketing department. Putting it comfortably ahead of seven different success measures.
Growing market share was the top metric for both SMEs and larger companies (47.6% compared to 54%) – as well as for B2B, B2C and companies with a mix of B2C and B2B where it received 47.5%, 49% and 55.9%, respectively.
But how much stock should be put in market share as a demonstration of growth? Could it be detrimental to your business when used incorrectly?
