What is Market Share: Definition, Formulas, and Examples
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Market Share represents the success of a business in cold hard numbers.
Knowing what it is and how to measure it can help a business benchmark performance, track success, and make plans to grow.
What is market share?
Market share is a company’s percentage of the overall sales in a given industry or market.
Why is market share important?
Market share is the ultimate measure of a company’s success within its market. It’s calculated using sales revenue, not profit. Knowing how you stack up against rivals is a solid indicator that can be used for competitive benchmarking , identifying industry leaders , strategic planning, and much more.
Why do you need to grow your market share?
Market share is usually assessed over a fiscal year or quarter. Monitoring it helps evaluate your company’s growth by examining how you progress relative to the overall market growth. A thriving company will see its market share increase faster than that of the competition.
Any tiny shift in the market distribution in stable markets can disrupt well-balanced market forces. In growth markets, changes are expected and, therefore, less significant. With new products or technology, a vendor could bite off a competitor’s share or attract a new target audience that wasn’t previously part of the equation.
However dynamic your market, increasing your industry share is vital for growth. Capturing a larger percentage of the market means you are increasing sales and revenue.
How do you calculate market share?
There are many ways to establish market share, and finding the right method for your business is important. It can be gained or taken quickly, so companies must use Digital Intelligence tools like Similarweb to keep track of key market share metrics in real time. Simply using revenue figures alone is no longer enough to keep up with the speed of change that most markets are experiencing .
Market share formula by revenue
Take your total annual revenue figure, divide it by the total overall revenue for your market, and then multiply it by 100 to get the percentage. For example, if your annual revenue is $1M, and the total revenue for your market is $100M, then you have a 1% share of the market.
Relative market share formula
You may want to compare your business to a specific competitor or industry leader. In this case, you can calculate the relative market share. Divide your market share by that of the relevant rival.
Read more in our full guide to market share formulas – Expand Your Reach: 4 Market Share Formulas to Get You There
Analyzing your market share
The company with the largest market share is usually considered the industry leader. But market share is no key indicator of a company’s financial health, profitability, or growth. It measures your competitiveness and gives you a general idea of how you match up in your target arena.
What does market share mean for your position in the competitive environment? It shows how the pie is sliced and how big a piece you have relative to everyone else. When you segment your target market , you receive a more granulated view. Picture each segment as a whole pie and compare how the distribution of portions varies.
Digital companies often use traffic share to gauge their control of the online “pie.” This is particularly valuable if you are running a non-ecommerce site and can’t measure your percentage based on revenue. Measure your traffic share and segment it as you would the market. Take a look at the example in the following section to see how it’s done.
Understanding your market share
Market share is also relative to your business. A global market share of 1% is nothing to brag about for a company that sells to the worldwide market. But if you only target Texas, it’s an impressive number, and you might even be leading the local market.
As a local vendor, you should consider benchmarking against comparable businesses in other regions. Choose similar size companies with equivalent audience demographics . This lets you evaluate if your market share is average for your type of company or exceptionally high or low.
To gauge market share correctly, look at your target audience segment . Your company may focus primarily on women, millennials , or high-income customers, which means your goal is leadership in a particular market segment. You’ll conquer the rest later with a new strategy.
The bottom line; when you try to gain insights from market share, make sure to view it in the proper context.
Market share example
Another way to calculate market share is to use website traffic as your key performance indicator . This way, you get a benchmark you can track in real-time, and while it’s not revenue-based, it shows how much interest and activity takes place in a market and allows you to track known industry leaders and your own site efficiently and easily.
Here’s a faster, more modern approach to measuring your share of the market. In this example, I’m using the accommodation and hotel market to demonstrate how to quickly analyze market share.
In 30 seconds, I can see who the industry leaders are and by what percent their business has grown or declined in a given period. I also see rising players; this is interesting, as these companies show notable growth in my market . So, while they have a relatively low share right now, they are emerging names with the ability to disrupt a market fast. At the bottom of the market leaders page, I can see a list of market leaders, sorted by share of traffic, with other useful traffic and engagement metrics to track, along with a yearly change %. This covers the top 10k domains in a sector, so it’s extensive and comprehensive.
You’ll have noticed a market quadrant analysis too. A quick click downloads a nice visual representation of the market leaders; which you can filter and sort according to the market share metrics that matter to you most. In this example, I chose unique visitors and traffic share.
5 ways to increase market share
- Marketing and branding With more aggressive advertising, you can expand your reach, gain more users, and increase customer loyalty. For long-term effectiveness, a strong branding strategy is essential.
- Price reduction You can tackle the issue from another angle by lowering your pricing just enough to beat the competition. This is the idea behind periodic discount campaigns, in which companies manage to steal competitors’ customers before raising prices again.
- Retention Nurturing your existing customer base is an underutilized and highly effective method. You keep your customers close when you maintain a positive relationship and send an occasional special offer.
- Innovation The best example of this strategy is Apple. The company constantly and regularly offers new product lines and innovative features for its existing products. Customers keep coming back for more.
- Acquisition If you can’t beat them, buy them. One way that helps Facebook to expand is by acquiring smaller companies and taking over their market share. Instead of winning over new customers, they take over the company.
Drawing conclusions from market analysis
Let’s look at an example of a non-ecommerce digital competitive set and the insights we gain from looking at market share.
Take the news site cnn.com. To define the target market , we look at the overall traffic to publishers and media sites . Specifically in the U.S., CNN’s traffic share is roughly 12%, putting them in second place right after Yahoo, also the global leader.
On the other hand, the news channel ranks number 85 globally. Does this mean CNN isn’t a significant news channel? Not necessarily. We can learn two things: Americans are the largest segment of news consumers, and CNN successfully targets American readers. We can also analyze traffic segments, such as specific marketing channels or devices, to learn more.
The next step
Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence is THE go-to platform for accurate traffic trend data. Compared to other market analysis tools , it provides the freshest insights, packaged in an intuitive platform that highlights the important changes and market share metrics you need to track.
Why Similarweb
- Data you can depend on
- Dynamically updates to give daily insights
- Easy-to-use platform, filled with useful market intelligence
- Highly accurate market trends data
- Try it for free and find out where your market stands.
How can I measure market share growth?
Calculate market growth by subtracting the market size for year one from the market size for year two. Divide the result by the market size for year one and multiply by 100 to convert it to a percentage.
What is the market share formula?
Divide your business revenue (traffic) by the total industry revenue (traffic). The result is your market share.
What is the quickest way to calculate market share?
Use a digital intelligence platform to capture real-time market share data. Outdated methods that rely on revenue alone fail to give you a current view of industry leaders.
How can you increase your market share?
Increase market share by using marketing and branding, price reduction, retention, innovation, and acquisition.
by Liz March
Digital Research Specialist
Liz March has 15 years of experience in content creation. She enjoys the outdoors, F1, and reading, and is pursuing a BSc in Environmental Science.
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How to Write a Market Analysis for a Business Plan
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A lot of preparation goes into starting a business before you can open your doors to the public or launch your online store. One of your first steps should be to write a business plan . A business plan will serve as your roadmap when building your business.
Within your business plan, there’s an important section you should pay careful attention to: your market analysis. Your market analysis helps you understand your target market and how you can thrive within it.
Simply put, your market analysis shows that you’ve done your research. It also contributes to your marketing strategy by defining your target customer and researching their buying habits. Overall, a market analysis will yield invaluable data if you have limited knowledge about your market, the market has fierce competition, and if you require a business loan. In this guide, we'll explore how to conduct your own market analysis.
How to conduct a market analysis: A step-by-step guide
In your market analysis, you can expect to cover the following:
Industry outlook
Target market
Market value
Competition
Barriers to entry
Let’s dive into an in-depth look into each section:
Step 1: Define your objective
Before you begin your market analysis, it’s important to define your objective for writing a market analysis. Are you writing it for internal purposes or for external purposes?
If you were doing a market analysis for internal purposes, you might be brainstorming new products to launch or adjusting your marketing tactics. An example of an external purpose might be that you need a market analysis to get approved for a business loan .
The comprehensiveness of your market analysis will depend on your objective. If you’re preparing for a new product launch, you might focus more heavily on researching the competition. A market analysis for a loan approval would require heavy data and research into market size and growth, share potential, and pricing.
Step 2: Provide an industry outlook
An industry outlook is a general direction of where your industry is heading. Lenders want to know whether you’re targeting a growing industry or declining industry. For example, if you’re looking to sell VCRs in 2020, it’s unlikely that your business will succeed.
Starting your market analysis with an industry outlook offers a preliminary view of the market and what to expect in your market analysis. When writing this section, you'll want to include:
Market size
Are you chasing big markets or are you targeting very niche markets? If you’re targeting a niche market, are there enough customers to support your business and buy your product?
Product life cycle
If you develop a product, what will its life cycle look like? Lenders want an overview of how your product will come into fruition after it’s developed and launched. In this section, you can discuss your product’s:
Research and development
Projected growth
How do you see your company performing over time? Calculating your year-over-year growth will help you and lenders see how your business has grown thus far. Calculating your projected growth shows how your business will fare in future projected market conditions.
Step 3: Determine your target market
This section of your market analysis is dedicated to your potential customer. Who is your ideal target customer? How can you cater your product to serve them specifically?
Don’t make the mistake of wanting to sell your product to everybody. Your target customer should be specific. For example, if you’re selling mittens, you wouldn’t want to market to warmer climates like Hawaii. You should target customers who live in colder regions. The more nuanced your target market is, the more information you’ll have to inform your business and marketing strategy.
With that in mind, your target market section should include the following points:
Demographics
This is where you leave nothing to mystery about your ideal customer. You want to know every aspect of your customer so you can best serve them. Dedicate time to researching the following demographics:
Income level
Create a customer persona
Creating a customer persona can help you better understand your customer. It can be easier to market to a person than data on paper. You can give this persona a name, background, and job. Mold this persona into your target customer.
What are your customer’s pain points? How do these pain points influence how they buy products? What matters most to them? Why do they choose one brand over another?
Research and supporting material
Information without data are just claims. To add credibility to your market analysis, you need to include data. Some methods for collecting data include:
Target group surveys
Focus groups
Reading reviews
Feedback surveys
You can also consult resources online. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau can help you find demographics in calculating your market share. The U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Small Business Administration also offer general data that can help you research your target industry.
Step 4: Calculate market value
You can use either top-down analysis or bottom-up analysis to calculate an estimate of your market value.
A top-down analysis tends to be the easier option of the two. It requires for you to calculate the entire market and then estimate how much of a share you expect your business to get. For example, let’s assume your target market consists of 100,000 people. If you’re optimistic and manage to get 1% of that market, you can expect to make 1,000 sales.
A bottom-up analysis is more data-driven and requires more research. You calculate the individual factors of your business and then estimate how high you can scale them to arrive at a projected market share. Some factors to consider when doing a bottom-up analysis include:
Where products are sold
Who your competition is
The price per unit
How many consumers you expect to reach
The average amount a customer would buy over time
While a bottom-up analysis requires more data than a top-down analysis, you can usually arrive at a more accurate calculation.
Step 5: Get to know your competition
Before you start a business, you need to research the level of competition within your market. Are there certain companies getting the lion’s share of the market? How can you position yourself to stand out from the competition?
There are two types of competitors that you should be aware of: direct competitors and indirect competitors.
Direct competitors are other businesses who sell the same product as you. If you and the company across town both sell apples, you are direct competitors.
An indirect competitor sells a different but similar product to yours. If that company across town sells oranges instead, they are an indirect competitor. Apples and oranges are different but they still target a similar market: people who eat fruits.
Also, here are some questions you want to answer when writing this section of your market analysis:
What are your competitor’s strengths?
What are your competitor’s weaknesses?
How can you cover your competitor’s weaknesses in your own business?
How can you solve the same problems better or differently than your competitors?
How can you leverage technology to better serve your customers?
How big of a threat are your competitors if you open your business?
Step 6: Identify your barriers
Writing a market analysis can help you identify some glaring barriers to starting your business. Researching these barriers will help you avoid any costly legal or business mistakes down the line. Some entry barriers to address in your marketing analysis include:
Technology: How rapid is technology advancing and can it render your product obsolete within the next five years?
Branding: You need to establish your brand identity to stand out in a saturated market.
Cost of entry: Startup costs, like renting a space and hiring employees, are expensive. Also, specialty equipment often comes with hefty price tags. (Consider researching equipment financing to help finance these purchases.)
Location: You need to secure a prime location if you’re opening a physical store.
Competition: A market with fierce competition can be a steep uphill battle (like attempting to go toe-to-toe with Apple or Amazon).
Step 7: Know the regulations
When starting a business, it’s your responsibility to research governmental and state business regulations within your market. Some regulations to keep in mind include (but aren’t limited to):
Employment and labor laws
Advertising
Environmental regulations
If you’re a newer entrepreneur and this is your first business, this part can be daunting so you might want to consult with a business attorney. A legal professional will help you identify the legal requirements specific to your business. You can also check online legal help sites like LegalZoom or Rocket Lawyer.
Tips when writing your market analysis
We wouldn’t be surprised if you feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information needed in a market analysis. Keep in mind, though, this research is key to launching a successful business. You don’t want to cut corners, but here are a few tips to help you out when writing your market analysis:
Use visual aids
Nobody likes 30 pages of nothing but text. Using visual aids can break up those text blocks, making your market analysis more visually appealing. When discussing statistics and metrics, charts and graphs will help you better communicate your data.
Include a summary
If you’ve ever read an article from an academic journal, you’ll notice that writers include an abstract that offers the reader a preview.
Use this same tactic when writing your market analysis. It will prime the reader of your market highlights before they dive into the hard data.
Get to the point
It’s better to keep your market analysis concise than to stuff it with fluff and repetition. You’ll want to present your data, analyze it, and then tie it back into how your business can thrive within your target market.
Revisit your market analysis regularly
Markets are always changing and it's important that your business changes with your target market. Revisiting your market analysis ensures that your business operations align with changing market conditions. The best businesses are the ones that can adapt.
Why should you write a market analysis?
Your market analysis helps you look at factors within your market to determine if it’s a good fit for your business model. A market analysis will help you:
1. Learn how to analyze the market need
Markets are always shifting and it’s a good idea to identify current and projected market conditions. These trends will help you understand the size of your market and whether there are paying customers waiting for you. Doing a market analysis helps you confirm that your target market is a lucrative market.
2. Learn about your customers
The best way to serve your customer is to understand them. A market analysis will examine your customer’s buying habits, pain points, and desires. This information will aid you in developing a business that addresses those points.
3. Get approved for a business loan
Starting a business, especially if it’s your first one, requires startup funding. A good first step is to apply for a business loan with your bank or other financial institution.
A thorough market analysis shows that you’re professional, prepared, and worth the investment from lenders. This preparation inspires confidence within the lender that you can build a business and repay the loan.
4. Beat the competition
Your research will offer valuable insight and certain advantages that the competition might not have. For example, thoroughly understanding your customer’s pain points and desires will help you develop a superior product or service than your competitors. If your business is already up and running, an updated market analysis can upgrade your marketing strategy or help you launch a new product.
Final thoughts
There is a saying that the first step to cutting down a tree is to sharpen an axe. In other words, preparation is the key to success. In business, preparation increases the chances that your business will succeed, even in a competitive market.
The market analysis section of your business plan separates the entrepreneurs who have done their homework from those who haven’t. Now that you’ve learned how to write a market analysis, it’s time for you to sharpen your axe and grow a successful business. And keep in mind, if you need help crafting your business plan, you can always turn to business plan software or a free template to help you stay organized.
This article originally appeared on JustBusiness, a subsidiary of NerdWallet.
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