share of wallet

Definition

The percentage of a customer's total spending in a category that goes to your brand, measuring loyalty in dollars rather than sentiment. The ultimate relationship status metric.

Example Usage

Our share of wallet among premium customers is 67%, meaning they spend two-thirds of their category budget with us.

Origin

Financial services terminology from the 1980s, expanded to retail and consumer goods.

Fun Fact

Increasing share of wallet among existing customers is typically 5-25x cheaper than acquiring new ones, yet gets less attention.

Source: Customer relationship management and loyalty metrics

Related Terms

Intermediate

media planning

The strategic process of determining where, when, and how frequently to place advertising to reach target audiences effectively. It's like planning a military campaign, except the objective is getting people to buy laundry detergent.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Advanced

viewability threshold

The minimum standard for an ad to count as 'viewed'—typically 50% of pixels visible for at least one second. A bar so low that advertisers celebrate ads nobody actually noticed.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

brand

The carefully crafted identity and perception of a company, product, or person that marketing teams obsess over and consumers either love or completely ignore. A brand is more than just a logo—it's the entire emotional experience and associations people have with your business, from Apple's minimalist elegance to that local pizza place with the angry owner. It's what makes people pay $200 for sneakers that cost $20 to manufacture.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

skyscraper technique

Finding top-performing content in your niche and creating something demonstrably better, taller, and more comprehensive to outrank it. The marketing equivalent of one-upping your neighbor's Christmas lights.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

reach and frequency

The two fundamental metrics of advertising campaigns: reach measures how many unique people see your ad, while frequency measures how many times they see it. The eternal balancing act between annoying everyone once versus annoying some people repeatedly.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Advanced

Dark Social

Traffic that comes from private channels like texts and DMs where marketers can't track it, making it the speakeasy of social sharing. It sounds sinister, but it's really just your aunt forwarding articles in the family group chat.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Translate This Term

See “share of wallet” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

Try the Translator

Share This Term

Post on X Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn

Discover a Term

Intermediate

paralysis by analysis

The training-killer where you spend so much time researching optimal programs, splits, and periodization schemes that yo...