Imagine putting in the blood, sweat, and tears to create a flashy video full of pizazz, but all you hear in return is the sound of crickets.
Did the viewers like it?
Do they want more?
Did they even pay attention?
The truth is, business owners today understand that it's critical to have a rock-solid digital marketing strategy. More so, videos, in particular, have become a key component for a business to market itself online effectively. Knowing this, it's no surprise that people ask how they can know if their video marketing sets them apart or falls short.
If you're among the curious, keep reading as we unpack precisely how to measure your video marketing efforts simply by paying attention to a few metrics—no more listening to crickets. We'll show you how to get the details you're searching for.
What matters to you as a business owner?
Before we dive into the individual metrics, it's important to decide what's most important to you as the business owner for your video marketing efforts. In general, there are three main goals that you may be chasing:
- Building brand awareness.
- Increasing engagement and conversion.
- Getting a favorable return on investment.
You may be focused on only one of those goals or any combination of them. The important thing is that you know what you're striving for, so you'll know what metrics to pay attention to. Each goal has its own set of metrics to measure. Let's look at them individually below.
Metrics for building brand awareness
If one of your goals is to build your brand awareness, you're looking for ways to increase the public's overall awareness of your company. To gauge the effectiveness of your strategy, you'll want to look for a few specific metrics.
These particular metrics will dial in on the groups of people who have watched your video and where they're located. This data will show you if you're reaching your target audience or if you may need to tweak your marketing.
Metrics to measure your brand awareness include the following:
- Viewer Demographics: The data in this report shows you who clicked on your video to watch it. By keeping track of this, you'll know who is engaging with your content and their location, age, and gender. If this data doesn't jive with your goal, you may need to adjust your ad settings or what social platforms you're using.
- Play Rate: This metric shows you the exact number of times a viewer clicks the "play" button on your video. If your platform doesn't compute this automatically for you, you can take the total number of viewers and divide it by the number of visitors to your page. If your rate comes to 80%, you'll know that 80% of your site visitors press the "play" button to watch your video. If this number is lower than you hoped for, you may need to change how you're promoting your video to make it more enticing.
- Impressions: The final metric for brand awareness shows you the number of times your video has been seen by viewers, even if they aren't engaging with it directly. This will clue you if your video is intriguing to visitors and casual online users. If your impression level is low, you can adjust your ad settings to include a broader range of users, so more people are seeing your content.
Metrics for increasing engagement and conversions
If you're a newer company or trying to revamp your branding, it's important to measure the public's engagement with your videos and if they're being moved to take action.
You'll be looking at the viewers' reactions to your content for this measurement. Your social media platform may automatically calculate these metrics, or you may have to do some of your calculations and research.
Metrics to track if your goal is increasing engagement and conversion include:
- Comments and Likes: This is probably one of the easiest metrics to track because it's visible to everyone. Make it a frequent habit to take note of your "likes" and read through your comments. While comments can be brutal at times, they'll alert you of anything that may need to be addressed. If you receive a negative comment, find a diplomatic way to respond to it and address the concerns. All comments (good or bad) will improve your SEO ranking and build your brand awareness.
- Shares: Another huge way to measure your engagement is to see how many times viewers have shared your video. Sharing your content is one of the highest compliments you can receive, and it gets your message in front of an audience you may have never reached otherwise. This is the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth referrals, so it's a worthy goal to chase after and take pride in.
- Viewing Time: This metric shows the approximate time a viewer spends watching your video. It's important to be aware of this, so you'll know if viewers are getting your whole message or if they tune you out before you ever make your point. If your viewing time is short, your content may not be engaging enough or too long. If that's the case, you may need to shorten the video length or give a hook in the beginning, so they have a reason to stick around.
- Live Video Metrics: If your video is being broadcast live, you'll have a set of metrics specific to your content that show its effectiveness. Pay attention to when the number of viewers peaks and when they taper off. If they start to drop out midway through your message, you may be going off on rabbit trails and losing viewers.
- Click-Through Rate: Finally, this metric shows how often a visitor clicks on your video to watch it. If this metric isn't given to you, take the number of video clicks and divide it by the total number of views. If this number is low, you may want to change up your call to action and find a better way to convince viewers to take the next step of clicking that button.
Measuring your return on investment and making adjustments
Whenever you're investing your time and money into something, it's important to know if you're getting a favorable return on your investment. The following formula will help you determine exactly that. With one calculation and a few observations, you'll know if your marketing budget should be increased or if that strategy needs to be scrapped entirely.
Return on investment (ROI) is found by dividing your profit by investment. In the case of video marketing, you'll want to determine the sales directly tied to your video by the amount of money it took to create and market the content. Looking at that number, you'll be able to see if you made a profit from your video marketing.
Your ROI shouldn't necessarily be something that you look at concretely. You should use it as a tool when looking at your strategy to determine if you need to make adjustments to your efforts. These adjustments may include the following:
You may need to increase your total marketing budget. If you're using paid advertising to promote your video, it may be time to increase your daily or overall budget to reach more customers and get a better conversion rate. This can easily be done through your social media ad platform and can be increased by daily dollars or your total budget.
You may need to adjust the visuals and sounds of your video. If viewers are clicking off your video quickly, it may be because something is aggravating them. Is there anything that may make them think they're being shouted at? Are your visuals annoying to the eye? Remember, your conversion rate will suffer if they're not sticking around long enough to hear your call to action.
Did you include an obvious call to action? If that last sentence gave you pause, you might not have a call-to-action (CTA), or it may not be clear to viewers. If that's the case, it must be addressed. The CTA is arguably the most important part of your video, so make sure you're giving it a good thought and that a viewer isn't left wondering what the next step is. You may need to insert a link for them to follow, or you may even need to include more than one CTA if your video is longer.
Follow the yellow brick road to success
Video marketing can be a costly investment of both time and money, so you need to know if your efforts are paying off or if you need to make adjustments. It should also be noted that video marketing isn't a one-and-done effort.
Rather, your video and the data mined by your social media platform should be reviewed regularly so you can tweak your marketing accordingly. By familiarizing yourself with the metrics above, you'll be able to easily follow a path to success with both your video marketing and, ultimately, your business.