How to Use Analytics to Properly Evaluate Your Video Marketing Strategy
#1 View Count
This is the most obvious measure of success for any video on the internet, but it’s also the most deceptive. As you know, a view count on a video shows you how many times your video has been viewed. This can give you an idea of your video’s reach. But, you have to consider the platform you’re using when assessing this figure. On YouTube, a person must watch at least 30 seconds of your video for it to count as a view. On Facebook, they only have to watch 3 seconds. View count is a great place to start, but measuring the success of your video marketing strategy should go far beyond view count.#2 Play Rate
How relevant is your video content to the location it’s being watched on? How successful is it at enticing scrollers to stop and watch it? Your play rate, the ratio of people who see your video to those who actually watch it, will help you determine if your video is succeeding at getting people to click on it. You might play around with different video placements on your website, and different headlines/context to see how it affects your play rate.#3 View Duration
Your view duration will be expressed as a percentage, demonstrating how much of your video viewers actually watched on average. This is a very useful metric and can show you how many people in your audience stopped watching, watched in full, or even re-watched your content. It can allow you to gauge the quality and usefulness of the content you’re displaying. And can also help identify the points in the video which may have caused someone to lose interest.#4 Social Sharing
Social sharing tells you how many times your video has been shared across various social channels. This shows you how appealing your video is to your target audience, and how willing viewers are to spread the word about your content after watching it. The social sharing metric is pivotal in brand awareness and word-of-mouth marketing campaigns. If you just want to reach as many people as possible, you’ll probably focus on this metric and the view count metric. Directly asking your viewers to share your content is the easiest way to boost your social sharing metric, but you can also create content that you have specifically tailored to be “shareable” by making it entertaining, educational, or emotional.#5 Click-Through Rates
CTR, or click-through rate, is not a metric that’s unique to video content. It’s the percentage of viewers that click on your call-to-action that accompanies your video. This metric will show you how successful your video was at engaging viewers and encouraging them to take action on your CTA. Nobody will click on it, however, if they don’t stick around long enough to see it, which is why engagement is just as important a metric. The CTR metric is the most important consideration if you are creating a video to drive traffic. You can improve it by placing your CTA at a different point in the video, and ensuring that it’s highly relevant to the content the video is presenting.#6 Conversion Rate
There are many types of conversions that can happen on your website, filling out a form, subscribing, making a purchase, or becoming connected to your business in some other way. Your conversion rate is expressed as a percentage of the viewers who viewed your content and have executed a desired action. For instance, if 1 in 12 of the people who watched your content, fill out your form, your conversion rate will be 8.3%. Tracking this metric is a bit tricky and it will involve setting up an analytics platform like Google Analytics so that you can track visitors from watching your video to viewing your site until the time they leave your site. You also have to consider things like, how much does watching the video influence the eventual conversion of a viewer? Will it only count if the video is the last point-of-contact with your brand before the conversion event? Or, will the video attribute to a percentage of the conversion alongside other steps the viewer takes? Again, it can get tricky but it’s a powerful metric for you to keep an eye on and utilize.
#7 Feedback
This is also a commonly understated metric, but it’s definitely an important one. Are people liking your video or disliking it? Are they engaging at all beyond just watching it? Are they commenting? Reading comments and looking at the feedback you’re getting on your video will help you determine whether or not you are effectively reaching your target audience. Try to extract some idea of the overall tone of the comments you are getting to determine if it’s positive or negative.
Don’t forget about the human side of data, either, and consider the emotion you are trying to invoke in your viewers. Most charitable videos, for example, invoke a negative emotion of pity or sadness.
Before you evaluate, you have to plan and execute your video marketing strategy. We have made it easy for you with the Video Marketing Strategy Blueprint (PDF). It is a quick, actionable guide to setting up a video marketing plan.
Neil K Carroll
Owner
I was your average small-town video guy, but when the pandemic hit, everything changed.
I ran a traditional video production agency with exclusively local clientele, a downtown studio, and a busy schedule. My days were long, travel frequent, and life as I knew it revolved around producing video content for my clients.
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