Understanding And Utilizing Your Video Metrics

How do you measure the success of your video content? When implementing a video marketing campaign, you want to ensure that you have a strong return on investment related to your business’s strategic goals. In our 6 quick tips for better video marketing, we recommend performing consistent and frequent analyses with regards to these marketing objectives. This allows you to understand the relationship of your marketing campaigns with your consumer.

 

How do you measure success for your video? How do you determine what will need to be improved for upcoming campaigns?

 

Before you even create a video, you should determine the purpose of that video. What do you hope to get out of the content? What are you trying to achieve? The goals for the video will help determine the metrics you’ll use.

 

Track and analyze those metrics that help you determine whether or not you met your video’s strategic objective.

 

Let’s take a look at the top video metrics to consider for a variety of goals, and how you can improve these metrics in your own video campaigns.

1. View Count

Goal: Reach

 

View count is the raw number of times your video has been viewed.

 

Although it determines the approximate reach of content, the view count can be more than the actual number of people seeing your video. On some platforms, the “views” metric may also include re-watches. In this way, one person could watch the video 100 times and you would have 100 views—though the reach is only 1 person.

 

Additionally, the metric “view count” can vary depending on the platform. For example, YouTube considers a “view” anyone who has watched for more than 30 seconds, while Facebook lowers the time limit of a “view” to 3 seconds.

 

Because of these limitations, views are a good starting point, but they aren’t the strongest metric to determine success. Nevertheless, without a tangible number of views, no other metrics will be able to occur. You need people actually seeing your video in order to aggregate any other data.

 

How to increase view count:

 

• Share your video through social media, email, and blogs. The more places you share, the more views you’ll have.

• Encourage your consumers to share your video with strong calls to action.

• Share your video with influencers, who may repost on their own sites.

2. Play Rate

Goal: Relevance & Impressions

 

The play rate is the percentage of people who clicked play on your video.

 

The play rate helps determine how relevant your content is on a given platform with a specific audience. This helps determine how many people come across your video and then choose to watch it, as opposed to scrolling past. e

 

The play rate is similar to views in its importance: if people don’t click play, they don’t see your content, and you don’t make an impression on them. Without the play rate, none of the other metrics can even matter.

 

Often the play rate helps determine the relevance of the content that surrounds the video, like the header, the description, and the thumbnail. Does this copy entice your audience and grab their attention enough for them to click play?

 

It will also help you determine the number of impressions your video receives. How many people are clicking play, viewing your video, and seeing your brand?

How to increase play rate:

 

• Pick a more engaging and significant thumbnail. Thumbnails that tend to work show a face talking or something in action (like dough being rolled out).

• Optimize your headline and copy with intriguing keywords relevant to the content.

• Change the platform on which you host your video. A low play rate may mean the users on that platform aren’t interested in that type of content.

• Change the size and position on the page. Wistia found that videos between 401 and 600 pixels best grab the attention of visitors.

3. Engagement

Goal: Video quality

 

The engagement number tells you the average length of time people watch your video. Ideally, you want 100% engagement, meaning 100% of your viewers watch your entire video start to finish.

 

Engagement or “watch rate” determines, in essence, the quality of your video and its ability to connect with your audience. It shows you where people stop watching your video. Do they watch all the way through? Do you tend to lose viewers at a certain point in the video? Are they skipping around?

 

This can show you where your video is or isn’t relating to your audience effectively. It also tells you whether or not you are making a strong impression on your viewer. If a viewer stops watching after the first few seconds, the engagement is low and you haven’t made a branded impression. If they leave halfway through the video, you may have made an impression, but you know for the future to create shorter or more relevant videos.

 

It’s important that you use engagement to understand how to tailor the type and length of video to your audience.

 

How to increase engagement:

 

• Ensure the video is the appropriate length./a>

• Create a storytelling narrative that will deeply engage your viewer.

• Keep the context of the page and platform in mind when creating content.

• Utilize engagement metrics to better understand your target consumer moving forward.

4. Social Sharing

Goal: Word-of-mouth & Community

 

Social sharing is the number of times your video has been shared across all social channels. This ultimately helps determine your community-based reach beyond your own pages and into a wider market./p>

When consumers and viewers share your video, they are putting a stamp of approval on the content and your brand for their friends. This social sharing feature becomes the ultimate metric for word-of-mouth marketing.

 

In fact, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from family and friends over other forms of advertising. In this way, your social sharing metric helps determine your approval rating while increasing your video market share.

 

How to increase social sharing:

 

• Create content that is meant to be shared. Most people won’t share a “how to” of using a product, but they will share a sweet narrative that relates to their lives or a funny video that made them laugh.

• Make your content share-friendly. The share buttons should be highly visible and accessible

• Have a call to action that politely requests your viewers share their content.

• Open a discussion around the video. Create a debate. Use your video to help others form their own opinions, so they will be more likely to share with their own thoughts and feelings.

• Reach out to influencers to see if they will share your content on their sites. The more influencers that share your video, the more likely you will have an increased community surrounding your video

5. Feedback

Goal: Approval

 

Look at the social aspects of feedback as well, like comments and likes. What do the comments say about your video? Are they generally positive or negative? What seem to be the key takeaways for most viewers?

 

This feedback helps give an idea of how your content is relating to your audience. This helps understand how people feel about your brand after watching your video.

 

How to increase feedback:

 

• Respond to all comments, both positive and negative.

• Ask clarifying questions and thank viewers for their input

• Utilize the feedback moving forward to create content that is especially relevant to your audience’s interests.

6. Click Through Rate (CTR)

Goal: Brand engagement

 

The CTR tells you the percentage of viewers that followed through on your video’s call to action.

 

A call to action encourages your viewers to continue their relationship with your brand. The click through rate determines how well your call to action relates to the content, the audience, and the viewer’s position within the sales funnel. It tells you if people are engaged enough with the video to further engage with the brand.

 

CTR is related to the metric of engagement. People need to watch your video for a long enough time in order to get to your call to action. If your video engagement is low, your click through rate for the CTA will also be low.

 

How to increase CTR:

 

• Improve your engagement metric. Make sure that people watch your video long enough to get to the call to action.

• Change how your call to action is presented. Put it in a different place in the video. Embed it in the video, put it in a link in the bio, or describe next-steps in detail.

• Ensure your call to action is relevant to the video in terms of topic, tone, feel, and aesthetic.

• Ensure your call to action is specific to your viewer’s place within the sales funnel when watching the video. Is it their first interaction with your brand or are they a loyal customer?

7. Conversion Rate

Goal: Consumer actions

 

The conversion rate tells you the percentage of viewers who become leads after viewing that video content. “Leads” is specific to your business’s goals; it could be that the viewer subscribed to your newsletter, filled in their email, contacted your sales team, or made a purchase. Basically, how many people took the next steps in your sales funnel?

 

This is often one of the most important metrics for businesses to consider. Conversions are key to gaining business. This is especially important if you’re using your video campaign as a way to grow your business and sell to your consumers.

 

However, it can also be one of the more challenging metrics to track. You often need to use an analytics software to do so. This technology uses heat maps on your site to show how consumers move from the video to the next steps.

 

How to increase conversion:

 

• Use actionable verbs that are direct, specific, and simple. Tell your consumers exactly how you want them to convert.

• Align your content with the CTA and the stage of the funnel. If the video is meant to create impressions on a new audience, the conversion might be signing up for a newsletter. If the content is targeting loyal customers, conversion might be purchasing a larger order.

• Put your video close to the conversion you want. Have a subscription form, “contact us” button, or sales page in close proximity.

 

Note: Video is often one of the best ways to boost conversion because it gives people an in-depth look at your brand. Use video content to your advantage.

The Bottom Line

 

Video metrics and analysis can be overwhelming. But you don’t need to use all seven metrics to determine the success of your video.

 

Define a goal for your video and your audience. Choose those metrics that will provide the best measure of success for those goals. For example, if you want an increase in impressions, you may want to focus on view count, play rate, and engagement. If you want to engender a loyal community, you might focus on social sharing or feedback. If you’re looking to grow your sales, you’ll consider different forms of conversion.

 

Metrics are necessary to understand how successful your video content is and how you can improve your future content.

 

Where are your marketing metrics now? Where do you want them to be?

 

Contact True Film Production for a consultation to see how we can improve your video metrics in accordance with your strategic marketing goals. We can’t wait to discuss your objectives.