Do you know what video marketing metrics you should be paying attention to? How do you know if the message you’re trying to communicate is being understood by the right people?
When it comes to video marketing, many metrics will allow you recognize how well your video campaigns are performing. You may think that monitoring your views is enough. However, this vanity metric doesn’t offer you any real insight nor does it measure if your video marketing goals are being met.
Your goals should go beyond gaining as many views on your video as you can. Because while a video can go viral and be watched millions of times, it doesn’t necessarily translate into sales.
A lot of attention focused on your video may be enough if your only business goal is to create awareness. However, it’s doubtful that you’re in business for the sole purpose of getting noticed and making a name for yourself. The bottom line is that you’re in business because you want to make sales and increase revenue.
With so many metrics to monitor, you might think that you need to be on top of all of them. To save you the trouble, we’ve listed the top metrics that matter:
Who Watches Your Video?
When you create videos for your campaigns, you produce them with a specific audience in mind. Knowing your brand’s buyer persona allows you to create content that is targeted to their unique needs. And if you’re monitoring who watches your videos, you probably won’t be surprised to see that your target audience make up the majority of your views.
However, what if you discover that your video has caught the attention of a whole different demographic? This means that you could have an entirely new set of prospects that you didn’t consider before. By monitoring who watches your video, you’ll identify who your real audience is in its entirety. This could be made up of the target audience you initially focused on and a new group of prospects.
And if your metrics show that you’re not getting the attention of your target audience, then you’ll need to analyze why. If you’re not reaching your desired audience, you may have to re-adjust your approach. Have you published your video on the wrong channel? Or is there something lacking in the video content?
You may be surprised how a perfectly crafted video can get no attention by merely being placed on the wrong channel. If your video was uploaded to YouTube and placed on your landing page, you might wonder why no one is viewing your video. Consider publishing that same video on your Facebook Business Page and Twitter feed where you get the most audience engagement. Twitter is continuously improving its video capabilities, so don’t overlook this important channel. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the quality of your video but the quality of the channel.
How Many Visitors Clicked Play and Watched Your Video?
If you want to know how relevant your video is on the channel where you’ve placed it, you’ll want to measure play rate. Your play rate tells you how successful you are at compelling visitors to watch. Knowing the play rate of your videos allows you to identify which videos are performing the best. And naturally, you’ll want to create more content similar to your top-performing videos.
A lot of experimentation is involved when you first start producing video. You’ll try different styles and tones as you figure out what type of content entices your target audience the most. By monitoring your play rates, you take the guesswork out of which video content style has made the most impact on your target audience.
It’s also worthwhile to monitor if your video is being re-watched. When people re-watch your video, it means that your video or at least a portion of it has made them consider something.
Which sections of your video are being re-watched the most? And by who? Specific parts of your video being re-watched may indicate that this part of your video has offered the most value. And by recognizing that, you can create more video content based on the copy, tone, and style of that specific section.
What Is Your Click-Through Rate?
Is your video interesting enough to watch through to the end and invite engagement? CTA is the percentage of viewers that click on the Call To Action that you include in your video content.
Ultimately, you want your viewers to take action after watching your video. And CTR indicates just how successful your video is at encouraging your viewers to take action. By monitoring your CTR, you’ll be able to recognize if you’re failing to engage your audience enough to lead them to click through.
Low CTRs may mean that you may need to place your CTA at a different point in your video. Is your CTA relevant to the content of your video? Low CTR could also mean that you have to go back and fine-tune your copy. Maybe it’s not clear or encouraging enough.
This is why it is so crucial to know your target audience. If you’re using a tone or style that is not relevant to their demographic, then it’s as good as talking to them in a language they don’t understand. It’s important to personalize your video content around your target audience’s preferences. If your target audience is from an older generation, then you shouldn’t be producing video content that only a younger market will be attracted to.
Because your CTR tells you a lot about how effective your video is, it will dictate the type of video content you should be producing in the future. Maybe you need to change your video content’s style, length, and overall tone. Remember that videos that aren’t performing can always be taken down, tweaked, and uploaded again.
Conclusively, there are many metrics to monitor when it comes to determining the success of your video campaigns. However, mulling over all of them is not necessary, particularly since you want to look beyond vanity metrics and get straight to the metrics that matter.