There is no shortage of ways to use video to improve your marketing campaigns. But with so many different options to choose from, it can be easy to lose sight of the right metrics to measure results.
Leveraging video metrics correctly can give your team the right insights to improve your content, target effectively, and measure real ROI. But, where do you start?
Define Video Marketing Objectives
Matt Erikson, Marketing Director, National Positions, says that you should always ask yourself the question: “Does your video content marketing contribute to higher sales?” but notes that the answer is “rarely so simple.”
We’ve broken it down into two high-level objectives:
- Knowledge-based campaigns: Knowledge-based campaigns are primarily focused on brand awareness initiatives. Metrics used are more top-of-funnel, focusing on reach, impressions, engagement, click-through-rates, social shares, and website visits.
- Action-based campaigns: Action-based campaigns are when your want your video to inspire viewers to take a specific action after viewing your video, like downloading a piece of content, or requesting more information. Metrics here are focused on downloads, leads generated, cost-per-lead/cost-per-acquisition, sales meetings, etc.
“It all comes down to the objective of your campaign,” says Muhammad Ehsan, Digital Marketing Specialist, Motioncue. “If you want to make an increasing number of people aware of your brand, then you should be looking into views, impressions and unique impressions. At the consideration stage, you need to look into the view-through rate, watch time, watch percentage, consideration lift, etc. At the action stage, you have to look at the main objective of your overall campaign leads, conversions, purchases, signups, etc.”
Apply Video Marketing Metrics To Campaign Objectives
Not all marketing campaigns are created equally. Different initiatives will have different goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) attached to them. As you integrate video into your marketing strategy, consider the role that you’d like it to play.
Some of the most common ways to measure video marketing performance include:
- Video Play Rate: How long are people watching our video?
- Website Metrics: Are videos driving people to our website, and making them stay longer?
- Engagement Rate: How are viewers engaging with our video? When do they stop watching?
- Bounce Rate: Do viewers stay on our site after engaging with our video content?”
- Shares: Are people sharing our video through email or on social media? If so, what are they saying?
- Conversions: Are people prompted to take further action after engaging with our video?
Set Benchmarks Based On Your Objectives
You can’t really start measuring and optimizing campaigns unless you have benchmarks in place. Ask yourself: How are your campaigns currently performing, and where can video help improve the experience? Understanding current performance gaps can show where video can make the most impact, and allow for better prioritization.
“For example, if you have a page that has decent traffic but a high bounce rate and low time on page, use this as a benchmark and then try adding video content to that page and test these metrics again in 30 days,” Erickson said. “If the time on site is going up and bounce rates are going down, this performance can likely be attributed to your new video content.”
Test, Target, and Optimize
Ongoing monitoring and measurement of your video marketing campaigns over time can help your team continue to refine your strategy. In the example above, metrics were used to help determine the impact of video on site engagement. But that’s not all that good measurement can do.
Understanding engagement metrics can help give you insight on the value viewers get from your videos. Whether it’s an explainer, a social media video, or a YouTube pre-roll ad, for example, measuring video play rates helps inform what types of video content your viewers are most interested in,
“If you are running a YouTube video campaign, see where the majority of users are dropping off from watching, and use this information when building your next video,” Erickson said. “If 67 percent of viewers are skipping after watching 20 seconds of your ad, see what message is happening that is causing this, create a new edit, and test again.”
Refine Your Audience
Measurement also allows you to build new audiences for segmentation based on different engagement or conversion rates.
“Video is mostly used to improve ROI of campaigns because you have a lot of data available which shows different metrics, such as the viewer’s interest and how they can be targeted at different stages of a funnel,” Ehsan said. “For example, you can create custom audiences of people who watch 25 percent, 50 percent, 75 percent and 95 percent of your video. You can also easily analyze if your audience is interested in your content or if you need to test new audiences or content.”
You can also apply the same principle to segmenting audiences based on other KPIs, like conversion rates. A/B testing based on opportunity costs or creating a lead scoring system based on video engagement will come in handy when measuring action-based campaign initiatives.
Keep Ongoing Reports
Keep detailed records on performance to share with the rest of the team as you test and optimize your campaigns. Detailed reporting affirms the effectiveness of your video marketing, and can help justify spend when requesting budget.
“Create a report with specific numbers and data, which you can usually gather from your video hosting platform, and present this data using a compelling story to leadership to prove ROI,” Stacy Caprio, Founder, Accelerated Growth Marketing, said. “You can tag links in your video and description using UTM parameters so you can tell which clicks from video resulted in product page views and sales, something you can use to prove ROI as well.”
Leveraging Video Marketing Metrics
There are many ways to use video to elevate your marketing strategy. Video can be used to elevate your marketing strategy in a number of ways. Ensure your efforts are being prioritized in a way that’s directly tied to ROI by leveraging the right metrics to measure, test, and optimize.
We’re committed to working closely with our clients to create compelling video storytelling that aligns with business goals. Get in touch to learn more about how we can help bring your next project to life.