Planning, producing and editing a video is too often a BIG investment. Time, money and effort. So,...
Video is no longer the ‘next big thing’ in marketing. It’s here right now and in truth, it’s already been here for a while. Whether you’re seasoned veterans of video or you’re taking your first tentative steps, it’s crucial you know how your videos are performing.
Video used to only be for the biggest brands. Now, anyone can shoot, edit and publish high-quality videos for everyone to enjoy. With so much competition, you need to understand the true value of the videos you produce and the ROI they deliver.
Measuring the ROI of your videos
Impressions, views and engagement
An easy place to start is with critical metrics like views and impressions. All the big video platforms make it easy to see how many clicks and views your video has. As you’d expect, the higher the numbers are, the better but keep in mind they don’t provide a complete picture.
Taking a closer look at your video analytics (which should be accessible on all major video platforms) will help you make informed decisions about your video marketing strategy.
For example, if your video impressions seem low, you could boost your post on a social media platform to expand your reach. Or your play rate might be on the low side. You could revisit your video thumbnails and monitor improvements. You could even go as far as creating different versions of a video to see how that impacts base stats.
Consider that more than 75% of all video content is played on mobile devices and only 52% of viewers watch a video from beginning to end. You need to identify not just what your viewers are watching but also how they’re doing it.
Like with many aspects of marketing, it’s often trial and error and what works for one video might not for another. By continually testing, tweaking and measuring changes in data, you can see what works best for your specific audience.
CTA clicks
Some video platforms (*hint* Vidyard) allows you to include video CTAs that keep viewers within your content ecosystem and encourage them to move to the next goal you have in mind for them.
Whether that’s a landing page or contact form is up to you. What it does mean is that you can track a particular video’s performance and whether or not it accomplished a specific goal.
Measuring those clicks depends on the video platform you’re using but, once it’s set up effectively, you can identify your most engaged audience members and determine who's converting and who isn’t after they’ve finished watching.
Try creating videos with CTAs and videos without and see what impact they have. 84% of people say that watching online videos of brands has convinced them to buy with them, so for many, a CTA is the perfect next step.
Time saved
At first glance, this one might not seem like something you can easily measure. However, consider your overworked sales team, who spend an awful lot of their time answering the same kinds of questions to leads.
If they had a series of videos they could use in place of these Q&A sessions, then they’d have time back to work on other valuable tasks. Say they each spend an hour a week answering questions that could easily be covered in a video. Across a team of five, that’s 20 hours a month that could be better spent elsewhere.
80% of marketers using video have found that it’s directly helped increase sales. Collate the commonly asked questions that the sales team face and create short, simple explainer videos to use in place. Then, track how much time your sales team gets back each month and you have another simple way of measuring success. By the way, read more about doing this, here.
Intangible benefits: brand awareness and trust
When measuring the ROI of video, it’s easy to focus all our attention on the cold, hard statistics. And although views, impressions and other quantitative metrics are essential, don’t overlook the intangible benefits of a video that lets you know whether or not it’s been a success.
Take brand perception, for example. It isn’t easy to quantify how different demographics views your brand. When customers see or hear about your brand on blogs or social media, what do they think about it? How do they feel about your company?
Compelling videos can improve overall brand perception, raise awareness of new products and build trust with consumers from a wide range of backgrounds.
Although you can’t measure how someone feels about your brand, you can keep track of comments about how they found out about your products. Speak to your existing customers and see what marketing materials of yours they saw. Were they even aware you were creating videos?
If customers start to mention they saw your latest video, then you’ll know it’s gaining traction and reaching the right people at the right time.
Measure your marketing ROI with our free calculator
If you’re planning your next marketing campaign and the best use of your budget, then download our free ROI calculator. It allows you to play around with different things like video, PPC and more to see what you might expect depending on where you invest.
Get access now using the link below.
