Every marketing video has a job to do — help a brand achieve its marketing goals by delivering a positive return on investment. It needs to capture attention, increase engagement, and drive clicks. Video analytics help you track those results and continually optimize for success.
In other words, video analytics don’t just help you measure video ROI. They can also show you how to improve your content and target videos effectively. Here’s a 5-step process to leverage the data you have to get the results you want with added insight from video marketing experts.
Step #1: Define Video Marketing Objectives
Your overarching goal may be to increase sales, but understanding whether your video is doing that is “rarely simple” according to Matt Erikson, Marketing Director of National Positions.
Tracing a sale back to a specific campaign can be difficult. The results are often cumulative over time. In the short term, it’s much easier to track progress toward campaign goals.
Basically, video campaigns can have one of two high-level marketing objectives:
- Knowledge-based campaigns boost brand awareness or educate people about your brand. They speak to customers at the top of the funnel. Metrics like reach, impressions, engagement, click-through-rates (CTR), social shares, and website visits can help you measure success for these campaigns.
- Action-based campaigns inspire viewers to take a specific action. You might ask them to buy, download a piece of content, or request more information. To measure success, you can track downloads, leads, cost-per-lead or even sales.
In short, first decide whether you’re trying to tell people about your brand or encourage them to take action. Then, make those goals as clear and specific as possible. More on that in step 2.
Step #2: Set KPIs Before Launching Any Video Campaign
Analytics are most useful when they’re measured against something. Many campaign managers track performance against both benchmarks and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Benchmarks are industry averages. They help you understand how your content is performing compared to competitors. For example, if you know the average video play rate for a >1 minute website video is 23% and only getting 12%, you know there’s work to be done.
KPIs are the metrics you track to measure progress toward your goals. For example, you might track average video play rate if your goal is increased awareness of your offerings. How to set KPIs from existing campaigns: Before you launch a new video, note the performance of your existing campaigns. Check your website metrics, bounce rate, and conversion rate. Each of those numbers could serve as a KPI depending on your goals.
Pick the KPIs that best align with your goals. Some of the most useful metrics for KPIs include:
- Video Play Rate: What number of people viewed your video?
- Website Metrics: Are video ads driving people to the website?
- Video Engagement: When do viewers stop watching?
- Bounce Rate: Do viewers stay on the site after watching?
- Shares: What are people saying about the video? Where and how are they sharing it?
- Conversions: Do people take action after watching the video?
If the goal is to get people to request your whitepaper, conversions is a better metric to track than shares. For awareness campaigns, shares might be the right choice.
Gathering initial data on these metrics might also reveal performance gaps on websites or ads. “Try adding video content to that page and test these metrics again in 30 days,” Erickson said.
Step #3: Target and Optimize Video Analytics
Monitor your video marketing metrics to refine your strategy and content over time. Regularly checking on video metrics can reveal insights that improve future videos. For example:
“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.”
Use play and engagement metrics to learn what kinds of content interests your audience. Try A/B testing different videos to understand which videos perform best for which target audience.
Stacy Caprio, Founder, Accelerated Growth Marketing recommends tagging video links with UTM codes. These useful bits of code let you track which clicks resulted in product page views and sales.
As you get to know your audience, you can create videos to target them at different levels of the marketing funnel. You might even create a lead scoring system to understand where viewers are in the funnel based on what videos they watch.
Avoid common pitfalls:
- Change one thing at a time: If you revamp the text, change the call to action (CTA), and add a new video all at once, you won’t know which change made a difference.
- Beware vanity metrics: No single metric should be the sole indicator of video success. Numbers like view count easily become vanity metrics if you narrow your focus too much.
Step #4: Continuously Update and Analyze Video Analytics Reports
“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,” said Caprio.
Task someone on your team with updating and analyzing reports at least monthly. If you’re publishing on social media, weekly or even more frequent analysis might be worthwhile.
Long-term records let your marketing team spot trends in audience behavior that may shift over time.Sharing performance records with leadership can help you make the case for video marketing. It can also help justify spend.
Best practices for video analytics reports:
- Keep it simple: share only the most useful information
- Make it consistent: track the same information month after month
- Include insights: avoid raw data that could confuse, and share insights or key takeaways instead
Step #5: Make Even Better Content
When used strategically, video can elevate your marketing strategy. Marketing analytics help prioritize your efforts so you get the results you want. Remember, the strongest campaigns start with quality video.
Use everything you’ve learned from tracking video analytics to inform your next video project. For help creating an explainer video or animated commercial for Healthcare, SaaS, Human Resources or pretty much any other industry, contact the video experts at IdeaRocket.
