Did you know about half of all companies and marketers are using video content in their marketing and advertising strategies? According to Cisco, “Globally, IP video traffic will be 82 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2020, up from 70 percent in 2015”. Video is the future of content marketing.
For many marketers, the number of video views is the key metric used to measure the success of a video campaign. Seeing the number of video views increase is exciting but does this metric alone truly measure its success? Views are just part of your video’s success story and show that your campaign is reaching an audience however, these views do not guarantee driving new business.
For a successful marketing campaign, it’s important to know your target audience. While video views give you the number of people watching, it says nothing about whether those views are from your target audience. ‘Who is watching’ is ideally as important as
‘how many are watching’. If the audience doesn’t fit your target customer profile, the views might be worthless. Moreover, you should be aware of what counts as a video view across main social channels (http://wersm.com/what-counts-as-a-video-view-on-social-media) on the web. You don’t want to count a view as someone who watches 10 seconds of a 90 second video.
Views help you to halfway understand the reach of your videos, but they still don’t help with understanding the type of engagement you are getting. To truly get the impact of your video, it’s necessary to figure out which metrics actually matter to you so you can meet your goals.
Play Rate
Play rate is the ratio of page visitors who actually clicked the video to the total number of people who access the page. Play rate is a good measure of how appealing your video content is and how your visitors engage with your content. A high play rate indicates that your video concept is good. For example; do you adequately explain the video in the topic or description you’re your thumbnail image compelling, and is your video content intriguing enough to capture someone’s attention.
This metric also measures how relevant the location of your video is on the page. To increase the play rate (https://www.skeletonproductions.com/insights/4-actionable-steps-to-increase-your-corporate-video-play-rate), focus to optimize your video:
· Design video content that appeals to your target audience.
· Pick an eye-catching, more engaging and relevant thumbnail.
· Alter the copy around your video (title, description, tags) to reflect the content accurately.
· Increase the video size and change its position on the web page.
Average Engagement
Is your video meeting the expectation of your viewers? Are viewers watching your video all the way till the end? Tracking the viewer’s engagement is another important metric to know how effective your video is. The average engagement shows the percentage of your video that all viewers watched.
If most viewers watch your video till the end, you’re meeting viewer’s expectation and your message is impactful. High average engagement clearly indicates that you’re sharing valuable information in a clear, concise and interesting way. Ideally, the metric is expressed as an engagement graph (https://wistia.com/doc/audience-engagement-graph), which allows you to see how your audience watched, re-watched and stopped watching the video.
Social Sharing
If someone shares your video, this means that you’re creating the right content. Social media is the king of today’s content marketing. Social sharing measures how much your viewers share your video (http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/track-social-media-shares-link) on various social channels – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so on. It’s a good way to track how appealing your video is to your target audience.
Social sharing not only extends the reach of your campaign and leads to more views, but also increases credibility of your business or brand. More sharing means more user engagement. To increase your reach to a larger audience is always a plus.
Conversion Rate
If you’re a marketer, conversion rate (https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2684489?hl=en) is another important metric for you to measure how appealing your video content is to your target audience. Conversion rate is the percentage of people who clicked on the CTA you included in your video. CTA or call-to-action is the desired action you’re expecting from your viewers, which can be filling out a subscription form, signing up for weekly emails, buying a product, or sharing your video.
High conversion rate is an indication of how effective your video is at encouraging viewers and driving them to convert. Perhaps, 64-85% of viewers are more likely to purchase after watching your product video (https://blog.kissmetrics.com/product-videos-conversion/), so if your viewers are not converting this probably mean your video content needs to be altered.
To improve your conversion, we have some suggestions for you:
· Place your CTA appropriately, and make it stand out.
· Improve your average engagement, as you need viewers to watch your video for a longer duration.
· Create videos relevant to your target audience.
Feedback
Sometimes the best way to create effective video campaigns is to just ask your customers what they like, what resonates and what’s important to them. Feedback is a measure of how viewers react to your video content. The feedback isn’t a number but rather qualitative data that might help you gain insight for your video.
What can feedback suggest? Positive or negative, both comments indicate the reaction to your overall video efforts, primarily the content. A viewer leaving a bad comment on unliking your official page after watching a video indeed suggests that you may need to rethink your campaign.
If your video is losing out on conversions, don’t forget to look at viewer comments, as this data may be useful to you.
