In their Ultimate Guide to Video Marketing, HubSpot reported that 71% of consumers watch more videos online than they were even a year ago. That number will only continue to increase. Video can no longer just be one piece of your overall marketing plan. It is must be a central component in your campaign efforts and social strategy.

“But, how will I know if my videos get me results?”

We get asked this question a lot.

Start By Identifying Your Goal

Before launching any video campaign, you should always identify your primary goal.

For example, are you hoping to:

• Grow brand awareness
• Boost audience engagement
• Increase website traffic
• Introduce a new product or service
• Capture leads through a lead generator
• Improve sales
• Generate more donations

While all those options may sound exciting, you should only choose one or two goals, or your messaging will get muddy, and you won’t properly target your efforts. When you define your goal, you gain greater focus for your video content and make it easier for your viewers to know what they should do next. As Donald Miller says, “No one will follow you into a fog.”

Once you’ve defined your video goals, it is easier to identify where to post your video and the best metrics for determining whether you've accomplished your goals.

Decide Where Should You Post Your Videos

No matter your goal, three places are always a safe bet to post your video content.

1. Your website.

A brand video or testimonial may fit nicely on your homepage or about us, but if you’re launching a campaign that will feature multiple videos, consider featuring them on a blog or news section of your website. Sharing that blog page will help drive traffic to your site. Not only is it good to have all your videos accessible on your site, but adding video to your website increases SEO. Plus, Wyzowl’s 2021 Video Marketing Statistics reported 83% of marketing professionals say video has increased the time people spend on their website.

2. Your social media accounts.

Posting your videos to your company’s Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social pages is critical. According to Animoto, 60% of consumers who purchased from a brand found out about the product or service on social media and video content helps you capture their attention.

3. Your campaign emails.

You may feel overwhelmed by your own inbox, but email marketing is still one of the strongest drivers of sales conversions. You’re marketing to warm leads who are already attracted and engaged. Using your video content in your email marketing can provide more value and convince your customers to say yes more easily.

We could get into the nitty-gritty of how the various social media channels perform depending on your goal. We could also talk about the difference between nurturing emails vs. sales emails. But we’ll save all that information for future blogs.

Let’s Talk About Metrics

There are many ways to define and measure the success of your videos. Many people get narrowly focused on one metric—view count. But there are at least seven other metrics that may be relevant to your campaign.

1: View Count

We’ve already identified that this is the most widely popular way to analyze success, but, depending on your goal, view count alone doesn’t tell you the whole story.

View count is the number of times your video has been watched. Sometimes you’ll also hear this referred to as the “reach.” If your goal is to grow your brand awareness, then view count is a great metric to track your success. The more people who view your video, the more people are aware of your brand.

However, it's important to remember that every video hosting platform measures a view differently. For example, a view on YouTube is 30 seconds while a view on Facebook is only 3 seconds. Be sure you understand how each platform defines the word view.  

2: Play Rate

Play rate requires a little math, but it’s a great way to determine how relevant or appealing your video is. The play rate is the percentage of people who played your video divided by the number of impressions it received.

For example, a thousand people may see your video, but only ten people played it. That’s a 1% play rate and probably an indicator that it’s time to optimize your content.

3: Social Sharing, Likes, and Comments

We love our shares, comments, and hearts, don’t we? And with good reason. They are decent indicators of how your audience is engaging with your content. If someone watches your video and takes the time to share it with their network, you probably created a great piece of content. Social shares are also significant because the more times your video is shared, the more times it will be viewed.

If your goal is to reach many people, social shares are a good metric to track.

Measuring performance on each social media platform provides valuable information, especially when determining if your video is the correct content type for your audience on each platform.

4: Video Completions vs. Completion Rate

Regardless of your goals, you probably hope that people watch your video to the end, right? Shorter videos tend to have a higher video completion. A video completion is the number of times a video is played in its entirety. In many ways, the video completion metric is more accurate than the view count.

But how is the video completion different than the completion rate? Again, it’s math.

The completion rate is the number of people who completed your video divided by the number of people who played it. Completion rate is a great way to gauge viewer engagement. If a thousand people viewed the video, but only ten watched it to completion, you have a low completion rate. If people aren’t watching to the end, it might be a sign that your video content could do better at engaging your target audience.

5: Click-Through Rate

The click-through rate is the number of times your call-to-action is clicked divided by the number of times it's viewed. When you’re looking at your click-through rate, you’ll get a good idea if your video encourages people to take the next step.

A lot of people forget how important it is to have a specific and direct call to action. There are two reasons people won’t commit to your brand. 1) You asked too soon, or 2) You never asked at all.

6: Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the number of times your viewers completed your desired action divided by the number of clicks on your call-to-action.

PRO TIP: If your goal is to have your viewers sign up for a free subscription or free consultation, try adding a video to your landing page to see if your conversion rate increases.

7: Bounce Rate and Time-On-Page

Use this metric for the videos you put on your website. Before you add any videos, check your starting metrics. How long are people spending on that webpage, or what is the current bounce rate? See if your metrics improve once you put a video on the page. If you can drive traffic to that page, a video dramatically increases the chance of your customer staying on your site longer. The longer they stay on your site, the more opportunity they will have to commit.

Measuring Metrics Takes Time

Across all platforms, be sure to measure views over time to determine the life of your videos. You may find you need to refresh your videos every few weeks or months to stay relevant with your audience. 

You should also track and compare the engagement of your videos to each other. Comparing will help you determine which topics are getting the most attention and have a higher and longer lifetime value.

It's time to make video a key part of your marketing strategy. Ready. Set. Action!