Okay, you know how to create a video and where to host it. You’re ready to get started, right? Maybe not. Before you dive in, you need to define your video goals and identify the best metrics for determining whether you’ve accomplished those goals.
Before launching any marketing campaign, it’s important to determine your primary video goals. Your goal could be to increase brand awareness, engagement, or even conversions for a free trial! However, it’s crucial to pick out just one or two goals for each video. When you have more, your video will seem unfocused, which makes it difficult for viewers to determine what they should do next.
When thinking of your goals, be sure to keep your buyer persona and target audience in mind. How old are they? Where do they live? What are their interests? How do they typically consume media? What stage of the buyer’s journey are they in? All of these questions can help determine what type of video you should make and where you should post it. For example, if your target audience is not familiar with your company, you probably want to make a video that focuses on brand awareness before producing an in-depth, product video. You’ll also want to host your video on a site that already has a large reach like YouTube.
So let’s talk about metrics so you can better understand how you’ll measure your success and set goals. When you post a video, it’s easy to get obsessed with one metric — view count. While view count can be an important metric, there are many others that may be more relevant to your campaign. Below are some popular metrics to take a closer look at:
- View Count: View count is, as you could probably figure out, the number of times your video has been viewed — also referred to as reach. This metric is great to track if your goal is to increase brand awareness and have your content seen by as many people as possible. 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 to read the fine print before reporting on your video view count.
- Play Rate: Play rate is the percentage of people who played your video divided by the number of impressions it received. This metric helps determine how relevant or appealing your video is to your audience. If thousands of people see your video, but only a handful of people play it, it’s probably time to optimize your content.
- Social Sharing and Comments: If you’re on social media, you’re probably familiar with sharing and commenting. Social shares and comments are good indicators of how relevant your content is with your target audience. If a viewer 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 important because the more times your video is shared, the more it’ll be viewed. If your goal is to reach to reach a lot of people, social shares is a good metric to track.
- Video Completions: If you took the time to make a video, you probably want people to watch the whole thing. A video completion is the number of times a video is played in its entirety. This metric can be more reliable than view count when trying to determine your video’s success.
- Completion Rate: Completion rate is the number of people who completed your video divided by the number of people who played it. Completion rate, and other engagement metrics, are a great way to gauge a viewer’s reaction to your video. Do you have a low completion rate? Are people all dropping off at a certain point? This might be a sign that your video content is not resonating with your target audience.
- Click-Through Rate: Click-through rate (CTR) is the number of times your CTA is clicked divided by the number of times it is viewed. CTR is a great indicator of how effective your video is at encouraging people to take your desired action. If your CTR is low, consider revising your call-to-action’s design or copy.
- Conversion Rate: Conversion rate is the number of times visitors completed your desired action divided by the number of clicks on your CTA. If your goal is to have your viewers complete an action like signing up for a free trial, try adding a video to your landing page to see if your conversion rate increases.
- Bounce Rate and Time on Page: Are you thinking about adding a video to a web page? Take note of the page bounce rate and the amount of time people spent on the page before you add the video. Be sure to check the metrics after you place the video to see if changes the way people interact with your other content.