Video Metrics That Matter

With its inclusion in the major social media platforms, video has become increasingly important as a marketing and PR tool. In fact, it’s often described as the future of content marketing.

Studies show that over half of companies include videos in their marketing plans, and most marketers expect video to soon dominate their strategies. Video will represent 69 percent of all consumer internet traffic by 2017, according to Cisco. YouTube – the overwhelmingly dominant force in crowd-sourced video — receives over one billion unique visitors a month.

Almost 70 percent of B2B marketers use video, and 82 percent of B2B marketers reported success with their video marketing initiatives, according to Demand Metric.

Yet many organizations are not sure how to measure their video marketing efforts. Some organizations deploy a “set it and forget” strategy. Others try to create a video that will “go viral.” Marketers typically examine view counts to measure the effectiveness of their videos.

The Demise of View Counts

But view count is a vanity metric that doesn’t indicate if your videos are actually helping your business or helping you reach your goals, argues Kristen Craft of Wistia in her article for Harvard Business Review.

View count doesn’t tell you about your audience demographics. It doesn’t indicate if viewers are your target audience. If they’re not, you might be better off with a smaller audience. The metric also doesn’t tell you if viewers like your videos. It only measures how many viewers push the play button, not if they watched the entire video or clicked out after a few seconds.

Through better measurement, marketers can find if they’re covering the right topics, using the right formats, and marketing videos correctly.

Craft recommends these metrics:

Viewers. If viewers provide email addresses, you can track what videos they watch. You can segment those viewers and invite them to view other content that matches their interests. Knowing what they watch provides information that sales can use to target the pitches.

Play rate is the percentage of people who click on the video divided by the total number of the visitors to the web page where the video resides. A low play rate means you might need to re-evaluate the video’s description, thumbnail photo, or the video’s position on the page. Play rates exceeding 50 percent are considered successful.

Average engagement measures the proportion of the video that viewers watch on average. Ideally, of course, viewers watch the entire video. Analytics can show sections of videos that viewers are rewatching, indicating the type of material viewers prefer.

Action completions. By watching the number of visitors who complete calls to action, you can see what videos are succeeding. By tracking action completions, you can test what website page locations and what types of video work best.

Comments and social shares. Comments and social shares mean you’re creating the right content. The sharer’s credibility spreads to you, and extensive commenting can lead to an ad hoc community centered on your site.

YouTube Metrics

When it comes to video marketing, YouTube remains the channel of choice. Dan Nedelko, founder of HoneySpot Marketing in a blog post for Vidyard, recommends focusing on these metrics to judge YouTube success.

Watch time is how long viewers watch the video. YouTube now prioritizes videos with the higher watch times rather than the most views. That means marketers who keep viewers glued to their screens longer will rise to the top of YouTube results.

Subscribers. More subscribers naturally lead to more viewers and more total minutes watched. When a view subscribes to your channel, they receive automatic updates when you upload videos, and subscribers tend to watch videos longer.

Audience retention is an overall measure of your video’s ability to retain its audience. Relative retention compares the video to other YouTube videos of the same length. Absolute retention considers the number of viewers of the video over time in relation to the video’s total number of viewers.

Marketers can gain insights into video marketing practices by tracking absolute audience retention over time. Pinpointing where viewers tend to leave can suggest video practices to avoid. The first 15 seconds, when viewers are most likely to drop out, are critical. If viewers pass the 15-second mark, you’ve cleared a major hurdle.

Bottom Line: While video has become a valuable tool for marketing and public relation, many organizations are not sure how to gauge their video marketing efforts. Page counts are passé, experts agree. Instead, marketers can track these key metrics to improve their video marketing strategies and ultimately increase conversions.