Over the past decade, it’s safe to say that the use of video as a marketing medium has steadily grown, and is now considered a staple of the digital marketing sphere. Furthermore, the barrier to entry of video marketing sits at an all time low; so much so that the mom n’ pop along the street, as well as the enterprise along the central business district can both create a considerable impact with videos. Yet, just because it’s easily accessible, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right fit for a cost-effective business plan. Why so? Because it all boils down to Return-Of-Investment (ROI).
Smart business owners will always make sure no matter how tempting a video or a campaign may be, they have to see a positive ROI. However, different ROI models apply to different types of videos. With that, here are a few measurements of ROI you could utilise for a couple of video types, so that you won’t have to kick yourself for a waste of budget due to wrong measurement methodologies.
No need to be shy; go ahead and use this video to promote your brand – your beliefs, values and promises. Why? Because consistent usage of such messages in your videos will sooner or later create a stigma of your brand in people’s minds that make them go “I know this brand!”. But how should you go about calculating your ROI for Brand Awareness videos?
Here, it’s all about social outreach – how much people you can snag to watch your video. A solid indicator of this statistic would be Viewcounts, the most basic and obvious indication of success of a brand awareness video made for online consumption. The higher the number of views, the better spread of outreach you will gain, be it whether your video is amazing, controversial or newsworthy, the fact of the matter remains: you managed to attract people near and far to watch your video.
But what does a high number of views translate to? You may be scoring the numbers, but lest we forget, outreach is also about people who are willingly looking for an answer to their problems. And in order to provide that solution in a concoction of noise, your video campaign needs to not only be visibly accessible to your audience, but also be accurate to their needs and wants. That’s where Search Ranking comes into play. One of the simplest methods you could utilise exclusively for videos is adding in a transcript, or more commonly known as Closed Captions (CC). The CC offers an additional copy that is looked at in YouTube’s search-ranking algorithm, hence the inclusion of CC boosts your video campaign’s visibility and ultimately its outreach. However, we suggest that you avoid depending on YouTube’s in-house transcriptions, because firstly, there will definitely be errors in the words – spelling, translation and the like. It’s way better to either create your own transcript or proof-read and subsequently edit the automated one YouTube offers.
Don’t just stop at promoting your brand. Anyone can do that. You want to let your audience have something to take away from your video. A moral, or maybe a life lesson, even perhaps a compelling sense of need to purchase. All these are what separates good videos from the best. Always leave your audience with a positive impression or at least one at all.
For these sort of videos which aim to retain the audience, a good calculation would be engagement. How much of an impact did your video have on your audience? Would they be more compelled to get on board with you after watching your video? The first metric to measure this that comes to mind would be Play-Rate – the amount of times your video has been clicked on and watched. But how does this differ from View counts? A view is a measurement of someone just simply having seen your content (i.e it’s thumbnail, or description), or even just having watched a small segment of your video. Facebook consideres 1 view after 3 seconds of playing, whilst YouTube counts it as 30 seconds (which is why you see Facebook viral videos having over a million views so quickly). So, back to Play-Rate. Play-Rate measures how many people actually clicked ‘play’ on your video and watched it for at least more than 30 seconds (on YouTube at least). With Play-Rate, you’ll be able to filter out who’s actively watching your content because they want to, and who had it shoved in their faces or were just browsing and didn’t really bother about your content.
But, perhaps you don’t want to settle with Play-Rate, you want to know who actually watched and understood the content and intent in your video from start to end. The best indicator of this would be Watch Time. Instead of looking at Viewcounts or Play-Rate, we’re checking for exactly how long people are watching your video for. Obviously a the longer a person watches your video, the more we could debate that the person is actively engaged in what your content has to offer. If your video is posted on YouTube, a steady way to begin measuring this information is to use YouTube Analytics, a free tool provided by YouTube. Here, you’re able to identify which parts of your video were the most engaging and which weren’t. This allows you to know more accurately what sort of content you need to tweak in the future, or even on-the-go.
Ask yourself; why did I create this product/service for? Chances are it was to help ease people’s pains about something. But in order for them to get on board first, they need to interact with you – through your video. So, you need to assess your target audience, and measure them as customers who buy your registration plan instead of just customers who show interest in you. Think of your video as a enabling tool for revenue generation, something to increase the number of people buying your product/service or actively getting involved in it. engaging with it. For that, you’ll need a direct call-to-action sequence slotted into your video.
More likely than not, your call-to-action involves people doing something after viewing your video such as participating in your campaign or events. Obviously, the best indicator of this is to see just how many people actually call, e-mail or get in touch with you. But at it’s initial stages, Click-Through-Rate(CTR) is one of the most essential metrics to track as it is shows as to whether your video is supplementing your campaign the way its supposed to. CTR is especially good when paired with a video that leads the viewer to your own landing page from YouTube, for example, as it tells you just how many people wanted to do more than just enjoy your video – they believed in you and wanted to be a part of your campaign.
Once you’ve finished a good run on your video marketing campaign, it’s a good practice to take a breather, assess and analyse. Start by going back to ground zero – your desired objective of your video campaign. Then, use the key measurements of the metrics we have laid out above. That being said, we’d like to remind you that consistent, positive ROI over the long term starts with experimenting and learning on-the-go on what works with whom. Just remember, fortune favours the bold, so dont be afraid of taking calculated risks to push for a good campaign. We hope this article serves to help you get a positive ROI at the end of your campaign!