Video marketing is time-consuming. You need to write the script, film, edit, post the finished video on your website and social channels, and then measure the results to be sure the effort was worthwhile.
But how do you measure success or failure? We asked some top marketing experts which video marketing metrics are best for determining if your efforts are bearing fruit.
5 video marketing metrics
Views
Likes
Retention
Rank
Conversion rate
“First and foremost, you have to ensure your videos attract viewers,” says Daniela Andreevska, marketing director at Mashvisor. You can’t hope to achieve much with your video marketing unless people are actually seeing your videos, which is why the first step in any video marketing strategy is driving traffic to your videos.
“If you don’t meet your targets for this metric, you won’t meet your targets for more advanced metrics because those depend on views,” says Andreevska.
Shakun Bansal, head of marketing at Mettl, warns against only counting the number of views. “For example, there may have been an auto replay that occurred,” he says. “Or some audience members may not have actually watched the video.”
Likes are a better measure of the success of a video because likes more accurately indicate audience engagement. “A viewer liking your video shows they have taken extra effort in their viewing experience,” Bansal says. “They are letting you know they found your content interesting in some way.”
The retention rate is how long viewers stick around to watch your video, and it’s useful for informing you about what you need to change to make your content better. Austin Iuliano, a social media consultant, says retention is his “secret metric” for making highly engaging content.
“My first couple of videos had a retention rate of around 20 percent, which is not bad, but not great. After further diving into the videos, I realized I needed to change up the style of the content,” he explains.
After analyzing the information he gleaned, Iuliano changed the style of his videos to be more in line with video essays. It worked. The retention rate for his videos increased about 50 percent. “You can build your audience once you know how to hook people’s attention and keep it,” Iuliano says.
James Canzanella, owner of Isolated Marketing Nights, agrees that views and likes are important, but his favorite video marketing metric is a video’s rank. “Nothing beats creating a highly keyword-targeted video and ranking it at the top of YouTube, or even both YouTube and Google,” Canzanella. “Views will then come organically, especially if you create a video that has people watching until the end.”
Canzanella says this approach works well with many long-tail keywords that have little competition, which allows video marketers who are just getting started achieve results sooner rather than later.
“There’s a ton of traffic available when it comes to video marketing, so make sure your videos are properly optimized to get in front of those who desperately need the information you’re sharing,” he says.
The most successful marketers eat, sleep, and breathe the conversion rate metric. Just as with other marketing metrics, the conversion rate is important for videos. Jacob Landis-Eigsti, owner of Jacob LE Video Production, says the conversion rate is the most important video marketing metric.
“Video marketing is about using video to drive sales. Not every video needs to be directly promoting a product, of course, but a video marketing strategy should always be centered around driving more sales,” explains Landis-Eigsti.
Comments, likes, and followers are important, but a good conversion rate is the central focus. Landis-Eigsti recommends including a call to action at the end of your videos. Additionally, always track the amount of traffic your website receives from the video, and what percentage of viewers turn into customers.
“Over the course of a campaign, you need to see a positive return on investment from your video marketing efforts,” he says. “The conversion rate is a key indicator of this.”
Want the complete rundown on video marketing? Check out this complete guide we created on the topic.
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