Best Ways to Measure Video Success

Best Ways to Measure Video Success

Video content is an excellent way to convey information in an entertaining and easily digestible fashion. In today’s world of visual platforms, video is an excellent tool for marketers to reach a large audience with shareable content. However, when it comes time to measure video success, many marketers don’t look beyond the number of views. To effectively leverage video to boost brand or product awareness, marketers need to track several metrics to determine the success of their video marketing strategy.

Play Rate

While the number of views isn’t the only thing that should be measured, marketers still need to know that their video is being played. The play rate is the percentage of visitors that click the play button. For example, if a company is sending out a video in an email, they want to make sure it is viewed. If the play rate isn’t as high as you would like, there are several things that can improve it.

Keep your video positioned “above the fold.” Videos receive more views if they don’t require scrolling. Choose thumbnails with humans featured whenever possible. They receive more interest than those without. Keep your video width to between 401 and 600 pixels to better grab viewer’s interest and attention.

The play rate metric is helpful for determining whether your video is in the right place and whether it is engaging. If no one is clicking play, you may need to rethink the content of your video, or where it is situated on a site or in an email.

Engagement

Video engagement includes the watch rate – which is the percent of a video that someone watched. The watch rate is incredibly important – viewers who watched a product video they enjoyed were 97% more likely to purchase the product. Clicking play is one thing, but for viewers to truly engage with video content, they need to watch the whole thing. Many marketer focus on view rate, but watch rate is more important to measure video success.

Watch rate can be improved by aligning the video and page content to reinforce the connection and context. Consider providing multi-language narration or subtitles if you are appealing to a global audience. Viewers are more likely to continue watching videos in their language.

To fully leverage this metric, analyze the parts of your video. Use a video hosting platform with a heat map to discover where viewers re-watch or skip ahead. Once you have identified problem areas, you can rework them to decrease drop off.

Conversion Rate

The purpose of most video marketing is to drive sales. This is especially true for product videos which encourage customers to buy a product or service. Conversion is the number of leads or customers gained by a piece of marketing. Tracking the exact metrics can be tricky and depend on your hosting platform, but once you set up how much viewing the video contributes to the conversion, you can accurately measure video success.

If improving conversion rate is your main goal, there are some things to ensure you are prompting the largest number of purchases. Focus on where customers are in the funnel when they view the video and make sure that content is relevant to the stage. Be sure to provide valuable information – answer questions or alleviate any concerns. Carefully consider video placement on your site so that it has the highest impact.

Social Shares

Video content is a wonderful tool for marketers because, when it is done well, it is easily shareable. This can be measured by the number of times your video is shared across different social channels. Not only does social sharing lead to more views and higher engagement, but it can also help marketers test the appeal of a video. The more shares, the more a viewer was impacted by the video and prompted to share.

If video sharing is your priority, ask your viewers to share. Prompting viewers and fans to spread your content is a great method to increase the number of shares. Be sure that the content is ultimately shareable – entertaining, educational, or emotional – it must perform on its own outside your site. To jump-start the sharing, reach out to relevant influencers and ask them to post it to their channels and audiences.

Many marketers only track the number of views a video receives to measure video success, but it’s important to focus on more metrics for an effective video strategy. Some viewers may not watch all the way through – many may stop watching at the same place. Figure out where to situate a video on your site and recognize what content to showcase based on your audience and where viewers are in the funnel. Successful video marketing depends on knowing how your video performs and making changes if it is not as effective as you want.

Have you ever found yourself in these shoes as a marketer? Share what’s going on in the comments below and we, along with your peers can bounce ideas to see if we can help!