You want to have a successful marketing video, right?
Yes, sure Phil in accounting said it was good, and your mom loves it, but how well did it do with your intended audience?
You won’t know unless you set realistic goals but you can’t have goals unless you look at your metrics for a successful video. Below are four key metrics that you can use to set goals for your videos.
Keep in mind these metrics that we are going to talk about are not for video ads (ads that run in front of content) this is for the video content itself.
Views: The most natural metric to measure is with views. Views is how many times anyone watched your video, right?
Well, how a view is measured depends on the platform that your audience views them. A view can mean that someone scrolled past your thumbnail, started watching a second, or even half of your video. You need to know what the platform you use counts as a view.
So views are a spongy metric. Views are excellent, but really don’t give you the whole picture.
Engagement: Engagement is a more precise version of views. Engagement details what percentage of people watch what percentage of your video. It is much more helpful than a grab bag of “views,” but it can be a bit misleading as well.
For instance, let’s say with video “A” you lose 40% of your viewers in the first 2% of your video (called the nose) and another 10% at the halfway mark. Compare that to video “B” where you lose 10% in the nose and 40% after the midway point.
In both cases, you have 50% viewership, but in video “B” a lot more of your message is absorbed. Note: you will very rarely have 100% viewer engagement, so don’t hold yourself up to an unrealistic goal.
According to Wistia average drop off in the nose is “4.9% for videos 1 – 2 minutes in length”. That engagement loss increases to 17.3% for videos 5 – 10 minutes in length”. So depending on the length of your video you can find an appropriate goal for your engagement.
Wistia.com
Shares: Share on social media are another metric to consider. Shares are a great way to introduce your video to other audiences. Moreover, they send a social signal to the search engines that “this is good content; show it more often.”
A caveat is this metric is going to vary greatly depending on your social media presence and savvy. A consistent way to look at your share ratio is “shares/views.”
Now we all know that the shares of an industrial video are not going to be anywhere near those of “insert popular rapper/singer/boy-band here,” but if you can get a ratio that beats around 1/100 you are doing great. Your share of “previously referenced popular rapper/singer/boy-band” is probably going for a ratio of 1/50 or lower. Real viral videos are around 1/25 or less.
Click-through: Click through rate (CTR), or conversion rate is my favorite metric. Not only have people watched your video but it also encouraged them to take action. Whether the action is to download a case study, sign up for a demo, or join your newsletter, you now have some who have self-selected.
So what is a reasonable goal for our video content CTR? Unfortunately, it can vary widely. The best bet might be to take some other piece of content, say a blog, and compare it to a page where your video is hosted. That will give you a starting point.
If you want help with your marketing video why not contact me and we can chat about it?