Video Best Practices Part 3: Video Metrics

Now that you've created your video and it's out in the world (if you haven’t yet, check out Video Best Practices: Parts 1 and 2), it’s time to look at video metrics to measure success.

Your definition of success for video marketing campaigns will determine which metrics are most important to you. Most video campaigns are geared towards driving awareness for your brand, and it’s traditionally been hard to see the long-term impacts of your video campaigns. However, for marketers with the right data and tools at their disposal, seeing the long-term impacts that videos have further cements the fact that video is an indispensable part of a marketing mix. 

Below, we’ve separated out common video metrics to analyze at every phase of the customer lifecycle. While finding these metrics in connection to your video gets more difficult as you go later into the lifecycle, it’s important to have a finger on the pulse of these metrics to spot long term trends, even at a high level. 

For tips around video production and distribution:

Awareness

In this phase, you’ll recall, the goal is to catch potential customers’ attention and create an impression. You may also want to drive them to take some action to further engage with you, pushing them down the path to purchase. Here are some video metrics to watch:

• Video completion rate: This is the percentage of your video that was viewed. It’s important because it tells you how much of your content a potential customer is consuming, but it’s also factored into some algorithms, like Facebook’s, that decide who is shown your content. Facebook uses the average completion rate to rank videos in a user’s newsfeed. A higher completion rate means you’ll get more organic traffic, which in turn lowers your costs.
• Video views: This is one of the more simple metrics, as it just tells you how many people have viewed your video. However, it’s important to know your channel’s definition of a “view.” For instance, YouTube counts a view when someone engages with an ad, watches 30 seconds of an ad, or watches the whole ad if it’s less than 30 seconds long. Facebook (and Instagram) on the other hand, count a video view on a campaign targeted towards views at the 15-second mark, or completion if the video is less than 15 seconds long.
• New site visitors: For this metric, you’ll have to dig into your website analytics tool. You should be able to see new site visitors by source, but you should also look at new site visitors overall. A customer may see or watch your video and later remember it when they’re ready to get more information. That type of behavior would look like an organic new site visitor but was really driven by your video. 

Consideration

So, you have their attention, but they haven’t quite purchased yet. As we mentioned earlier, the goal of the consideration phase is to capitalize on that attention and move someone closer to purchase. The engagement phase might be relatively short depending on how long potential customers consider a purchase and compare different options.

• Likes, shares, retweets, comments: Most social platforms that you use to distribute your videos will contain some engagement metric. Whether they break it out and share with you the exact actions that people are taking or they just tell you an engagement rate, this is a good indication of the kind of effect your video is having on people. The next step will be to go one level deeper and go through any comments, retweets, or shares to get an idea of exactly how your content is resonating and what reactions people have.
• Email signups: If a customer is letting you into their heart (aka, their email inbox), that’s a clear sign that a customer wants to hear more from you. While it will be difficult to track email sign-ups back to your video unless you are especially intentional about it, you can watch for increases in your list around video launches.
• New social media followers or subscribers: Like email sign-ups, this metric will be an indication of how receptive customers are to your message. Most social media platforms will give you this number, so watch for increases that could be attached to your video. 

For more on how to create a robust social media strategy:

Decision

This is the ultimate goal for most campaigns, which means you’re probably already practiced at measuring the impact of your campaigns as it relates to purchases. However, it’s important to remember that a subgoal of the decision phase is to encourage someone to purchase again and refer their friends.

• Return on investment (ROI): Calculating your ROI for a video campaign can entail looking at just your media spend, or you can include the actual cost you incurred through video creation. It’s helpful to understand it from both angles since time is, as the saying goes, money.
• Conversion rate: This counts the number of conversions over the number of people who saw your video. Make sure to look at various time frames or lookback periods to make sure that you’re taking into account how long it might take for someone to go from a video viewer to a purchaser.

Delight

Once a customer has purchased, most brands turn around and try to encourage a customer to come back. The interesting part is that the way a customer finds out about you can impact how loyal they are to you in the long run. So, if someone sees an impactful video and then becomes a customer, they’re more likely to have positive associations with your brand and therefore more likely to be loyal.

• Return purchase rate: This is particularly important for brands with products that can be purchased more often, like clothing, makeup, food, and more. It’s also important, though, for products that are meant to be used longer term like luggage, electronics, and even cars. While it will be difficult to attach your return purchase rate to your initial video distribution strategy, you can see how adding video to your email strategy or retargeting previous customers with a video increases your return purchase rate.
• Lifetime customer value: This is the measure of how much a customer spends with you over the average lifetime of a relationship with you. If they spend more, you can imply that they are a loyal customer. The lifetime value is impacted by retention marketing, but it’s also heavily dependent on a person’s initial reaction to your brand, which in this case involves video.
• Referrals: Whether you ask for them or not, customer referrals are an important part of any marketing strategy. Because you don’t have to pay for referrals unless you have a referral incentive in place, referrals are a method of obtaining new free or low-cost customers.
• Shares and retweets: Watch for customers who are consistently sharing or retweeting your content. By interacting with you in this way, your customers are helping you to increase your organic reach. Because most video efforts are meant to create awareness, measuring the impacts of your videos throughout the customer journey is difficult, but not out of the question. With the right tools on your side, you’ll be able to measure your impact and see how video can help you not only create awareness and drive purchases but also help you create more loyal, long-lasting relationships with your customers.

For additional reading around customer delight: 

Ready to Create?

If you’re still not convinced that you need video at all, here are our closing thoughts about video’s value. First, many forms of video are evergreen content, meaning that the same video could live on your website, for example, for many years before it starts to lose value. This means you’ll make a one-time investment in creating the content that will pay dividends for months or years down the line.

Second, consumers report that they want brands to put out video content. In many surveys, consumers share that video is their preferred way of learning about a company, product, or service. For example, Wyzowl reports that 68% of people say they’d most prefer to learn about a new product or service by watching a short video. Why would you miss out on the opportunity to give your audience what it’s asking for? Learn more about consumer preferences surrounding video content here.

Ultimately, the best way to approach video content is to get started. If your e-commerce brand is lacking in the video department, we recommend diving right in — even if you feel like you’re not ready yet. By the time you’ve gone through the process once, you’ll have a valuable asset to distribute and a wealth of knowledge about what you might want to do differently next time. We can’t wait to see what you create!

If you haven't yet, be sure to download our “Video Best Practices” eBook!

Last updated on August 16th, 2022.