Video metrics help you see whether your video is achieving the goals you set for it. At least, that’s what they’re supposed to do. Unfortunately, it’s easy to get distracted with vanity metrics that seem positive but don’t actually connect to your marketing goals.
Here’s a look at the video metrics you should be tracking so you can make informed decisions about your video marketing. These metrics can help you make engaging video ads, build more effective landing pages, and write more compelling CTAs.
How Video Metrics Inform Your Strategy
Video metrics are standard measures you can use to see how well your video is performing. Here are some common video metrics and the goals that most often go with them:
- Video play rate – make videos that are relevant to the audience
- Video engagement – build a relationship between the audience and the brand
- Bounce rate – keep viewers on the site longer
- Social shares – spread the word about the brand and/or build a bigger audience
- Conversions – make sales or get sign-ups
The most important metric for any video is conversions. Conversions measures the sales value, number of sign-ups, or contacts resulting from your video.
Tracking conversion and other video metrics helps you recognize what’s working and what isn’t. They can signal a need for a new video strategy, or encourage you to keep creating similar content.
Beware The Lure of Vanity Metrics
Tracking the wrong metrics is worse than a waste of time. It’s misleading. Metric mismatch can make it seem like your video is doing well even though it never achieves the goal you set for it. These mismatched metrics are known as vanity metrics.
A vanity metric is any metric that sounds impressive, but doesn’t connect to the goal of the video. For example, you might be excited that your social media video achieved great reach, but that doesn’t tell you anything about whether it met your goal of converting customers.
Some marketers fall into the vanity trap when they define objectives only after looking at the metrics. Remember the “Texas sharpshooter fallacy” explained in the video below. Don’t revise your idea of success after your video metrics tell you something that you don’t want to hear.
5 Video Metrics to Measure Video Marketing Success
Whether you’re sharing video on website landing pages, through email, or on social media, video metrics help you measure video marketing success. Social media, video hosting, and email marketing platforms all offer built-in video analytics to help you track and optimize your videos.
1 – Video Play Rate measures relevance
Video play rate is the number of times the video is played compared to the number of opportunities people had to view it. For example, if 100 people visit your landing page and 30 of them click your video, the video has a 30% play rate.
Play rate is most useful in environments without autoplay enabled. With autoplay, the video may start to run even if the viewer isn’t interested in watching which can skew your data.
Some social media platforms, including Facebook and YouTube, give you information on how much of the video was played. On Facebook, you can see how many times 25% or more of your video was played. On YouTube you can see how many viewers watched 25%, 50% and 75% of your video. Play percentage helps you see how long audiences are staying and whether they’re getting the full story.
Increase your video play rate by using an enticing video thumbnail to encourage users to click your video. Give your video a key-word rich title, and surround it with search engine optimized text.
2 – Video Engagement builds relationships
Video engagement is a measure of how well the video helps a brand build a relationship with its audience. You can measure video engagement in several ways. Shares and likes, unique viewers, watch time, and completion rate can all be tools to estimate engagement. Engaged users may watch multiple brand videos in a row, or watch the same video several times.
Heatmaps can give you even more detailed information about how audiences are engaging with your video. These color-coded reports show you detailed data about when viewers paused, skipped, rewatched or otherwise interacted with your video.
Crazy Egg, HotJar and Heatmap are just a few heatmap metric sites with affordable plans to get you started. The video hosting site, Wistia, also offers heatmaps for video that plays on or is embedded by Wistia.
Increase video engagement by creating quality videos that answer viewer questions or address their pain points. Place website videos near the top of the page and create video playlists so users can easily watch multiple videos in a row. On social media, include CTAs that encourage likes and shares.
3 – Bounce Rate tracks visitor retention
Web page bounce rates can give you some insight into whether your video is working. A website visitor “bounces” if they don’t do at least one of the following: (a) stay for at least 10 seconds, (b) convert, (c) visit another page on your site.
High bounce rates means your video may not be compelling enough to keep viewers on your site. Average bounce rates depend on your industry.
- B2B, 30-50%
- Healthcare, 55-70%
- Finance and insurance, 40-65%
- Technology and software, 30-55%
- Ecommerce and retail, 20-40%
Measure your page’s bounce rate before and after adding video. Or compare the bounce rate of landing pages with video against those without video. If bounce rates improve with video, that’s a good indication that your video is meeting its goal of keeping people on your website longer.
Improve web page bounce rates by placing your video above the fold and surrounding it with helpful text. A good thumbnail can make a big difference. You may also want to test whether autoplay helps or hurts your bounce rate.
4 – Social Shares help spread the word
It’s no surprise that people trust friends and family over brands and influencers. About 71% of adults have bought products based on recommendations from family while only 35% buy based on recommendations from a brand.
Social shares can help spread the word about your brand. They may also increase trust which can boost conversions. If your goal is to grow your audience and increase awareness of your brand, social shares is the metric to watch.
Even if you’re only sharing your video on your website or via email, shares can still be a useful metric. Most video hosting platforms include a share button on their video players.
Increase social shares by including a CTA that specifically asks viewers to share the video. The more interesting and engaging your video is, the more likely users are to share it.
5 – Conversions are the MVM (most valuable metric)
Conversions will always be the most valuable video metric for any campaign. Even if your short-term goal is to increase awareness or engage audiences, the point of all that is to get people to buy what you’re selling.
Your definition of conversions may include email list signups, downloads, subscriptions, sales, demo or free-trial signups. These are the real world impacts your video has on your bottom line.
Unless you have a robust lead attribution system, it might be hard to measure the role that video plays in your sales process. You won’t always be able to tell if a viewer saw your video and then did a web search for your brand. Your videos may help build awareness and trust with customers so they’ll later convert from an ad or email.
However, services like Google Analytics and HubSpot can help with attribution tracking. They include attribution tools that can help you tell whether particular videos or landing pages are converting.
Increase conversions by pairing quality content with the right CTA to encourage viewers to take action now. The viewer should easily understand what you want them to do and feel compelled to do it.
Marketing Goals Rely on Quality Video (Not Just Metrics)
Whatever video metric you’re trying to influence, you’ll see the best results if you start with a quality video. The experts at IdeaRocket can help you create engaging videos that audiences can’t wait to share. We make explainer videos and animated commercials for Healthcare, SaaS, Human Resources, B2B and retail business of all types. Contact us to get started.
