5 Video Performance Metrics that Matter

Added some video clips to your online content? Great!  But now how do you measure the impact your video has really made?  Lively, engaging videos  can be used in a multitude of ways to reach more customers and boost your business. However, to ensure your videos are having the desired impact, or indeed any impact at all, you need to be analyzing video performance metrics and adjusting the clips accordingly.

Video ROI (return on investment) is extremely important and with an ocean of statistics being churned out by countless analytics tools it can be difficult working out what to monitor.

Jon Spenceley from Vidyard.com highlights the fact that ..

“Video analytics are a must-have for marketers who want to go beyond number of viewers, and start attributing real results to video”

Here are 5  video performance metrics that can effectively measure your video ROI.

1. View Through Rate (VTR) 

The VTR is the percentage of people who saw your video that actually go on to watch the video in its entirety. The basic ‘views’ statistic just doesn’t tell the full story when you’re monitoring the impact of your videos. You need to know what’s happening beyond phase one. If people are dropping off early, perhaps your preview image is misrepresenting your content and attracting the wrong audience. Wideo recently rolled out a new feature allowing you to easily change your preview image, so take advantage of that tool next time you’re uploading a video.

Measure the Conversion Rate: You may think the message and delivery of your video hits the nail on the head, but if it’s not converting views into business goals, it simply isn’t doing its job.  Identify which section of your video is not working, cut or edit to ensure people watch your video to the end. Monitor the conversion rate of the video. It enables you to see when viewers leave your video and if they are clicking through to a buying page or another desired destination.

Measure load times:  Check out the average load time of your video to see if your hosting service is doing its job properly. A lot of hard work can be undone if load times drag on as the modern, impatient online consumer will simply head elsewhere if they’re greeted with a clunking load page instead of the video they want to see. If the load times are long your conversion rate will plummet, so don’t be afraid to change your hosting service if the metrics are telling this story.

2. Click Through Rate (CTR)

CTR = how often your viewer clicks the Call-To-Action (CTA) button in your video. CTR is the classic measuring tool to show you how effective your video is at driving action. Make sure you include an effective CTA button in you video. Why not do an A/B test where you can try out 2 different buttons to see which one is performing better. After a period of time you can see which one would be more beneficial to use.

Measure your in-video SEO – The relative lack of text on your video page may mislead you into disregarding those old SEO principles. Don’t fall into that trap. Titles, keywords and tags are crucial if you want your video to be discovered in the first place, so check out tools like Google Trends to see what people are searching for and make sure those phrases are included on your video page. What’s more, many content management systems (CMS) now have in-built SEO tools so make sure they’re also applied to give your video maximum visibility.

3. Share statistics

Once your video’s discoverable, it then needs to be shareable. As we know, social media shares fuel the success of you videos and the only way of achieving viral status. Use video performance metrics to show the number of shares your video is getting. Find a platform such as Vidyard.com  to help you see not only how many times your video was shared, but also on which networks, how it was shared and measure the metrics along the way.

Use your finding from the video performance metrics extracted to implementing your findings for future content. Perhaps the video is getting plenty of shares on Twitter where content is quickly consumed and discarded, but is lacking the substance to gain recognition among the LinkedIn community. Work out where your audience dwells and tailor your videos to those platforms.

4. Watch time

Views only measure the amount of times people clicked play on your video. On the other hand watch time measures actual engagement. Measure watch time to see how effective is your video at getting the message through to your audience and achieving your desired engagement level.

According to reelseo.com 15 seconds is the average time 50% of your audience watch a video before stopping. So keep it SHORT! you pretty much have 15 seconds to grab your audience attention. Make sure you communicate your message early on to ensure max ROI.

5. Life Time Value of a Video (LTVV)

A great way to view your ROI is to measure your video performance metrics over a period of time. After you have gathered a substantial amount of info, see if you can model out their trajectory. Work out how many conversions your video will ultimately generate, whether its more views, email/blog signups or product purchases.

The bottom line?

Setting your video live does not mean your job is done. But don’t see this as a negative thing that’s adding on more work. See it as a tool that shapes the destiny of your video even after it’s been made. If something’s not right, the game isn’t over. Use video performance metrics to see what tweaks will help your videos flourish.

Here is a excellent and clever INFOGRAPHIC by Vidyard.com on how marketers can increase ROI.