How do you know if your marketing video is a success or if you’re taking the right next step to optimizing your content? Look to video metrics — they measure your results and are a sign of whether or not you’re reaching your business video goals.

Before you can start measuring…

Define a goal — What should your video content achieve? Is it to encourage people to download an e-book, deepen engagement on social media, or educate customers on your website?
Pick a target audience — Who do you want to watch the video and what is their persona?
Identify a your key metrics — What is your goal? Your key metrics should tell you if your goals are being met. If you are focusing on too many metrics, then your goal might be too broad and need refining.

When your business is clear about what goal its wants video content to achieve and who the video is for, then that will inform how and where you share your online videos for the greatest reach and impact possible.

We chose 3 of the most common goals for marketing video and go over what you should know about tracking and using their metrics to measure performance.

1. Brand Awareness

Because of its visual format and the popularity of online video in social media, video marketing can be very effective in raising brand awareness. Although it’s a common video goal, it can be hard to track.

What to measure

Mentions, shares, comments, conversations, etc. One way to measure brand awareness is to track video shares and the number of times your business appears in social mentions and conversations in a given amount of time following a video launch.

Video views. This metric is not a direct reflection of the audience size that the video reached, but it does reveal how the video performed in relation to other pieces of content.

How to measure

Major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube provide tools for seeing metrics such as video views, likes, reach, watch time, and engagement. You should also try doing a Google search of your business name to see if it’s creating conversation elsewhere.

2. Lead Generation

Video can be a very effective medium for addressing a customer need; it’s a visual experience designed to capture people’s attention. Plus, it’s a form of content that is an increasingly integral to the way people use social media — whether to inform their consumer decisions or be entertained. Video shows what your business can do for its potential customers. Don’t forget to use a clear call-to-action!

What to measure

Conversions. This one is the most obvious: conversions that resulted from your video will reveal its performance as a whole. That conversion could take the form of a contact form submission, newsletter subscription, or purchase, depending on your specific goal.

Video actions (clicks, views, retention). Did you use a clickable call-to-action on your video? Or did you share your video on a social platform where you can track video views and retention? These metrics help give you an idea of whether or not the video content is relevant to your audience.

Site metrics (traffic, bounce rate, time spent on landing page). If your lead generation goal is to get viewers to visit your website to complete an action, then it is important to know whether or not your video has created an impact on website traffic. If website traffic has increased following a video publication, are people bouncing from the page or staying enough time to indicate interest in your business?

Pro Tip: Use Wideo’s link tool (found inside the Editor) to add relevant links to your video to enrich their viewing experience and lead them to your website or landing page.

How to measure

It can be tricky to measure all the leads that result from video marketing if the video doesn’t use tagged links that people can follow to your website. Conversions can also happen days or weeks after someone watched a video. However, clickable calls-to-action make it easier for people to take action, and for you to track those generated leads — just make sure you tag them using UTM parameters.

You can measure conversions and site metrics with tools such as Google Analytics.

3. Education

You might create a how-to video or tutorials to help explain your business to people and ease any doubts they might have. Similar to the video goal of brand awareness, video communication with the goal of educating people can also be difficult to track. However, when measured properly, you can gain great insight into how to continue optimizing video strategy.

What to measure

Site metrics. Again, metrics on the web page where your video is being watched are important for getting an idea of content relevance or resonance among viewers.

Number of times a video is being rewatched. This can indicate whether or not the content is confusing.

Number of support emails received on a certain topic. If your video tutorial addresses a frequently asked question, good measures of its success are 1) whether or not you’re getting less support emails on that topic, and 2) whether or not the quality of customer questions have evolved beyond FAQs. If there is no change, then the distribution of the videos could be improved, or, the content might not be clear enough.