A Guide to Measuring your Video Marketing Return to Investment (ROI)

The ultimate goal of video marketing is for your video content to drive sales, create new leads and enhance brand awareness among your target audience.

To achieve these objectives, you’ll first need to invest resources, including time, money, and effort, into your activities. These resources must be tracked, with careful attention paid to your return on investment (RoI), and measured in order to determine if your video marketing strategy is actually paying off.

Success in video marketing can be tricky to measure. Depending on your goals, a successful marketing strategy means that you will need to keep an eye on the things that tell you what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong.

In this blog, we examine the different metrics to be tracked, and the outcomes we can measure that tell us if your RoI is turning a profit. 

Tracking the Metrics

There are two sets of metrics to be considered in video marketing. While both groups give us important information on our video marketing content’s performance, separately, they allow us to figure out if our RoI is creating value for the business.

Vanity Metrics

These metrics refer to how our videos are doing out there. They tell us if there are any issues with the videos that affect their ‘popularity and visibility to target markets. Vanity metrics are especially helpful in informing us on the corrective action to be taken to boost the videos’ overall performance. 

• Impressions – How often your video thumbnails appear in viewers search results. A drop in impressions may mean you’ll need to refine and enhance your keyword targeting. 

• Click-Through Rates – Indicate what percentage of people who see your video thumbnail actually click on it. Low CTR’s may mean your thumbnail needs to be improved.

• Percentage of Video Watched – Shows how far into your content people get before stopping and navigating away. If audiences abandon your video in the first couple of seconds or skip through, there are issues with the content itself.

• Number of Subscribers – Are the number of people signed up to watch new videos stagnating? If so, it’s time to give them a reason to subscribe. Improve your CTA‘s, and motivate them to follow your channel.

Business Metrics

Business metrics represent the ‘money-spinning’ potential of video content. They are of particular interest to business owners and CEOs, and their relevance depends on what point in the customer journey the viewer currently is.

Business metrics are identified before the marketing campaign gets underway since you’ll need to determine which tools you’re going to be using to track the data.

• Leads Generated – Tell us how many viewers turned into a realistic potential customer towards the end of the funnel. Leads are determined by measuring how many people take action as a result of watching the video and is probably the clearest indicator of RoI. Vudini, for example, will embed your video on your webpage, and include a lead tracker, tracking whenever someone clicks on the video and a new lead is generated. 

• Website Visits – Indicate how many people navigate to your website as a result of viewing your video content. A good number here shows high interest in your offering.

These metrics can be accurately tracked by making use of a unique URL for your video and then tracked via Google Analytics. Google Analytics’ UTM Code or Bitly’s Short URL are great tools for this. 

Measuring Your RoI

Once you’ve figured out how to track your video’s metrics, you’ll need to measure them against your goals. If your metrics underperform, it’s time to take action and change the trajectory of your video content. If your metrics are looking good, well, you’re doing it right and will enjoy a number of easily measurable RoI-boosting benefits.

Need all the ranking factors to get more views and subscribers on YouTube? Download the full guide below.

From the moment your video is live, you need to monitor it. To do so, you must select what metrics are most important to your overall goal and only measure those. For instance, if your main objective is building brand visibility you will then need to measure: view count, social shares and reach.

The below infographic outlines the essential metrics you need to know:

Measuring Indirect Video Marketing Benefits

• Increased Conversion Rates – One of the most rewarding benefits of crafting successful video content is seeing an increase in the number of people who become customers as a result of watching it. In fact, adding a video to your landing page can increase these conversions by as much as 80%, while including personalised video content in other sales and marketing activities boosts response rates dramatically.

• Time and Money Savings – As the world goes ever more digital, video allows us to take advantage of the convenience and access afforded by this shift. No longer do sales teams need to spend hours travelling to clients, repeating the same demos and pitches to them, one person at a time. Instead, we can measure the time and expense saved by a successful video content strategy by looking at the improved productivity of sales personnel with more time on their hands.

Qualitative Video ROI Metrics

These metrics are a little harder to measure since they rely on the opinions of different stakeholders, such as brand sentiment, trust, and product education. These metrics affect the long-term investment return and should be considered in tandem with your number-centric vanity and business metrics.

With all these numbers, metrics, and data floating around, tracking and measuring your video content RoI can quickly become a little overwhelming. A simple solution here is to create a Video Marketing Dashboard. Simply select the metrics you want to focus on, put them onto a spreadsheet, and each month, track and record these numbers, adjusting your video marketing strategy as you go.

Remember to adjust your video content marketing strategy based on the information you gather from your tracking and measuring activities. A successful marketing strategy depends on being reactive to your videos’ performance.

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Need all the ranking factors to get more views and subscribers on YouTube? Download the full guide below.