Running a successful video marketing campaign requires tact. To ensure that your video meets your business goals, you have to monitor your campaign and adjust it as you go forward.
So, how can you measure a video’s success?
You can measure your campaign’s key performance indicators (KPIs) to track your video’s performance.
The KPIs you should keep a close eye on will depend on your marketing goals: brand awareness, consideration, or conversion. Therefore, define your goal before you move ahead.
If you’re new to video marketing and feel a little overwhelmed, don’t worry. You can learn everything you need to know about it in our ebook.
We’ve broken down the process into three simple steps, backed with examples, so be sure to check it out.
How to build a video marketing campaign for startups
Now that you have your strategy sorted, let’s talk about how to target the right video KPIs.
Four steps to measuring success with video KPIs
1. Identify the primary marketing goal for your campaign
When you plan your video marketing strategy, you’re likely to use a funnel approach and start with wanting to increase brand awareness; then consideration and, ultimately, conversions.
Now, although prospects may not necessarily experience a linear journey, marketers still use the model because the target audience generally falls into one of three camps: unfamiliar with the product, on the fence about a product, ready to act.
If you can figure out where your audience is in their buyer’s journey, you can prioritize your marketing goals.
2. Zero in on the right KPIs for your marketing goal
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of video marketing KPIs? You might think of video views. And though this metric is important, the number of views you get won’t paint a complete picture of how effective your campaign is.
Read more: Why You Shouldn’t Be Hell-bent on Creating Viral Video Content
Take a look at some of these video KPIs that you can track based on your marketing goals.
Now, let’s define some important video KPIs
Video KPIs to keep track of
Video plays
Indicates how many times your video starts to play. This is counted for each impression.
Impressions
Shows the number of times your ads appeared on the screen. If one person views the same ad more than once, that counts as an impression, too.
Reach
Indicates the number of people that saw your ad at least once.
Thruplays/view-through rate
The number of times someone viewed your video completely. Facebook records a ‘complete view’ or thruplay even if someone watches the video for at least 15 seconds.
Read more: How to Set up and Optimize Facebook Video Ads
Watch time/average play time
The average time a video was played. Video replay time is also included.
Ad recall lift rate
This rate is an estimate of the people who, when asked, remembered seeing your ad. This metric is mostly relevant for awareness and engagement objectives.
Click-through rate (CTR)
Specifies the percentage of times people saw your ad and then clicked on the CTA.
If your marketing goal is awareness, then this metric may not be useful for you because on Facebook, for example, you don’t have the option for adding a CTA for an awareness campaign.
Leads
This shows you the number of leads your video ad has generated.
It’s an important video KPI to keep track and helps you understand how many people are interested in your company or its offerings. You can then retarget them to boost conversions.
Purchases
If your marketing goal is to increase sales, then this is a video KPI to keep track of. It shows you the number of purchase events your ad generated.
Once your video marketing campaign is in motion and enough time has passed, you can measure relevant KPIs and measure ROI. Use the data and analytics your ad manager provides to assess your efforts.
If you’re wondering how to measure a video campaign’s ROI, then keep reading.
3. Assessing video analytics and measuring ROI
The lifetime value of a video
To assess ROI, you can calculate your video performance metrics for a specific time period and then predict its trajectory.
To do this, you must first gather a substantial amount of data. After that, you’ll be able to assess your video’s effectiveness.
4. Optimize for your KPIs
If you feel like your video ad campaign could do better, you can optimize it.
Adjust your targeting, video ad placement, and budget allocation for better results.
When it comes to optimizing your video ad, you may want to try comparing your results to an industry benchmark. But a better approach would be to try A/B testing your own ad creatives to set a bar for yourself.
You should also compare your current campaign to one of your previous ones.
If this is your first video marketing effort, then you could compare your ad’s performance at different time periods—especially after you’ve optimized the campaign.
Next, we’ll take a look at our recent video marketing campaign and answer some questions so you can see the 4-step method in action.
Analyzing our campaign
Our video production team at MotionCue created a sizzle video for brand awareness. We adjusted the ad creative based on the info we had from our previous campaigns and then launched the video on Facebook. We’ve been monitoring it with relevant KPIs.
Here’s a breakdown of how we applied the 4-step method to track and optimize our campaign.
Our marketing goal for this campaign
Brand awareness.
KPIs for this marketing goal
The brand awareness KPIs we focused on were: video views, reach, Impressions, Thruplays, 25% video views, 50% video views, 75% video views, 95% video views, and ad recall lift.
Here are some stats from our campaign.
Measuring ROI
Since our video marketing goal for this campaign was brand awareness, we mainly monitored the engagement level to assess its performance.
Our plans for optimization
We optimized our video ad before we launched it. Previous data helped us figure out how to move ahead with the campaign with our best foot forward.
If we felt it was necessary to make some changes, we would adjust targeting; ad placement, and budget.
Bonus tips
- When you’re planning your video marketing strategy, make sure your team is on the same page. There should be a consensus on the selected KPIs, targeting methods, and ad creative.
- Stay on track and make sure no one changes their approach midway. You can’t ask for results based on KPIs that weren’t agreed upon beforehand.
- Keep monitoring your campaign and ask for analytics reports. Pull the plug on low-performing ads and adjust your ad budget as you go.
We hope you now have a better understanding of how to track your video marketing campaign’s performance using the right KPIs.
There’s no doubt that video is a highly engaging and effective medium for reaching out to prospects on every stage of the buyer’s journey. But you must learn how to track and measure your content’s performance to make sure it has the best chance at success.
The bottom line: keep adjusting your current campaigns and future video ads to achieve your business goals with greater efficiency.
If you want to supercharge your marketing efforts with a result-oriented video, then contact us to kick-start your project.
We’ve been in the video production business for 10 years and would love to help you achieve your business goals.
Schedule a free consultation call with our video strategist
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