When it comes to har­ness­ing the pow­er of video mar­ket­ing, track­ing views won’t cut it; you will need more pow­er­ful insights into your video efforts and how they impact your over­all mar­ket­ing strategy.

This is where key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors (KPIs) come in: KPIs are mea­sur­able val­ues that indi­cate how effec­tive your video mar­ket­ing efforts are. They allow you to track engage­ment, click-throughs, and more. And this, in turn, allows you to hone in on what needs to be adjust­ed to opti­mise your results.

Let’s dive into the video mar­ket­ing KPIs you should track to opti­mise your mar­ket­ing strategy.

Why Measure Video Performance?

Before we explore which KPIs to track, here are three rea­sons to mea­sure video performance:

1. To guide decision making

Track­ing your per­for­mance gives you a way to quan­ti­fy your progress. When you know what’s going right and wrong with your video mar­ket­ing, you can make informed deci­sions about your next steps.

2. To get a better ROI

If you’re using video to sup­port your mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, mea­sur­ing your per­for­mance allows you to iden­ti­fy which areas of your strat­e­gy need to be opti­mised. That’s not all: the right met­rics can show you where to invest your resources for a bet­ter return on invest­ment (ROI).

3. To create better content

To har­ness the pow­er of video, it’s cru­cial to cre­ate con­tent that res­onates with your tar­get audi­ence. The right met­rics will help you iden­ti­fy what types of video con­tent res­onate with your audi­ence. Armed with this infor­ma­tion, you can opti­mise your con­tent strategy.

Video Marketing KPIs You Should Track

With so many KPIs avail­able, which ones do you track to mea­sure the suc­cess of your video marketing?

First, con­sid­er how video mar­ket­ing fits into your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. In gen­er­al, video mar­ket­ing strate­gies are designed to achieve any or all of the following:

• Stronger brand aware­ness (Aware­ness goals)
• High­er lev­els of engage­ment (Con­sid­er­a­tion goals)
• More con­ver­sions (Action or con­ver­sion goals)
• Greater cus­tomer loy­al­ty (Reten­tion goals)

Once you’ve deter­mined which of these goals you’re chas­ing, link them to the right KPIs to start track­ing your per­for­mance. If you’re won­der­ing how to select the right KPIs, we’ve got you cov­ered. We’ll review which KPIs work best with each of the goals list­ed above and why.

1. Awareness goals

If you’re using video mar­ket­ing to attract more leads, then you should be track­ing these KPIs:

• Views
• Impres­sions
• Unique Users
• Aware­ness Lift
• Reach
• Leads gen­er­at­ed
• Social shares
• Play rate
• View­er demographics

Views

Video views give you a good indi­ca­tion of how many poten­tial leads have been exposed to your busi­ness. Views also tell you if your videos are engag­ing or not hit­ting the mark.

What makes a view tends to vary from plat­form to plat­form, so be sure to fac­tor that into your analy­sis. For instance, if a video is viewed for at least 30 sec­onds, YouTube counts that as a view. With Face­book and Insta­gram, any­thing after the 3‑second mark is con­sid­ered a view.

Impres­sions

Impres­sions refer to the num­ber of times your video has been seen by view­ers, even if they don’t engage with it direct­ly. If your impres­sions are high, this is a pos­i­tive sign that you’re gain­ing expo­sure. If your impres­sions are low, con­sid­er adjust­ing your ad set­tings so that more peo­ple are exposed to your content.

Unique users

Unlike impres­sions, the unique user met­ric gives you a bet­ter under­stand­ing of who’s engag­ing with your con­tent. A high num­ber of views and a low num­ber of unique users implies that your videos are being watched by the same peo­ple mul­ti­ple times.

While this could mean that repeat view­ers gen­uine­ly enjoy your con­tent, you might need to ramp up your efforts to attract new viewers.

Reach

Reach tells you the num­ber of unique view­ers that have seen your video. The high­er this fig­ure is, the bet­ter, as this means that your videos are reach­ing more view­ers and poten­tial leads.

Leads gen­er­at­ed

If you’re using videos as lead mag­nets, track­ing this KPI shows you how suc­cess­ful your efforts are at get­ting leads into your fun­nel. If some of your videos aren’t attract­ing many leads, you’ll have enough data to replace them with those that are.

Aware­ness lift

Mea­sur­ing this KPI allows you to deter­mine the aver­age num­ber of view­ers who remem­ber your brand and prod­uct after a cer­tain amount of time. If you’re keen to make your brand and prod­ucts more mem­o­rable, ensure that you deeply under­stand your audi­ence’s needs.

Ad recall lift

An ad recall lift is a met­ric used to deter­mine the num­ber of peo­ple who remem­ber the con­tent of a video with­in days of view­ing it. If you’d like to increase ad recall, ensure that your con­tent is rel­e­vant and entertaining.

Social shares

Social shares are a pos­i­tive sign that audi­ences con­sid­er your con­tent worth shar­ing. If you’re aim­ing for increased inter­est in your brand and qual­i­ty leads, focus on cre­at­ing riv­et­ing, val­ue-laden content.

View­er demographics

By com­pil­ing data such as view­er gen­der, age, device, and loca­tion, you’ll have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of who is engag­ing with your con­tent. From there, you can adjust your strategy.

Play rate

This met­ric shows the exact num­ber of times a view­er clicks the “play” but­ton on your video. If this num­ber isn’t as high as you would like, you may need to change how you pro­mote your videos to make them more entic­ing. Con­sid­er cre­at­ing more inter­est­ing thumb­nails or opti­mis­ing your titles.

2. Consideration goals

If you want to engage poten­tial cus­tomers and get them to con­sid­er you over your com­peti­tors, the right KPIs to track include the following:

• View-through rate
• Watch time
• Favoura­bil­i­ty lift
• Con­sid­er­a­tion lift
• Brand inter­est lift
• Com­ments and likes

View through rate

View-through rate keeps track of how many peo­ple watch a video to the end. High­er view-through rates imply that a video is engag­ing. Low­er rates, how­ev­er, may imply that a video isn’t up to standard.

To increase your view-through rate, focus on cre­at­ing con­tent that res­onates with your tar­get audi­ence. You may need to do a deep dive into what makes your audi­ence tick.

Start by analysing your videos to deter­mine the most pop­u­lar drop-off points. When you’ve iden­ti­fied what’s push­ing your view­ers away, work on address­ing this in future videos.

Watch time

Watch time refers to the total time a video has been watched. High­er watch times sig­nal that your videos are engag­ing. This may give you a com­pet­i­tive edge and access to more views on plat­forms like YouTube.

Favoura­bil­i­ty lift

If you’re curi­ous about how view­ers per­ceive your brand after inter­act­ing with your con­tent, this KPI unlocks that infor­ma­tion. When used to mon­i­tor indi­vid­ual videos, favoura­bil­i­ty lift gives you a clear­er pic­ture of what types of con­tent your audi­ence favours.

Con­sid­er­a­tion lift

Con­sid­er­a­tion lift mea­sures how suc­cess­ful a par­tic­u­lar video is in increas­ing brand aware­ness. And how like­ly a cus­tomer is to con­vert after watch­ing it. Con­sid­er­a­tion lift also high­lights the most engag­ing videos across mul­ti­ple videos.

Brand inter­est lift

Mea­sur­ing brand inter­est lift allows you to 1) deter­mine how inter­est­ed prospects are in your brand and 2) deter­mine how engag­ing your videos are.

Com­ments and likes

Likes and com­ments help pro­vide insight into what view­ers are think­ing. View­er feed­back is also a great way to get more con­tent ideas and iden­ti­fy areas of concern.

3. Conversion goals

If you want to con­vert leads into pay­ing cus­tomers, the KPIs to mea­sure are:

• Click through rate
• Con­ver­sion rate
• Cost per acquisition
• Pur­chase intent lift
• Return on investment

Click through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) allows you to track how suc­cess­ful a video is at get­ting poten­tial cus­tomers to click on your CTAs. When you iden­ti­fy which videos earn the most click-throughs, you can pin­point why they work so well and opti­mise future video campaigns.

To mea­sure your click-through rate, divide the num­ber of clicks that your ad receives by the num­ber of times your ad is seen. If your rate isn’t up to scratch, you may need to improve your videos and CTAs.

Con­ver­sion rate

Con­ver­sion rate mea­sures the num­ber of cus­tomers gen­er­at­ed through a video cam­paign. When you can track exact­ly how your video mar­ket­ing efforts influ­ence your bot­tom line, you’ll have access to pow­er­ful, action­able insights. You’ll also be able to quan­ti­fy your return on investment.

A high con­ver­sion rate tells you that your video strat­e­gy is rel­e­vant and per­sua­sive. A low­er rate implies that you may need to go back to the draw­ing board.

Cost per acquisition

Cost per acqui­si­tion is a mea­sure of the total cost of get­ting a pay­ing cus­tomer. By divid­ing your total video mar­ket­ing costs by the num­ber of cus­tomer acqui­si­tions, you’ll have an idea of how much your video strat­e­gy is cost­ing you.

The idea is to keep your costs as low as pos­si­ble while max­imis­ing con­ver­sions. So, if your costs are very high, you may need to adjust your strategy.

Return on investment

Track­ing ROI requires you to com­pare the sales direct­ly linked to your videos against the amount of mon­ey it took to cre­ate and mar­ket them. This tells you whether you made a prof­it or loss and helps you make sound deci­sions about how to allo­cate your resources.

Pur­chase intent lift

This met­ric is great for mea­sur­ing how suc­cess­ful your videos are at nur­tur­ing cap­tured leads and influ­enc­ing them to buy from you. Any insights gath­ered should be used to opti­mise future videos.

4. Customer retention goals

If you want to per­suade your cus­tomers to buy from you again and pos­si­bly rec­om­mend you to friends and fam­i­ly, you’ll need to pro­vide them with val­ue long after they have pur­chased your prod­uct or ser­vice. As this is usu­al­ly done through addi­tion­al video con­tent, like tips, rec­om­men­da­tions, and tuto­r­i­al videos, the KPIs you’ll want to track are:

• Favoura­bil­i­ty lift
• Return vis­its
• Social inter­ac­tion

Favoura­bil­i­ty lift

Track­ing favoura­bil­i­ty lift tells you how effec­tive your videos are at improv­ing your brand per­cep­tion. By under­stand­ing which videos gar­ner the most approval, you’ll be able to cre­ate sim­i­lar content.

Return vis­its

By mea­sur­ing return vis­its to your web­sites and land­ing pages, you’ll have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what types of video con­tent help you attract and retain customers.

Social inter­ac­tion

Track­ing social inter­ac­tions is a great way to check if your video con­tent is suc­cess­ful­ly get­ting cus­tomers to 1) buy again or 2) share your con­tent, or 3) leave pos­i­tive reviews on your social channels.

Mon­i­tor­ing how new videos affect likes, shares and fol­low­er counts also helps you deter­mine if your con­tent is doing a good job of delight­ing your audience.

How To Track KPIs

Ana­lyt­ics plat­forms such as Google Ana­lyt­ics and Kiss­met­rics can help you track a major­i­ty of the KPIs we’ve explored. If your videos are host­ed on oth­er plat­forms, such as YouTube or Face­book, you’ll also have access to addi­tion­al plat­form-spe­cif­ic insights.

For the brand lift fac­tors dis­cussed above (aware­ness lift, ad recall lift, con­sid­er­a­tion lift, brand inter­est lift, favoura­bil­i­ty lift and pur­chase intent lift), you’ll need to use con­sumer research and cus­tomer sur­veys to gath­er insights.

How To Use KPIs To Optimise Your Video Strategy

Once you’ve aligned your goals and KPIs, you need to deter­mine what you’ll mea­sure them against. Indus­try aver­ages and com­pet­i­tive bench­marks are usu­al­ly good places to start. But this isn’t pos­si­ble with video mar­ket­ing because strate­gies vary from busi­ness to busi­ness. As a result, you’ll need to deter­mine what video mar­ket­ing suc­cess means for your business.

Instead of rely­ing on exter­nal bench­marks, con­sid­er set­ting your own. For exam­ple, you might find it help­ful to com­pare new cam­paigns with old ones. If you don’t have rel­e­vant his­tor­i­cal data, forge ahead and tweak your strat­e­gy as you go along.

With a wealth of action­able insights at your dis­pos­al, it’s tempt­ing to act on all of them at once. How­ev­er, this will make test­ing dif­fi­cult. It’s bet­ter to make one change at a time and then mea­sure how that affects your audience.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve been focus­ing on views and likes, it’s time to piv­ot to more insight­ful met­rics. Track­ing the right video mar­ket­ing KPIs will give you the pow­er to engage new audi­ences and ensure that you are strate­gis­ing and bud­get­ing effec­tive­ly for future video campaigns.

Ulti­mate­ly, test­ing, mea­sur­ing, and opti­mis­ing your video strat­e­gy will push you clos­er to achiev­ing your over­ar­ch­ing busi­ness goals.

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