One of the biggest obstacles many companies face when it comes to video marketing is measuring return on investment (ROI). It can be tough to determine if your video marketing initiatives are worth the time and money you’re investing. That’s why finding a way to track results is critical.
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There are a variety of ways to measure the success of a specific video — from total views to how much time someone spends watching the video, and engagement (likes and shares). It all counts, but it may not be reflective of your ROI unless you determine specific goals for your video.
If you’re trying to make the most out of video marketing, here are some ways to determine your return on investment for any video you put out there.
Videos and lead generation often go hand-in-hand. Your video content can do things like:
Including a call-to-action at the end of the video gives your viewers the chance to connect with your website to get more information.
You can track the leads your video is generating in several ways. Using Wistia's Turnstile email collector and integrations with marketing automation platforms, businesses generate qualified leads from within videos and automatically pass them onto sales.
Tracking the number of emails captured on each video is an easy way to track how well those videos are working for lead capture.
When using Wistia analytics to track results, the free version provides details about your video that you can’t get in other places. You can see how your audience consumes and interacts with your videos.
If you upgrade (for a monthly fee), you can even get aggregated views of a video's performance with engagement graphs, or drill down to see how individual viewers watch your videos with heatmaps.
The paid version will also allow you to find out how much of your videos people are actually watching. Are they only watching a few seconds before losing interest or making it all the way to the end? Monitoring this can help you get a sense of how people are reacting to your video content and help you reiterate and improve.
Another way to get feedback on your videos is by adding tags (UTM parameters) to your website, landing page, or the specific product page. This will help you learn how much traffic your videos are driving.
Add the UTM parameters to links shared alongside your videos and track them in Google Analytics. Google’s URL builder makes this easy. Just enter the basic website URL, campaign source, medium, name, and any other differentiating information.
Adding this information to your links will help you organize your data in Google Analytics so you can see exactly where your traffic is coming from.
At the most basic level, you can keep an eye on the video views to see how many people have watched your video.
The other thing you see is video retention. This will tell you how long someone watches.
But if you’d like to dive a little deeper into your video stats, you can upgrade and pay for a Vidyard service agreement. If you do, you can see things like play rate and discover the percentage of page visitors who clicked play and started watching. It’s a great way to make sure you’ve placed your video on the most relevant part of your page.
Getting a return on your investment is crucial, so you should equip yourself with the proper tools and video marketing team to help you get the information you need.
If you’re interested in getting started, check out our video marketing page to find tips on how to create great videos. Or take a look at examples of some of the videos we’ve produced for our clients.
