Video is now widely used in digital marketing strategies and when used correctly can be a great investment. 87% of video marketers say video, in general, gives them a good return on their investment however, this is down from 89% in 2020. That drop may not necessarily reflect video falling out of favor with the audience, but it instead maybe that video isn’t be used to its fullest potential for maximum ROI. It may also mean that businesses aren’t accurately measuring and tracking their video content. This is why it is important for businesses to understand what contributes to a video having the greatest ROI and then how to accurately measure the return from video.
Choosing Your KPIs
One of the most important things when it comes to understanding the ROI of a video is knowing what to measure. Once we understand the metrics, we can start to learn how to improve the ROI. Obviously, what metrics you choose to track should be dependent on what your objectives are, it’s not necessary to track everything. Some things you can measure are:
- Audience engagement– Measured by your audience interreacting with your video, liking, sharing or commenting.
- Average watch time– How long your audience is watching your video and at what point they are dropping off.
- Conversion rate– Measuring how many of the viewers converted to a lead or customer.
- Views– The total number of people who have watched your video.
- Click–through rate– How many people clicked on a link linked to the video.
- Traffic– Driving your audience to a predetermined destination.
Of course, these are only a few of the many metrics you can measure when tracking the success of the video. When picking KPIs, it’s important to not only consider your objectives but also what platform you’re hosting the video on, as some platforms may not automatically track your chosen KPI. For example, if you embed a video on the landing page of your website you may need to set up a goal on Google Analytics to track views or watch time.
Setting Goals
It’s important to set clearly defined goals before you start making any video content. Ultimately the goals you set will have a massive impact on every aspect of your video, from the type of video, to the platform you post the video on. Having the objectives clear from the start will make it easier when it comes to tracking the ROI later on. Make sure that the goals you set are something measurable, relevant and achievable to your business. Some of the goals may include:
- Educating– Whether it’s educating your customer about how to use your product or a staff training video that informs your staff about internal processes.
- Forming Trust– Using the video can allow your audience to get a real sense of the personality of your business, this can ultimately create a relationship of trust.
- Brand awareness– Video can bring more eyes to your business, increasing its visibility.
- Loyalty engagement– Maintaining a relationship with your existing audience and encouraging continued engagement from them.
- Market leadership– Establishing yourself as an expert and showcasing authority within your industry.
Understanding the Audience and Planning Content Around Them
Setting your goals comes down to understanding your audience and what their needs are. The underlying goal of all video content should be to solve the problem of the audience. The way to create engaging video and useful video with maximum ROI is by providing genuine value to your audience. Once you have done your audience research you can start planning your content around them.
With your audience in mind think about what kind of video they need to see. If your goal is to educate your audience, the best kind of video may be an explainer video. If the goal is to inspire loyalty, then a testimonial video may work best.
Distribute Your Video Content
The next step in the process is planning how you’re going to distribute your video. You may have a video that perfectly solves all your audiences’ problems but if they don’t watch it they can’t gain the value from it. Here are some things to consider when distributing your video when you want to get the best ROI:
- Platform– Use the platforms that your audiences use often. Utilise cross-channel distribution, you don’t only have to post your video on one platform. Once you’ve identified which platform performs best consider spending more to promote it on the underperforming channels.
- Time– What time your audience is most likely to engage with your content? Tracking your previous video content will give you a good idea of when most of your audience is online.
- Accessibility– It’s a good idea to add subtitles for your video. This not only makes your video more accessible but also makes it more watchable on social media. Videos are automatically muted on a lot of social platforms.
- Optimisation– Is your video fully optimised for the platform you’re posting it on? For example, the majority of social media platforms encourage the use of vertical video. Does the platform encourage shorter form video or longer?
- SEO– Make sure to do keyword research and include them in the title of your video. Include the keywords in the tags and the hashtags if you’re posting the video on social.
Repurposing and Reusing Video
A great way to get the most ROI from your video is repurposing and using it. Reuse your video across multiple platforms in different forms. By re-using your video content you’ll spend less on creating new content. Read our blog about ways in which you can repurpose your existing video content here.
Conclusion
Continually tracking the ROI of video content, you create is a worthwhile exercise as it will help to improve the ROI of future video content creation, by showing you the areas in which need improvement. The earlier you define your objectives and KPIs, the easier if will be to measure them further down the line.
How can we help?
At Feature Media we’re always looking at ways to offer our customers support and advice about how to maximise a return on video/animation marketing. If you would like to discuss your ideas, please get in touch for a no-obligation conversation.