Measuring the ROI of your brand videos is important; are they worth the time, money, effort and persuasion you needed to use on your boss to get to use them in the first place?
Brand videos (any video) are not the cheapest form of visual media available. There – we said it.
But video is the most successful and for almost every business is the most cost-effective, offering a greater ROI when compared to other visual content.
But how do you prove this to yourself (or, perhaps, more importantly, your board of directors or anyone else you are reporting to)?
What are the metrics to focus on and how best to interpret them?
Simply put, the main areas to focus on are
-
- Number of views
- Engagement rate
- Conversions
- Social media sharing
- Feedback
- Overall cost
Measuring the ROI of any marketing element can be complicated, but here is a breakdown of the points to focus on to measure the ROI of your brand videos.
What to measure for video ROI
ROI is sometimes a clear calculation, sometimes it is more obscure. Video ROI tends to be a more obscure set of metrics – but there is one easy question to simply it a little.
The simple question is this: What is your objective for the video?
For a brand video, this may be something as straightforward as ‘be seen by x people directly and y people through social media shares’ or it may be ‘convert to a sale’.
Before anything else, be clear on the objective – your desired outcome – and then you can measure against it.
Here is a breakdown of the 6 metrics we mentioned earlier. Not all of them will apply to every video, but whatever your objective, one or more of these should be enough.
Number of views
This is simply the number of people who have watched your video.
Although it is tempting to count everyone, you ideally want to be noting everyone who stuck around and watched more than the first few seconds only (see engagement below).
Determine the number of views (exposure) that you require and start counting right from the start
Engagement rate
As we mentioned just now, engagement refers to how much of your video is watched.
This means that the first 15-30 seconds of your video needs to engage viewer attention and be something special to keep them watching. 5 seconds of a blank screen and stirring music works well for a blockbuster movie, but that’s a long time in ‘social media world’ where viewers often hit the ‘back’ button after 3 seconds – especially on mobile devices.
YouTube, for example, counts a view as anything greater than 30 seconds of total viewing time (even if the viewer skips, and watched the first 15 seconds and the last 15 seconds).
They also only count it if the viewer watched the video intentionally (ie. it doesn’t include autoplay). They also use several other metrics to determine if the viewer is human or not and whether the same person is watching the video repeatedly, but these are two of the more useful examples.
There is just no point in celebrating one million views of your video if they all turned off within 10 seconds – although that is also a useful metric, as it tells you something very valuable.
It tells you that your video needs a re-edit because the beginning is not engaging anyone!
Conversions
Conversions can be anything from a sale made from a click-through on your video, to a sign up to an email newsletter to a request for more information.
Again, it depends on what your desired outcome from the video is.
A call-to-action (CTA) may be a click-through video (ie. on Facebook and Instagram) or it may be a direct appeal to do something at the end of the video itself – ‘call this number’ or ‘visit www.special_landing_page.com’.
Make sure that you have your metrics set up to record the what, when and where-from for every click and contact, so that you can determine when the video is doing its job.
Social media sharing
Like counting direct views, make sure you are keeping an eye on your social sharing stats.
Social media shares are excellent evidence of a successful video. It is a key indicator that your video is engaging and is so appealing that the viewer wants others to see it too. In other words – it is a measurement of relevance.
It is also the metric of success. If your video is aimed at brand awareness, then social media metrics are the most important figures to be considered – even more so perhaps than direct views, as many of those will be from customers and existing followers of your brand.
Views generated from social sharing are far more likely to be new potential customers and thus the video in this environment is doing a far better job of raising brand awareness.
And many studies have shown that videos shared by friends have a far higher watch rate than ones discovered from other sources.
Feedback
Monitor all feedback from the viewers. Whether this is comments, ratings or any other method used by the platform the video is being viewed on.
Reactions and comments are feedback from real people – more than a simple view count, they give you actual opinion on how well your video is being received and how effectively it is communicating your message.
Again, all response is useful data (not just the positive ones).
Positive comments are great – but negative ones can be more educational for you, so listen to what your viewers are telling you and respond to them.
As with all social media, comments on videos are a great way to engage with your audience; many businesses are judged more by their response to this type of engagement (or lack of it) than by the video or other marketing that instigated it.
Respect your audience – good and bad – and you will find that they provide a wealth of information and feedback that you will simply not get elsewhere.
Overall cost
Know how much your video cost.
Another obvious sounding statement, but depending on how your video is produced, and who by, keeping track of development, planning and other ‘hidden’ costs can be challenging.
Note everything and produce a final true value. Only then can you measure the expense against some of the other metrics we have looked at.
However, if your video is produced well, looks great and delivers its message, then you will be pleasantly surprised by the results you find.
Recent research on video shows that video marketers receive an increase in click-through rate of 96% and that blog posts incorporating video attract three times as many inbound links as posts without one.
Over half a billion people are watching video daily – and that’s just on Facebook!
What next?
For further details on how video can impact your bottom line, take a look at ‘Will video marketing help my business?’.
Video is no longer outside of your budget – whatever it is. High-quality video production no longer means high-priced!
Rather than scale pricing as your order size increases, Splento has scaled their entire video production process instead, so that lower prices are available for everyone – regardless of the size of the order or length of video you require.
We produce your fully edited video within 48 hours (guaranteed), and all for a fixed rate of just £149 ($299) per hour, which means we can guarantee our services will fit your budget too.
What is still true, however, is that a poorly made video will do your company more harm than good, so wherever you go, find a visual media company you can trust, with a track record and a portfolio you can see for yourself.
You can view Splento’s video portfolio online, and if you have any questions about video or photography, then please do contact us here; we will be happy to help.
We hope you found this article useful – and when you stop, and start to think about it, you will realise that video marketing will help your business.
Contact Splento if you are in need of:
