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The 8 Most Important Video Marketing KPIs to Track Your Performance
Video marketing is everywhere. This isn’t an exaggeration, just an acknowledgement that nine-tenths of companies use video in their marketing mix. This doesn’t mean your company can simply rest on its laurels just because you have a video marketing strategy. It means the exact opposite, in fact. If everyone is using video, how do you make sure you’re creating content that will break through?
The answer comes from video marketing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). When you’re actively monitoring the performance of your content and its alignment with your overall objectives, you can be sure you’re delivering relevant content while tracking your improvement over time.
Why Measuring Marketing Video Performance Matters
Video marketing KPIs exist to track several different kinds of results, all depending on what matters most to you.
Are you using your marketing materials at the top of the funnel to attract attention and build visibility for your brand? Or are you using videos to close deals and drive conversions at the bottom of the funnel? To make sure you’re achieving either of these purposes, or anything in between, you need to check your video metrics.
The one true mistake with video marketing metrics would be not using them at all, and choosing to keep producing content without measuring its performance. In such a system, you would have no way to know whether changes are needed — you could be throwing your budget away on ineffective marketing and never know it.
8 Impactful Video Marketing KPIs
The most important key performance indicators for your specific business will depend on your goals. The following eight video KPIs are great places to start, whether you’re trying to persuade potential corporate partners, educate a general audience or earn quick sales:
- Video views
This is the most obvious and simple video marketing metric. It’s not the most valuable measure in all cases, but it’s very easy to measure, and it has its uses. For instance, if you’re trying to raise awareness of your brand among a general audience, checking your view count is a good way to track progress. Good ways to increase video views include partnering with influencers or corporate partners to share your video or posting it on social media, in newsletters or in paid ads.
- Play rate
This means the number of people who watched a video vs. the number who encountered it but didn’t press play. It’s a general-purpose video metric that determines whether a video’s thumbnail, title and description are compelling enough to earn a click and you can increase your play rate by testing out new options. You can also try embedding the video in new and more suitable pages or optimizing it for mobile devices.
- Watch time
This is a simple measure of how long people watch a given video. It’s relevant for most video objectives. You want people to watch sales videos until the final call to action or take in an educational video’s entire lesson, after all. You can adjust expectations — presenting videos on different pages or with different introductory materials — and see if that helps improve watch time. You can also make adjustments to future videos, such as creating shorter content through tighter, more engaging editing.
- Click-through rate
This is a key metric for awareness and sales videos, because it means the rate at which video viewers click on related links and take further action. Of course, it’s just the first step (see conversions, later), but it’s an essential one. If you’re seeing low click-through rates, people are disengaging, and potentially a more engaging style is needed to keep them locked in.
- View-through rate
View-through rate is different than click-through rate: It means a viewer engages with your brand at some time after watching your content, rather than doing it right away. It’s a useful measure of a video’s role in an overall marketing strategy, but tricky to optimize because the video itself may be only one element in encouraging an eventual click.
- Click-through conversions
This video metric is like click-through rate, but more directly tied to sales and revenue. It means the percentage of video viewers who convert right away, whether that means signing up for a list, subscribing for further updates or spending money. You can maximize it by tuning every element of your CTA and sales pitch.
- View-through conversions
This is the sister KPI to view-through rate, tracking people who eventually convert after having watched a video. If you can successfully track site visitors who watch content and eventually convert, you can judge the success of your overall marketing campaign with video as a component.
- Social media engagement
This is a catch-all term for several different video metrics. Did people share the video directly? Did they post about it on their own social accounts? If you’re hoping to make a social splash, it’s worth keeping a close eye on these numbers — and you can boost them by focusing on your overall social presence and influencer partnerships.
Get started producing videos with measurable value
Working on a video campaign that produces real numbers is a challenge — but one you should embrace. After all, you can only pivot to drive greater value if you know what to aim for. You don’t have to panic if you’re lacking a large in-house video team. Working with an expert video production partner allows you to deploy a skillfully built video marketing strategy, tailored to your needs.
Read our eBook for more on the value of video as a marketing tool.
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