Your video project has just been distributed to your audience—congratulations! Time to give yourself a firm pat on the back and move on to the next one, right? Well, not quite. Before you completely wash your hands of your recently shared video marketing campaign, you need to take a minute to reflect on the success of your video(s) and determine your return on investment.
Measuring your video’s performance is critical to ensure you are realizing the ROI you set out to achieve. We strongly suggest you consider your ROI measures of success in the planning stage of your video project because there tends to be a ripple effect. For example, the video’s objective informs the distribution strategy which then informs how you’ll measure success. Waiting to consider how you’ll calculate your ROI until the video is complete and living out in the world puts you at a disadvantage and impacts your ability to evaluate impartially. Determining your ROI will greatly benefit you in the long run as you apply what you learned about your video’s success to future projects, making each video you create more and more effective at reaching your goals.
So, how do you determine your ROI? Start by gathering quantitative and qualitative data and then analyze your findings
Quantitative Data
Quantitative data could include the number of likes, clicks, engagement, and plays your video gets on the sites where it’s posted. It could also be the leads generated from the video including click-throughs to your website or follow-throughs on your video’s call to action.
You could also set out to measure a metric that is more specific to your own circumstance. We have many corporations that measure how many incoming calls involve answering questions that can be found in FAQs or white papers on the website. Converting those resources into follow-up videos could get the information to their clients in a more effective way, resulting in a decrease in interactions that save time (and money) for the sales team or the call center.
To get the most out of your data, however, you need to go beyond the quantitative stats. That’s where qualitative data comes in.
Qualitative Data
Whether you run a small business, nonprofit organization, or national association, qualitative data is important to gather. Qualitative data measures the human experience, not just the raw stats and numbers. This can make the data more difficult and time-consuming to measure, but putting in the effort to record qualitative data will give you a more complete picture of your video’s success. Instead of simply recording the number of views and average length of playtime, you’ll need to think more abstractly and dig deeper into your target market's behavior to decipher qualitative metrics.
If your videos set out to explain how your organization operates and the importance and benefits of your work, one qualitative metric you might want to track is audience education. The challenge is measuring how well your audience understands the message you’ve set out to deliver. Aside from direct asks through focus groups or surveys, you’ll have to get creative. This could be something such as tracking the number of calls and emails you receive asking questions or documenting the level of understanding new clients have during their initial contact.
If you’re trying to track your brand affinity, you could look at the content of the comments you’re receiving on your videos, reviews on social media, or the interactions your team has with your target audience. These metrics will be different for every organization and every campaign, so find something that makes the most sense for you and your goals.
Analyzing and Interpreting
After gathering all your data, you need to sit down and analyze your findings. This is the most important part of measuring success because the data can only tell you part of the story. Looking through trends and examining why that behavior occurred will help guide your future video marketing decisions.
If your reporting finds that one video is performing significantly better than others, it would be worth the time to figure out why. Did the time, day, and platform you posted on help get your video more exposure? Did featuring a warm, friendly talking head in the video help hold your audience’s attention and build a connection? Comparing this video with other videos you’ve shared, what makes this one different? How can you take what you’ve learned and replicate the success?
It would be easy to skip this final step of the video production process, but we assure you the value gained from taking the time to reflect on your ROI is too great to pass up. Quantitative, qualitative, and well-analyzed data can create a foundation for you to build on that will take your videos to the next level of success.
Now that you’ve measured your ROI, you’re finally ready to move on to your next video marketing project. What will it be?