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Video in the business setting can be a pretty entertaining project at first. Moving images with production quality is getting closer and closer to the movies. But pretty quickly, due to the cost, we find that clients want them to be posted, running, and producing. That may be for marketing purposes or even internal programs. The most effective video campaigns always come with some kind of metric set. That is, you need some benchmarks to let you know how you're doing. Without them, you're not going to know if it's really effective...or to what degree.
Having benchmarks can't be an afterthought. In fact, the most effective video campaigns have the metrics already decided upon and are produced to a degree with them in mind.
The most basic metric is View Count. You want to know how many times the video has been seen. While probably the most valuable of metrics, it generally falls short of providing essential information. We find that the Engagement Rate offers better information. It is the percentage of users who see your video content and also interact with it.
For marketing teams, the Conversion rate might be the most important. This is when a viewer performs a desired action after finishing the video content. This could be downloading information, clicking through to a prepared landing page to more information collect information or actually purchasing a service or product online.
We think Watch Time provides a lot of good information (a similar metric is Average View Duration). This shows how far viewers watch the video and where they stop playing it or exiting. For some viewers, watching to a certain point then taking an action is what's most important. The watch time information may also show where a video may need to be edited or tweaked in the future.
There are a number of video hosting services that we recommend including Vimeo, Wistia, YouTube, HubSpot, and Vidyard. Each come with a pretty robust set of metrics that you can customize. And they generally have slightly different ways of measuring. However, they all provide the kind of ROI data you need.
We've worked with clients that use even what many consider to be the most rudimentary of feedback systems - by simply asking clients. This is also called qualitative feedback. While not technical, it still provides a great deal of information if asking the right kinds of questions.
Whatever mechanism you decide upon, using metrics will help direct your way!