Video marketing has become one of the most sought-after forms of advertising.
It’s an easy way to connect with your local or international customers. But being “easy” doesn’t always translate into “profitable.”
As with any type of marketing effort, business owners must determine if a return on investment (ROI) is possible when using video marketing. You should do the same for content marketing ROI.
How do you do that? Is it enough to monitor the number of views or shares a video gets? Does it seem logical to put all of your marketing budget into the production of a single video just because the competition is doing it?
Instead of guessing and wondering, consider these steps for measuring video marketing ROI.
1. Establish some expectations
What do you want the viewer to do once they watch your video? Establish specific goals that outline the expectations you have once your launch the video. You cannot determine ROI if you don’t set these first.
2. Determine how the video will be distributed
How you gather data for ROI will need to be, in part, based on where the distribution takes place. Any place you share the video online is a place you’ll need to measure results. This includes everything, from the company’s newsletter to social media to your YouTube profile.
3. Set an ROI measurement methodWhat are you measuring? Here’s where you begin to have some options.
- Is the video the only element of your marketing campaign? If so, you need an absolute ROI. Measure the cost per subscriber, cost per purchase, and cost per download.
- Are you running it as part of a larger campaign? If that’s the case, you need to determine how well the video is performing against other media you are using.
4. Decide what to analyze
An analytics system can make this component of the process easy. In fact, there are many tools available online to help you. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
- Who is watching your video? Break down the demographics.
- What happens when they watch the video? Do they watch to the end? Do they stop a few seconds into it?
- When do they stop watching? Look for specific instances that cause them to leave.
- What do they do when they are done watching? Do they like it, share it, or just move on?
5. Monitor the results
Using this information, you can gain insight into what’s working for you and what is not. Be consistent in monitoring results to see trends. And use this information to make key decisions moving forward. For example, when you tweak the type of video or the way you distribute it, what results do you get? Work closely with your video production team to ensure the very best outcome based on your business goals.
Once you wrap up the campaign, go back and look, learn, and change. Review your goals and all of the metrics. This will allow you to see whether or not a positive ROI occurred. It’s a time-consuming process, but it will eventually help you make key decisions about properly managing your business’s next video production.
About the author
Sandy B offers in-depth content in numerous subjects including finance, health, insurance, investment planning, legal, healthy living, offline and online marketing and other many other avenues. She also loves researching and doesn’t think any topic is too far out of range.
