How to measure your video ROI for ongoing success

Video is dominating the content marketing scene and becoming a hot commodity all over the internet. It has even evolved over the years from being a blip on a marketing plan to the point where, often, it has its own dedicated strategy. And it’s no surprise; most people would prefer to see video from brands over any other content type. But how can we measure and justify whether your videos are earning a return on investment (ROI)?

Video is immediate, engaging, and can simplify difficult concepts within seconds, which is why people all over the world are watching over one billion hours of video on YouTube per day. But let’s be real; video content can be time-consuming and costly to produce.

That means it’s crucial that, as a marketer, brand, or video producer, you’re able to easily quantify and measure your video content ROI. Not only will measuring video ROI show if you’re getting a good return on your content, but it will also enable you to see which video campaigns are a success – and which are a massive flop!

The big, fat problem with measuring video ROI

We know that videos are highly engaging and are a sure-fire way of compelling your audience to act. In fact, video can increase landing page conversions by 80% or more. According to research by HubSpot, even the mere mention of the word “video” in an email subject line can increase email open rates by up to 6%!

But while video in general works for countless brands, before you start planning your domination of the video content world, it pays to plan. You want to create your video content strategically and ensure you can easily measure your video ROI so you can accurately benchmark it against your other marketing activities. This will ultimately enable you to optimize your videos and improve your video content on an ongoing basis.

The downfall with standard videos is the lack of deep and useful insights. Sure, you can publish your video on various channels and measure the number of views and likes, but that doesn’t tell you much, apart from how popular it was.

It doesn’t show you how successful your video was in achieving your business objectives – whether it’s capturing leads, converting views to sales, or simply building awareness. These are the crucial things that you need to measure to justify your video ROI.

How can you measure video ROI?

So, can you measure the ROI on video marketing? The short answer is yes – but only with the right tools! Unlike the limited number of insights available with standard videos, interactive video provides superior analytics by allowing you to embed clickable buttons, links, and custom forms to drive direct traffic, purchases, and leads – all while viewing the video.

These interactions are a super-easy way to convert views into traffic and sales, which ultimately helps you measure your video effectiveness against the sales or leads generated.

But while that is handy, the most meaningful insights lie in your audience’s behavior and in being able to see how they’re consuming your video content.

This is the next best thing to sitting right next to them. Each click and interaction in a video is tracked, meaning you can evaluate when viewers have clicked on something and how they’ve done it. This allows you to gain data and insights that can enable you to fine-tune your campaigns and content strategy to weave in what’s working (and get rid of what’s not!). Overall, this will mean you can start to build more successful and impactful video campaigns that generate better results every time. Winning!

What can I measure?

So, what interactions can you measure using interactive video, and how can those insights help you improve your video ROI?

Interactions

The number and type of interactions – such as clicks from any links or calls to action within your video – can tell you how people are reacting to the content they’re watching.

For instance, if they’re clicking on a particular item being showcased in your video, let’s say suit jackets, but they’re not clicking on your casual summer collection, it tells us that those viewers are more interested in the suit offering. From there you can continue to fine-tune your campaign by targeting those who clicked on the suit jacket with more tailored content while presenting the casual summer range to a different audience segment.

Conversion rate

This valuable metric tells you how well your video is at converting views into your desired outcome, whether that’s capturing leads, driving traffic, or making sales.

With the ability to embed forms, links, and shop directly within a video, interactive technology makes it so much easier to track leads or sales generated.

But while the number of form submissions or purchases is a clear win, measuring this against your interaction rate can also help determine how many people are clicking on your CTAs but not converting. This might mean that you need to review your messaging and tweak your copy or layout to drive more conversions.

Bounce rate

Someone who bounces from your video simply means they didn’t interact and convert. Knowing the percentage of viewers that leave your video without taking any action helps in recognizing the effectiveness of your video, enabling you to adjust your video accordingly. Some top reasons a viewer might bounce from your video can include long load times, no clear CTAs for viewers to interact with or simply, the video wasn’t engaging enough to draw people in.

Completion rate

The number of views only measures how many times people clicked “play” on your video, but completion rates measure actual engagement to see how many people watched your video all the way through. This, in turn, determines how effective your video is at actually getting your message through to your audience and achieving your desired engagement level. If you have a low completion rate, it could be that you’re presenting in the wrong format or length. Think about the topic you’re conveying and whether the style of video works best for it. To increase your completion rate, add interactive elements to keep viewers actively engaged for longer, such as a poll, a shoppable pin, or a link to additional information.

Retention rate

Similarly, knowing at which point in the video most people switch off can help provide further insights into your video’s performance. If you’re getting 1 million views but 90% of those viewers stop watching within 30 seconds of your 2-minute video, it might suggest that you need to revisit your audience and distribution strategy or adjust your video content to improve retention rates. For instance, adding interactive elements early in the video can pique your viewer’s interest from the onset and hold their attention longer.

Location

Being able to drill down to where most of your viewers are located is powerful in determining where your biggest market is for a particular offering or content. This helps in finding your target market for future content creation and may even help identify regional or international expansion opportunities for your business.

All these video analytics available when using interactive video platforms play a critical role in determining your video ROI. But it’s also important that you tie each video to a specific business objective, such as generating conversions or leads, enabling you to quantify the success of each video and come up with real video ROI, instead of simply looking to create a “viral” video.

Once you have all your data, you can assess the value of the leads or awareness generated or the sales achieved against the cost of your video to calculate the final video ROI.

Ultimately, while the future of video is looking bright, more and more marketers are jumping on the bandwagon, so it pays to stand out with a unique video type like interactive video. Not only will you be trying something different, but you’ll also gain invaluable insights from the rich data available when you use interactive video, allowing you to justify a long-term investment into this exciting content format.