Monitoring the performance of your video gives you calculated insight into its strengths and weaknesses. Analyzing data also has the potential to identify opportunities to expand on certain material and when to dial-down other, less engaging video.
As you read, you’ll learn about the following 6 best key performance indicators:
- Reach
- Impressions
- Likes
- Shares
- Click Through Rate (CTR)
- Conversion Rate
Understanding KPIs
When we talk about analytics, there’s an endless list of key performance indicators (KPIs) that result from online activity.
The art behind utilizing analytics to best assess your video’s performance is to choose a variety of KPIs that illuminate areas you wish to improve or expand upon. Depending on whether you are seeking exposure, engagement or a combination of the two, will guide your use of analytics tools most appropriately.
So, asking yourself if you simply need more viewers, or a better conversion rate towards your ultimate objective, can help hone in on reaching your unique goal.
Using the following data to your advantage allows you to concentrate your attention, energy and resources toward a defined target.
Exposure
- Reach quantifies how many individuals your content has reached.
As an overarching metric, reach shows you the number of unique contacts to which your video has been presented. As such, this eliminates the guesswork as to how much exposure you’re truly getting.
- Impressions focus on how many times your video has been displayed.
It is important to note that this KPI will include duplicate times your content appeared on the same person’s device. Therefore, it’s advisable to be discerning when weighing the value of this data due to its vague nature.
That being said, impressions can be useful in comparison to Reach to see if your video is being repeated to the same audience. This might be a sign that you need to target other markets by expanding your set demographics, or more favorably that you have a loyal fan base that enjoys watching your content more than once.
Engagement
- Likes can be an exciting number to watch grow, but in reality, it’s more of a vanity metric.
Although some people reserve their likes for content they genuinely enjoy, many users tend to reflexively click the thumbs-up button out of habit or politeness. To accurately gauge the appreciation of your content, it’s best to follow the Shares KPI.
- Shares give you a reliable indicator of how the public perceives your video.
By sharing a video on social media or via email, an individual is expressing either an identification with the content or believes one of their peers would enjoy and/or identify with it. Offering better insight than Likes, monitoring the number of Shares gives you the ability to track what messaging or themes are working best.
- Click Through Rate (CTR) is a metric that most content owners observe attentively when paying for an advertisement, as it shows a superficial level of response to any given ad.
Monitoring this KPI has the potential to allocate your ad budget strategically on ideal platforms and channels. For instance, if your organic CTR is higher than your paid ad CTR, then it might be worthwhile to either reduce your budget or choose a higher performing page to host your ad.
Alternatively, you have the capacity to invest more in an ad with a high CTR that’s outperforming others.
Also, if a specific display or search engine ad has a high CTR, then it assures you that your ad is at the very least intriguing to browsers.
Developing well crafted copy with a clear and captivating call-to-action should lead to an increase in your CTR. On the other hand, vague or “spammy” (e.g. exclamation marks, grandiose promises, or overused capitalization) headlines can negatively affect your CTR, thereby losing potential viewers.
Conversion
- Conversion Rate is the ultimate KPI that marketers and content owners use to calculate how profitable a video has been.
This data shows precisely how many viewers completed their journey from browser to viewer, purchaser or subscriber. Compared to the Click Through Rate, which gives you an idea of how many people click on your ad, the Conversion Rate can be a precise measurement of how many people watched a predetermined duration of your video, paid for content or subscribed to your page.
Once you have an account of how many viewers have reached your business goal, you can then calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) to measure if your profits are satisfactory or require improvements in order to afford to continue posting content.
If your Conversion Rate and corresponding ROI are low, then you must review your budget to see if any expenses can be cut or if ad spend needs to be readjusted. Optimistically, if the Conversion Rate and ROI are high—and continuing to rise—then you have reliable indicators that your money is being spent wisely.
Using a video hosting platform that gives you the tools to understand how your content is performing can be valuable in comprehending not only the perception of your videos, but the market as a whole.
Visit our website to learn more about how analytics reports can help you grow your audience.
