Monitoring ROI for online video
23rd January 2012
Its important to monitor the ROI on any marketing you undertake for your business and YouTube statistics make this very simple for online video content. Depending on the client and their needs, we mainly recommend uploading video content primarily to a YouTube channel and embedding their videos on their website from there. Reason being, this content is then shared easily over multiple platforms and more importantly you can quickly and easily monitor your video statistics.
Within your YouTube statistics section found through your channels 'video manager' option you can quickly check overall stats or be more precise looking at certain videos, in particular time frames for instance.
If you are trying to target a particular market you can search by demographics and see location, age ranges and gender of your viewers.
N.B. This information will only be accurate for registered YouTube users who have filled in these details, but will give you a good idea of whether the correct people are viewing your videos.
Traffic sources will tell you where people have discovered your video, whether its directly through your website, or through other platforms or links. This is a great way of seeing how effective your marketing strategies are working and you may find that tweeting your video has resulted in your highest view count and you can then adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Audience retention or previously known as hot spots only becomes available when you have a large number of views, however when it is available it can be very effective in valuating the content of your video, as It allows you to see where the viewer loses attention. Any large drops in the line indicate people are either quiting out or skipping parts of the video. You can then review your content and adjust accordingly if there is a particular piece of information that has put people off or equally if there is something that has gained their interest.
Monitoring your view count can also be interesting, especially when experimenting with social media interaction and different times of the day. For instance if you posted your video on your facebook page, or tweeted the video link first thing in the morning you can monitor whether people have clicked through or not. Then on another day you could experiment posting your video early evening and see whether this is a more effective time to post certain content.
Using YouTube statistics in conjunction with Google Analytics for your website, you can monitor quite precisely the interaction throughout your video and whether video discovered on other platforms, social media for example, is driving quality traffic to your website. If its not working, you can look closer using functions such as 'Audience Retention' to find out why and adjust your content accordingly.
Video is such a diverse marketing tool which is not limited by restrictions such as where it can be discovered or by its life span. Video can be used on your website, across all your social media, embedded in an e-newsletter or even burned on to disc. Not only this but a video produced this year will still be an effective marketing tool for years to come. Make sure you are taking advantage of this diversity and using your videos across all platforms to ensure maximum exposure.
