If you want to improve the effectiveness of your video marketing strategy, you must first understand how to measure its performance. And it all starts with knowing which video metrics to monitor.
Some metrics have no effect on your bottom line, and the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) can differ from video to video. So, in this article, we’ll go over some of the most important video content KPIs, as well as when to track them and what they mean for the overall success of your video marketing.
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What are video content KPIs and why are they important to track?
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are quantifiable measures of performance.
Many types of marketing strategies have their own KPIs that must be monitored and tracked to determine whether the strategy is working or needs to be tweaked. You can’t just launch a new strategy or campaign and then walk away. To reach its full potential, every campaign requires testing, tracking, and adaptation, which is where your KPIs come in.
When you choose the most important KPIs for your content, marketing campaign, or strategy, you can zero in on exactly what needs to be tweaked to improve performance.
You’ll be tracking things like the number of views, watch time, comments, clicks, and more in video marketing. The specific KPIs will be determined by the type of video you’re producing and where it falls in your marketing funnel.
Let’s take a closer look at what each video metric and KPI means.
The top seven video metrics to track
Whether you’re launching a new video campaign or uploading a new video to your YouTube channel, there are a few key performance indicators (KPIs) to keep an eye on in order to gauge the overall success of your video.
We’ll go over each of the top seven video metrics to watch and explain what they mean.
The number of views
The total number of people who have viewed your video is represented by your view count. It’s important to remember that these are measured differently across platforms.
The following is how the major platforms calculate a view:
- YouTube: Someone watches your video on YouTube for 30 seconds on purpose.
- Facebook: Someone watches your video for 3 seconds on Facebook (same for Live videos)
- Instagram: After 3 seconds, video views are counted; Live video views begin counting the moment someone joins the broadcast.
- Twitter: Someone watches your video for 2 seconds with at least 50% of the video player visible on their screen.
- LinkedIn follows the same policy as Twitter: 2 seconds in which at least half of the video is visible
- TikTok: A video view is counted as soon as it begins to play in someone’s feed.
View count is more of a vanity metric because the number of views has little impact on your bottom line if no other action is taken. However, this demonstrates the importance of making the first 3-30 seconds of a video extremely engaging in order to hook a viewer.
Views, for example, are the first video metric measured in the Sprout Social YouTube Videos Report, followed by estimated minutes watched, view duration, and engagement. If you have Premium Analytics, you can sort the YouTube Video Reports and the Post Performance Report by specific metrics.
