Video and Big Data: How Analytics Can Inform Your Video Marketing Campaigns by our company

It was just over a decade ago that Youtube made its debut, introducing a wealth of video content to an internet landscape that finally had the bandwidth and speed to support it. Ever since then, a video has been an important form of digital content. From entertainers like PewDiePie to educational and informational videos like Moz’s Whiteboard Friday, a video is a major component of many companies’ content marketing strategy.

No longer a “new” up-and-coming thing, video marketing is now a staple. Along with text, it’s a valuable medium for telling your brand story, showing a product demo, or otherwise informing your audience about your company.

According to recent statistics, it’s quite effective and has considerable audience appeal. Hubspot reports that according to 2015 findings from Animoto, four times as many customers would rather watch a video of a physical product than read about it. They also found that people who viewed a video were 1.81 times more likely to buy the product. Google findings from 2016 found that about 50% of people look for a video about a product before they make a final purchase decision.As of now, 87% of marketers are already incorporating video into their content strategy. Chances are you’re among them. But how well are your videos actually performing? Are there areas you could further optimize for better conversion rates? What does your audience like to see the most from you? There are answers out there to all of these questions, and those answers lie in analytics. By measuring the performance of your marketing videos, you can make informed strategic decisions to further refine your video strategy.

As of now, 87% of marketers are already incorporating video into their content strategy. Chances are you’re among them. But how well are your videos actually performing? Are there areas you could further optimize for better conversion rates? What does your audience like to see the most from you? There are answers out there to all of these questions, and those answers lie in analytics. By measuring the performance of your marketing videos, you can make informed strategic decisions to further refine your video strategy.

There are answers out there to all of these questions, and those answers lie in analytics. By measuring the performance of your marketing videos, you can make informed strategic decisions to further refine your video strategy.

You can’t just put your video on Youtube or Facebook and leave it there, never looking at it again. Video marketing shouldn’t be a mystery; it should be measured in a way that generates clear and usable data. Analytics can help you find ways to better optimize your content. After all, views don’t matter the way people often think they do. A view is not a sale. What matters is conversions. Your videos need to persuade your audience to make a decision that generates revenue for your company.

So what can analytics tell you about your marketing videos? Here are some of the most common metrics that marketers need to see.

Tallying views isn’t that effective on its own. You need some insight into exactly who is watching your videos. This gives you, valuable insights about these viewers, who are essentially leading. If you know what videos a lead is watching, you can get a better idea of what they’re interested in and where they are in the buying process. This can help you better create videos that guide your leads through the entire buyer’s journey, from initial curiosity and interest to the final purchase decision. For example, if a person watches your upper funnel and middle funnel videos, then moves on to your lower funnel videos, that’s a good indication that they’re seriously considering making a purchase decision. Knowing which videos they’ve watched can help your sales team better plan for sales conversations, using insights that help them in closing the deal.

For example, if a person watches your upper funnel and middle funnel videos, then moves on to your lower funnel videos, that’s a good indication that they’re seriously considering making a purchase decision. Knowing which videos they’ve watched can help your sales team better plan for sales conversations, using insights that help them in closing the deal.

Analytics can give you insight into repeat viewings of videos by the same person, helping you better gauge their interest and their position in the buying process. This helps you better target new content toward them.

Just because someone hit the “play” button, it doesn’t mean they watched enough of your video for it to matter. People often hit play, watch a few seconds, then leave. As far as you’re concerned, they may as well not have watched it at all.

Figuring out how long the average person watches your video can help you make your content more appealing and hold their interest longer. You may even find that your videos perform better if you start making them shorter. You can pinpoint the part of the video where most people drop off, clueing you into things that lose your audience’s attention.

This is important because when marketing teams dream up and create a really great video, we have a tendency to overestimate the attention span of our audiences.

Ever start a video, then fast forward until you get to the “good part”? You’re not alone, and there are tools available to give you data about what parts of your videos your audience is or isn’t watching. You can use this data to make your videos more engaging, eliminating types of content that don’t hold people’s interest.

When you search for a product or service online, you’re often shown results that are localized based on where you are. Video marketing analytics can provide similar information, giving you valuable geographical insights.

Some people are watching your videos on their smartphone, others on a tablet, and still others on their laptop or desktop computer. Knowing what devices your audience is using can help you optimize your videos for the right screen sizes and resolutions. For audiences that are largely mobile, you can also further optimize your video by adjusting its length for faster on-the-go consumption.

Is your audience primarily watching your videos through your YouTube channel? Or are they seeing them on your website or landing pages? This information can help you get a better idea of where most of your leads are coming from.

If your videos aren’t accompanied by a compelling call to action at the end, you’re missing out on potentially lucrative sale opportunities. If people are watching your videos but they’re not clicking your CTAs, it can be a sign that you need to further optimize the CTAs for better conversion rates. Sometimes your CTA may be too generic, targeted to the wrong part of your website, or the copy just isn’t compelling enough to convince people to click it.

In today’s world of digital video and inexpensive, widely available cameras, video is far less cost-intensive and complicated to create than it was in the past. However, great marketing video campaigns are still far from free. If you’re investing in video production as part of your content strategy, it’s important that the cost of doing so is offset by the return on investment that your videos bring.

These tips can help you use the insights from your analytics to track and enhance the ROI from your video marketing efforts.

It’s important for you and your team to create a total itemized breakdown of the projected costs of your video marketing campaign. This should include costs associated with promoting the videos, as well as the cost of creating them. After all, you can’t manage return on investment adequately unless you know what your investment will be.

Determine what the video will need to do to break even and recuperate the cost of its creation and promotion. Once you reach this tipping point, everything else is profit. This can be pretty simple. If you spent a total of $10,000 creating and promoting a series of marketing videos, you should expect your sales to go up by $10,000 or more in turn. Video analytics can help you track sales that are coming from the video, giving you a more accurate idea of whether there’s a causal relationship.

Once your video campaign has begun and you have access to analytics about your videos, you can use that data to find ways to further improve and optimize them. For this, classic A/B split testing can be quite useful and effective.