11 Essential Video Marketing KPIs Every SaaS
Business Should Track
Did you know that video is now the highest-performing content type for content marketing?
According to a survey conducted by Semrush, 37% of companies say that video is their best-performing content type. Still, blog posts come at a very close second with 36%.
This goes to show how important video content marketing is nowadays. And when you’re running any form of digital marketing, it’s always essential to look at the key performance indicators (KPIs).
So what video marketing KPIs should you be tracking to ensure that your video content is effective?
That’s what we’re going to talk about in this blog post.
What To Consider When Tracking Video Marketing KPIs
Before we go into the video marketing KPIs you need to track, let’s first look at some of the factors you need to consider.
These considerations include your business goals and your video marketing channels.
Your Video Marketing Goals
Your specific goals for your video marketing campaign will greatly affect the metrics that you need to track.
Let’s take a look at some examples of goals and how they affect your KPIs.
Brand Awareness: This is one of the most common goals for video marketing. After all, video content is generally more engaging than other forms of content, like blog posts and infographics.
If your goal is to increase brand awareness, then you’ll want to track KPIs that focus on reach and video views.
Lead Generation: Another common video marketing goal is to generate leads. You can do this by including a call-to-action (CTA) in your video or in the video description.
If lead generation is your goal, then you’ll want to track KPIs that focus on video views and click-through rate (CTR).
Lead Nurturing: Once you’ve generated leads, your next goal is to nurture them until they’re ready to buy from you.
Video content can be a great way to nurture your leads as it allows you to build trust and credibility with your audience.
If lead nurturing is your goal, then you’ll want to track metrics that focus on conversion rates, video completion rate, and time spent on video.
Your Video Marketing Channels
Your relevant video marketing KPIs also depend on what distribution channels you are using.
The most common video marketing channels are:
Your Website: You can host your videos on your website and then embed them in your blog posts or other web pages. This is a great way to keep people on your site longer and increase the chances that they’ll take your desired action.
YouTube: YouTube is the second largest search engine next to Google. So it’s definitely a channel you should be using for your video marketing.
Plus, it’s free to use.
When using YouTube as a video marketing channel, you’ll want to track KPIs that focus on video views, video likes, video comments, and video shares.
Social Media: Social media is another great video marketing channel as it allows you to reach a large audience. Plus, you have a greater chance of getting viral on social media.
You can post your videos on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you’re targeting short-form content and a younger audience, you may also want to post your videos on Instagram and TikTok.
When using social media as a video marketing channel, you’ll want to track KPIs that focus on video views, likes, comments, and shares.
Paid Ads: You can also use paid ads to promote your videos. This includes video ads on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
When using paid video ads, you’ll also want to track KPIs that focus on video views, CTRs, and conversion rates. You’ll also want to track your return on investment (ROI) to see if your video ads are financially efficient.
Video Marketing KPIs You Need To Track
Now that we’ve looked at some factors to consider when tracking video marketing KPIs, let’s take a look at the specific metrics you should be tracking.
Generally, you can track your video KPIs on the respective platforms where it’s in. If it’s on YouTube, Vimeo, or social media platforms, most of those have in-built analytics features that you can use.
What’s more, you can also use Google Analytics to track your video KPIs across all channels.
So which video marketing KPIs should you track?
Here are some of the most important ones:
- Video Views
- Play Rate
- Video Bounce Rate
- Unique Users
- Returning Users
- Engagement Metrics
- View-Through Rate
- Average Watch Time
- Click-Through Rate
- Conversion Rate
- Revenue Per View
Let’s talk about them one by one.
1) Video Views
This is a pretty self-explanatory KPI. It simply measures how many times your video has been viewed.
This metric is applicable to any video marketing channel you may be using.
Factors that may affect your views include the video length, title, thumbnail, and description.
2) Play Rate
Your play rate is the percentage of people who click on your video and begin watching it.
This KPI is different from the video views because this one measures the percentage of plays or clicks you get on your videos out of the total number of people who saw them.
For example, let’s say you’re measuring your play rate for a video you embedded on a blog post. It would be the total number of unique video plays divided by the number of individual page loads for that blog post.
This metric can be affected by a few factors, including your video thumbnail and positioning on your webpage.
3) Video Bounce Rate
Your video bounce rate is the percentage of people who click on your video and then immediately leave your site or stop watching the video.
This metric is important to track as it can give you insights into how engaging your video is. If you have a high video bounce rate, that means people are not finding your video interesting and are leaving quickly.
Factors that may affect your video bounce rate include video length, topic, and quality.
4) Unique Users
This video KPI measures the number of unique users who have watched your video. This metric is important as it can give you insights into how many new viewers you’re reaching with your video.
This KPI can indicate the effectiveness of your distribution channels. So it would also help if you track where these users are coming from.
For example, imagine finding out that you have a lot of unique users coming from paid ads but only a few from social media. This could mean that you need to catch up with your social media marketing efforts.
5) Returning Users
This video metric measures the number of users who have watched your video more than once.
This KPI can give you insights into how engaging your video is and whether viewers are watching it all the way through. If you have a high number of returning users, that’s a good sign that your video is interesting and informative.
Factors that may affect your returning users include video length, topic, and quality.
6) Engagement Metrics
Engagement metrics are video marketing KPIs that measure the number of various interactions people have with your video.
The most general among these metrics is the engagement rate, which is the percentage of video views that resulted in some kind of engagement.
Engagements can vary for each platform you’re using for your video marketing campaign.
For YouTube, engagement metrics include likes and comments.
On the other hand, social media engagement metrics include likes, comments, shares, and clicks.
These video marketing KPIs are important as they can give you insights into how your video is performing and whether people are finding it interesting.
Factors that affect engagement include your video’s quality, length, and CTAs that specifically tell viewers to like, comment, or subscribe.
7) View-Through Rate
View-through rate is a video KPI that measures the percentage of people who watch your video until the end.
This metric is important to track as it can give you insights into how engaging your video is and whether viewers are watching it all the way through. If you have a high view-through rate, that’s a good sign that your video is interesting and informative.
Your view-through rate may be affected by a number of factors, including video length, topic, and quality.
8) Average Watch Time
Average watch time is a video metric that measures the average amount of time people spend watching your video.
Like the view-through rate, it’s a good indicator of how well you are keeping your viewer’s attention.
So if your average watch time is high, that means people are finding your video interesting and are sticking around to watch it.
9) Click-Through Rate (For Videos With CTA To Click A Link)
The click-through rate measures the percentage of people who click on a link in your video or in the description.
This KPI is important to track as it can give you insights into how effective your video is at driving traffic to your website or landing page.
Factors that affect your click-through rate include video quality and your verbal CTA within the video.
10) Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is a video metric that measures the percentage of people who take a particular desired action after watching your video.
There are a lot of possible desired actions that you can count as a conversion. It can be simply clicking through to another video or it can be the act of purchasing a subscription to your SaaS product.
This is particularly useful if you’re using videos to nurture your leads all throughout the SaaS sales funnel.
Have you noticed how YouTube videos can have those annotations and end screens that you can click to watch other relevant videos? Your viewer clicking those video elements could count as a conversion.
For example, a lead on the Awareness stage could simply be watching an educational video on how they can improve their sales performance. You could provide an annotation or link that leads to another video about how your SaaS product can help boost sales.
Then your conversion rate could be the percentage of video viewers that click on that link.
Another use case is tracking your conversion rates to count your actual lead-to-customer conversions.
This is especially useful if you have videos on your website and features pages. You could have a video CTA that says something like “Try our product free for 14 days” or “Get started with a free trial.”
Then your conversion rate would be the percentage of video viewers that click on that CTA and sign up for your SaaS product.
Factors that affect conversion rates include video quality, video length, video topic, and most importantly, your video CTA.
11) Revenue Per View (RPV)
The bottom line is still the most straightforward measure of the effectiveness of any marketing strategy.
Revenue per view is a video metric that measures the amount of money you make for each video view. This is particularly useful if you’re running video ads as part of your video marketing campaign.
You can calculate RPV by taking your total video ad revenue and dividing it by the number of video views.
For example, if you make $100 in video ad revenue and you have 10,000 video views, then your RPV is $0.01.
This number might not seem like much, but it can add up quickly if you have a lot of video views. And it’s a good indicator of how effective your video marketing campaign is in driving revenue.
Final Thoughts On Video Marketing KPIs
Video marketing is a powerful way to reach and engage your target audience.
And like any other marketing strategy, it’s important to track your video marketing KPIs so you can see what’s working and what’s not.
What’s more, the performance of your videos can affect how well they rank in search engines.
So not only will tracking your video marketing KPIs give you insights into the effectiveness of your video marketing campaign, but it can also help improve your search engine optimization (SEO).
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