Creating a marketing video can be one of the most stressful (but rewarding) endeavours a company embarks on. Whilst the gains are potentially huge, there are so many cylinders that need to fire simultaneously to make it work.
And sometimes, it can be hard to notice whether or not they actually are.
That’s why it’s so important to measure the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing video.
Without a deep dive into your video’s ROI, you are short changing yourself without even knowing it.
Why video ROI is important
What is so important about video ROI? It’s a question we get asked a lot and the answer is simple – because every inch counts.
Business is a game of fine margins and if you can’t measure every penny of your investment, it’s a game you’re going to eventually lose.
Measuring the ROI of your marketing video
Measuring the ROI of your marketing video may not be as clear cut as putting X amount into ad spend and getting Y back in sales, but by implementing the steps below, you’ll be as near as dammit.
1. Prepare with clear KPI’s
Also, the sky is blue…
On a serious note, we know it sounds cliché, but if you fail to prepare, you’d better be prepared to fail. To measure anything in business, you need to identify your key performance indicators (KPI’s).
Here are the most important outcomes to measure when objectively analysing your marketing video:
- View count
- Click through rate (CTR)
- Cost per purchase
- Cost per view
- Social shares/interactions
- Total cost
- Total return
Those last two will give you the clearest idea of how successful the campaign was as a whole.
The industry standard to compare against here is a 5:1 return to investment ratio. Anything above that can be considered a roaring success. Anything markedly below should be analysed and improved. The rest of the KPI’s on the list should give you a more micro insight into the performance of your marketing video, allowing you and your team to pick apart specific areas where improvements can be made.
2. Exit the echo chamber
Don’t just listen to the yesmen and yeswomen around you.
Often, teams get trapped in groupthink which can be disastrous if people are coaxed down the wrong train of thought.
Get feedback from outside your immediate company. Send out a beta cut to a focus group and get detailed thoughts from them. If you want to incentivise them to get better qualified participants, try offering discount codes, vouchers or competitions. This is used to great effect by some of the most successful businesses.
3. Analyse your marketing video
This follows in the same vein as escaping the echo chamber. Try to gather as much external consumer feedback as possible following the cessation of the campaign. This will help to subjectively gauge the consensus on the video, but it will also be invaluable to your team when implementing improvements to your next marketing video.
Then it’s time to take things internal.
The three ways to analyse the ROI of your marketing video are:
- Absolute ROI (this is your cost per sale, cost per view, etc.)
- Relative ROI (this compares and contrasts your video’s success across different platforms, ie. YouTube plays vs TV ad viewership)
- Attribution model (this is a much more complex measurement technique that often doesn’t warrant the time required to implement)
This is also where the KPI’s set from #1 will come into play.
Use whichever marketing analytics software you have implemented to measure all of your metrics against the KPI’s you set before the campaign went live.
Did you hit every single indicator? Maybe you got close, maybe you excelled or maybe you failed spectacularly. The great thing about this post-campaign analysis is that you can objectively see all of this in real time.
That means that going forward, you can make far more informed decisions when putting together your next video (meaning you’ll obliterate those KPI’s next time round).
If you want to ensure that your video ROI is maximised, you might want to consider hiring professionals. If you want to discuss how Dragonfly can squeeze the most returns from your marketing video, get in touch with us here.
