Its Not Just About the Clicks

Hurray … You just got 25,000 views on your video!
Wow that is good stuff!
You are excited!
You are proud!
But now what?

Or better yet: what did your achievement get you on the business front?

My point here is: how many views a video receives is really only a part of the full story (and sometimes it is a small part).

Yes… Video views get the most amount of attention and are important but without a more granular look at your video’s reach it might not get your business what it needs.

Looking purely at a video’s clicks would be like stacking a baseball team with only home run hitters without any thought about on base percentage, pitching or even defense… Your team might pack a punch but not be able to win the big games.

By themselves the number of clicks is just a marketing tool to give a sense of exposure but the clicks do not suggest anything about who watched the video, did they watch the whole video/just a part and what they did after watching it.

1) Who Watched the Video?
If you do video strategically, the video is created for a specific audience. So how are you making sure the intended audience is in fact watching the video?

Much of this has to do with where the video is publicized and how you tag it. To get the most lift out of a video, it should be designed for a specific audience and then marketed in places where they can easily find it. Or better yet, deliver it to them using AdWords for Video as just one tool.

2) How Did They Watch It?
This is about viewing patterns. We have found as videos are viewed by more and more people, obvious patterns tend to emerge.

This is huge because the video can then be adjusted to better speak to your audience. This may mean how the landing page is organized, the call to action or even the way the video is constructed.

Then you can take this information and use it to make your next video campaign even more effective.

Platforms to help you monitor your video’s viewing patterns include: uStudio, VidCaster and Wistia (to name a few).

They each have different strengths but all can adequately accomplish the goal of knowing how your video is watched.

3) What Action Did They Take?
An obvious way to track this is to include the video’s embed code in your Google Analytics profile. That way you can see how people found your video and what they did after watching it.

The three steps are really about being strategic. American Express and Google launched a program last year called “My Business Story.” Click here to see a recent article to show the results of the campaign (thanks Erica Klein). The article shows how video can be monetized but it also emphasizes the need for a strategy behind the images.

All three of these points are important by themselves but together… the information you get gives you a complete profile of how well your videos are performing for you. Perhaps what is more important is how to take this information and then improve on those results for your next campaign.