Video remains the most effective medium today to convert, engage and sell. It is a “must-have” for any business.
You already heard this and you already know it. But one thing most business owners don’t know is the fact that, a video marketing strategy that performed well for one business may not necessarily perform well for another. This is why understanding and planning a video strategy is necessary for any business. In this FIRST post we will analyze how to measure video marketing ROI to strengthen the future communications of any business.
1. Planning the End Result…
Knowing which video strategy to adopt to accomplish what you want is important. This is a fundamental error most business owners do. This is why it is important to plan expectations. A single video or a video startegy should be planned for your audience to take actions. This is why your future video marketing strategy needs to be an actionable strategy. So… what would you want your video marketing strategy to achieve?
1. Brand Awareness (viral videos)
2. Increase Conversion Rates (explainer videos, product videos, how to videos)
3. Reaching New Customers/Clients (Testimonials)
4. Damage Control (Re-assurance when business faced with conflict and negative feedback)
5. Selling (most videos should involve selling at some point – but your sales videos need to be equipped with the big guns)
Without a clear cut goal it will be hard for you to measure your video marketing ROI.
2. Planning Beyond Youtube®…
Youtube is still King, when it comes to online video marketing. But if you are serious about winning the future, you need to consider other video hosting platforms that are rapidly gaining video traction. Your online audience is now proliferated, and you need to follow, educate, entertain and engage them. The same youtube video will not generate the same buzz on twitter video. Likewise many other video hosting sites/apps have length requirements. Here is a list of a few (as of June 2016):
1. Vimeo/Dailymotion/Metacafe/Hulu/Facebook/Yahoo (no time restrictions)
2. Twitter (30 seconds)
3. Flickr (90 seconds plus ONLY 2 video uploads a month)
4. Instagram (60 seconds)
5. Vine (6 seconds)
Your video marketing strategy needs to find out where your target audience is most likely to view (and engage) your videos, if you desire to reap a positive ROI.
3. Planning Beyond the Desktop PC…
New Technology has given rise to better video viewing experience from different devices. Pretty soon the number of people watching videos from mobile devices (tablets and smart phones) will exceed desktop users. Have your video strategy taken this to account? If your video (and audio) quality don’t meet the demands of technology, and are not in par with the demand of your audience, don’t expect your ROI to be in favor.
1. DO NOT use poor quality images, slides, show reels, stock footages.
2. DO NOT use high frequency back ground music or any audio that may annoy listening through ear phones or ear plugs.
3. DO NOT use small fonts that are difficult to read from smaller displays.
4. DO NOT engage in extended story telling. Get to the point as quickly as possible (mobile viewers are very impatient).
5. MAKE SURE the information they need (to take action after watching the video) is easily found.
Gone are the days of the desktop PC audience… get to know the temperament of your online audience and the devices they view your videos from.
4. How to Measure Video ROI…
Without carefully attending to the above 3 planning processes, you cannot realistically measure video ROI. How can you measure something that you did not plan from the start? Calculating video ROI for a single video can be done at any point, but for a video campaign that involves a video series cannot be calculated until it is complete. There are 2 frameworks you can choose from to calculate video ROI.
1. Absolute ROI – More suited to measure ROI of a single video, and is not related to other marketing strategies that your business have adopted. You can use this model to measure video ROI on a video series or a video campaign that involves many videos as well.
2. Relative ROI – This model is designed to give you the compare the performance of your video marketing campaign with another marketing campaign. This model not only will give you a good measurement of the success of a video campaign, but also give you great insights to future campaigns.
If you need a guide of a relative ROI model please Contact us.
Planning the Future…
Once you run a proper, pre-planned video campaign and gather the analytics and calculate a video ROI, it will teach you two things:
1. What Worked
2. What Did Not Work
If your goal was to increase revenue, and you engaged your audience with intent to inform and entertain (without engage in selling), you will not be content at the fact that your video gained more engagement (views, likes, shares, comments). This is an example of what DID NOT WORK. This is why pre-planning expectations (end result) is so important when getting your video strategy started. Regardless of how good or bad your campaign was, the insights you gather from this model will help create more effective and successful video campaigns in the future…
In my next post I will continue on this topic and show you five ways on maximizing your video ROI.
Do you have a video marketing strategy for 2016… and beyond? Do you know there are 10 ways of building a brand with online video? Click the links to find out more.
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