The scope of video content all over the internet is increasing exponentially. According to Cisco, online videos will make up 82% of the global internet traffic by 2022. HubSpot found out that 55% of people watch online clips every day.
There is no doubt that video is turning into the hottest asset in the modern marketing world.
Video clips attract a target audience, grow conversions in a marketing funnel, and consequently help companies generate more income. However, though video content has proven its effectiveness and numerous advantages, it’s vital to consider video marketing ROI. It should always be estimated in the context of the client’s business objectives and expectations.
Any modern marketer worth his salt knows that the impact of video on customers is not only measured in views. There are plenty of video ROI metrics, from CTR to pipeline conversions, that can be tracked. It helps to prove the effectiveness hidden behind the implemented promotional activities.
If you want to get a workable clip of perfect quality to match your business needs and reach your business goals, choose a contractor carefully. Before hiring, make sure the company can craft a cutting-edge product for you.
GET THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO EXPLAINER VIDEOS: TYPES, BUDGETS, STYLES
The key ingredient of any successful marketing strategy is analytics. To ensure your strategy works, you should test different marketing tools and approaches and analyze the results and contributing factors. Since video marketing is a part of overall marketing strategy, we use this approach as well.
The major objective of video marketing is to boost sales through wider audience outreach or converions’ optimization.
For example, it can have a goal of increasing social media engagement, website visits, or email sign-ups driving brand awareness, improving customer service, and much more.
To make sure you’re on the right track, you need to test how your video affects your audience and analyze whether you have reached your strategic goals or not in such a way that you can define what was most effective, what did not work, and why.
As a rule, video is an effective communication medium, helping to increase conversions in the marketing pipeline. Nevertheless, modern business people still often doubt the reasonability to invest in video production.
To find the answer, you can calculate the expected ROI for a video marketing campaign and make an informed decision based on the result. An ROI indicator is calculated as the ratio of the money received in return to the invested money. If you spend a certain amount on a clip and its promotion and earn more than that amount, your investments are well worth it. Thus, you can define the sum reasonable to invest to increase conversions in the marketing funnel.
Sometimes a video can help a company avoid expenses. For instance, if you need to explain certain advantages of your product or service to your clients, you can make a tutorial or an explainer to demonstrate it. Your staff will then spend less working time on explanations and use it to solve some more strategic tasks. Everything that helps you save, decreases your expenses and is worth investment.
Another important aspect to mention is that video becomes a kind of status symbol for a business. In the past, a website was a must-have for a business, now it’s a video that is an indispensable part of every website. However, you don’t want something average, but rather a workable video with a good ROI.
Let’s proceed then to the question of how to measure video ROI and bring the hidden criteria of its efficiency into the light.
To start with, let’s recall the classic formula of ROI calculation. It’s like this:
It’s vital to consider and total up all gains and expenses you had when both creating and marketing a video.
To calculate ROI for video correctly, keep in mind the following potential costs: cost of production, expenses for paid distribution, time spent, etc.
The ‘gain’ should be defined as a resulting increase in sales and/or decrease in operational expenses.
If the result is positive, you’re lucky: your ROI covers your investment and gives you additional profit. However, even in this case, it’s quite natural that you’d like to ratchet up that result. There are also cases when the result is negative and you will certainly want to understand the reasons.
No matter what the motivation to improve your video ROI is, you should understand that behind your profit gains or losses stand certain metrics that can be measured. Since every business has its attribution model, touchpoints with the audience, and goals to achieve, it may be confusing at times to decide which KPIs and metrics to measure.
For instance, your key video ROI factor is a certain stage at the marketing funnel. If it had a 3% conversion rate which grew to 6% after a video was added, you can speak about a positive impact on your ROI. However, this only measures the final result – it does not provide you with an understanding of WHY such a result was achieved, whether it’s positive or negative. It also fails to give you an understanding of the side effects of introducing video into the funnel – for instance, whether your clients now understand your product better.
Marketing funnel along with video types that increase different conversions.
That’s why there is a range of additional metricsthat help you understand how a video really works and influences your customer journey, which messages are most/least catchy, how the users’ attention is kept, do they go deep or fast-forward your video, etc.
Understanding such “additional metrics” allows you to identify why a particular clip worked and what needs to be changed to increase the efficiency of the target audience outreach. These factors also help you understand if the audience liked the particular video more than other types of content and what messages appealed most to them. With this information in mind, you can later create even more effective and high-quality videos to speak one language with your audience.
Now that you know how to measure ROI and see the importance of understanding additional metrics, you can play with them around, perform experiments, put hypotheses forward, check them, validate or disprove, adjust something and check the results.
GET THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO EXPLAINER VIDEOS: TYPES, BUDGETS, STYLES
Let’s deal with the major metrics that matter in measuring video ROI in more detail.
For a marketer,it’s crucial to correctly define which metrics to monitor to align with the established marketing objectives. These objectives can be manifested in increasing CTR (click-through rate), the number of subscribers, leads, customers, brand awareness, sales, staff’s time saved, etc. Understanding each metric will give you an understanding of reaching a certain goal or not. Engagement level, for instance, can be tracked through average completion rate, user retention, and reactions. To enhance sales and subscriptions, CTR and conversion rates should be tracked.
🔷 View Count/Reach
Despite the fact view count lies at the very beginning of any video story, it facilitates measuring audience outreach. Seeing the number of views, you can estimate the number of people you have reached. To increase view count, you can take the traditional measures of content promotion – social media sharing, distributing through influencers, paid promotion, etc.
🔷 Engagement/Quality
The view count should be supplemented with engagement metrics – completion rate and recirculation – to make sure your video content engages people. These metrics are also the indicators of the quality of your clip. It’s better to stick to one topic and keep your content clear and succinct. Besides, it’s reasonable to monitor where the users drop and optimize the content to improve it.
🔷 Play Rate/Relevance
The proportion of page visitors who start to watch a video is the play rate. It is a great indicator of the video being in the right context, ensuring the users both see it and engage. If the play rate is below expectations, try to alter the text or the thumbnail to be more engaging, move the video to a more prominent location, or possibly another page, and make sure it’s the right medium for the message you want to communicate.
🔷 Site Metrics/User Experience
By monitoring site metrics before and after the video is embedded, a marketer has the opportunity to compare the percent of the site users that convert (either sign-up, subscribe or purchase the product).
As a rule, the right video results in the improvement of overall website metrics. That’s why it’s important to determine the parameters with which compare before and after. If you do not witness an upswing of the metrics, or spot a high bounce rate, consider changing the context of the video or even the content itself. Make sure you provide value with your content at the relevant stage of the customer journey.
🔷 Conversations/Clarity
In cases where you’re looking to explain something, answer a question, or solve a problem, track the number of support inquiries you get on that precise topic. You can consider video a success either if you receive fewer questions or if the quality of the inquiries is higher. If you see that a specific section of your clip is often re-watched, check it to make sure it’s not confusing. This will add clarity and improve your communication with the audience.
🔷 Comments/Community
By enabling commenting on your website, you have a great opportunity to measure the scope of community you build and the extent to which your content resonates with your audience. Video can encourage further questions and discussions around your brand. This allows you to measure the qualitative and quantitative aspects of your community’s reaction.
🔷 Social Media/Word of Mouth
Social sharing allows you to measure how excited your audience is about your brand. It’s vital not only to track the number of shares but also monitor the content and context in which it happens. To enhance social sharing, you can include clear CTAs in your video, make it entertaining and optimize it for sharing with open graph tags.
Now that you know the metrics to measure video ROI, you have an understanding of how to move along. Marketing is about experimenting: you launch an innovation, measure it, improve it and start all over again.
If you neglect the analytics of video effectiveness and marketing strategy, you lose the chance to improve your activities and gain a competitive edge in the market.
Let’s review the ways you can enhance your video content ROI.
WE’D BE GLAD TO FUEL YOUR MARKETING WITH VIDEOS OF ANY GENRE, MOOD, AND STYLE
Ways to Improve the ROI of Your Video Content
Since the ROI for video production depends on several factors, to improve it you should consider these factors and optimize them.
✅ Right Audience/Accurate Messages
Before you start working on your video, you need careful target audience analysis and segmentation. Make sure your targeted group in fact has the problem that can be solved with your product or service, research the market, put forward hypotheses and test them!
The next step is to make sure your audience is emotionally involved with your video, correctly understands your message, and acts on your call to action. It depends on well-thought-out and accurate development of your video concept (idea, style, goals) and production realization (script, storyboard, illustrations, animation, voice-over).
Even the slightest mistake at any stage of production can result in low video campaign ROI. For example, if you use a young voice when your target audience is older adults, you will fail to sound trustworthy. Take a creative idea that does not resonate with the real problem and lose your targeted customers.
That’s why an expert in each field should work on a certain part of the video under the supervision of an experienced producer who has a crystal-clear vision of the overall process. Experienced companies, like Blue Carrot, as a rule have all the necessary professionals and teamwork experience to carry out any project hassle-free. We guarantee quality based on many years of expertise in video production.
✅ Matching the Sales Pipeline
The video you offer to your audience should match the right stage of the sales funnel. A 15-second promo created to be the first touch with the target audience and motivate them to learn more about the brand, for instance, can be used for social media cold advertising. Do not use it at the next stages of the funnel, where the clients need more details.
Alternatively, testimonials work well at the final stage of the sales pipeline, driving decision-making when a user is ready to work with you, but needs social proof of your company’s value. It’s no use to offer testimonials to customers in the earlier stages.
✅ Effective Distribution
To make your video effective, distribute your video through as many channels as possible including but not limited to:
All relevant pages of your website
Listings, where your company is mentioned
YouTube channel
Brand pages on Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks
Exhibitions and other business events
Online/offline meetings
Marketplaces
Newsletters
Email chains
Paid channels like Youtube/Facebook Ads
Otherwise, you risk no one seeing your video resulting in low ROI.
✅ Cut Costs
One more method to increase video ROI is to cut production costs. You can do so without sacrificing quality in the following ways:
Outsource production to countries where the development rates are lower, Eastern Europe, for instance. At times, the quality is even above the client’s expectations, but as a rule, meet the requirements to the letter.
Consider 2D instead of 3D or live shooting.
Hire a skilled team that is experienced in such projects and knows how to smartly distribute the workload and minimize corrections.
Check how much it costs to make a promotional video in 2021
Blue Carrot Case Studies
In the context of this article, we’d like to share Blue Carrot’s case studies Scratchpay and Onfo.
Scratchpay
The client, a payment system for American veterinarians, offers an innovative solution to pet owners. For an average user, it’s difficult to grasp how it works and what benefits it offers. Initially, the offer page was all text, which complicated the information for users even more. So, the company decided to create an explainer and put it on its landing page.
The video was developed in a relatively simple style, designed to introduce the service to the target audience and explain how it works. It also had a traditional structure: problem – solution – how it works – additional benefits – CTA. As a result, the site’s visitors understood the product better and the CTA conversion grew. The explainer clip created by Blue Carrot completely paid off and added-value.
Scratch’s high-level viewing statistics of the explainer video are as follows:
Thus, it is clear that every third page visitor watched 86% of the clip, and page conversion is up 8.5%.
🥕 Increasing landing page conversions with our video for Scrathpay startup
Onfo
Onfo is a cryptocurrency company that wanted to grow its audience at minimaд cost while building emotional connection with the gained community members.
Since crypto is in the C2C sphere, the success of the project depends to a great extent on the community, people who purchase crypto-assets and recommend it to others.
The decision was to play around with an extremely emotional idea that became the basis for the video. What is more, we did not stick to a traditional clip structure and did not tell anything about the currency, how it works or how can be purchased. We also didn’t provide customer reviews.
The video was provocatively stylized and appealed to the users’ emotions. It was met with a generous response from part of the targeted audience. As a result, with a relatively small investment in production, Onfo received amazingly large coverage without paid promotion – in just three days on Facebook, it reached 100k views organically. The objective was met and many crypto users turned into Onfo customers.
Check how Blue Carrot launches extraordinary ideas into the world.
Final Thoughts
In the present-day marketing landscape, video is a powerful asset if implemented correctly. Tracking ROI helps businesses to make wiser decisions.
Improving your video content ROI is all about choosing the right product/market fit, setting correct goals, creating a professional video, and distributing it widely. With clear business objectives, marketing metrics, and the right production team, your video can bring you the desired return on investments and even exceed your expectations.
If you need assistance in video production, Blue Carrot is here to support you in the process, from A to Z. Our team can help you set the right video marketing goals, select the right messages to appeal to your audience, and create a video that evokes emotion, teaches, or accelerates product understanding. Blue Carrot experts can also assist you with distributing your clip in the right places for it to be well-positioned.
