Video is an investment
Video is an investment. We get it. Just last year HubSpot released research detailing that a third of marketers polled (out of over 500 globally) dedicate 21-40% of their total marketing budget to video.
But as well as being an investment, it’s one of the best formats to be backing.
Cisco believes that by the end of this year, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic — 15 times higher than it was in 2017.
So, with a potentially high investment cost needed to meet what is one of the top formats for your content, what are you getting out of your animation? How can you measure winning?
Well we’ve got some ideas for you.
Metrics you should keep an eye on
You’re most likely already using some form of analytics. If you don’t have Google Analytics or something similar firing yet, here’s a quick guide from Google to set up a basic account.
With this assumption in mind here are some metrics you could (and probably should) be keeping an eye on when it comes to measuring the impact of your animation.
Website metrics to keep an eye on
Watches, rewatches and % played
These are metrics you can track as a goal in Google Analytics. That way you can understand how people are interacting with the videos on your landing pages. Here’s a video from Analytics Mania to teach you how to set it up.
Why would you do this in Google Analytics and not natively on Vimeo/Youtube? Those platforms won’t tell where the video was consumed. If you’re looking to understand the effectiveness of your video on your webpage and get more specific play, abandonment or conversion data, linking it to Analytics is a no-brainer.
Page engagement
Noting the increase in your time on page, pages per visit and your bounce rate might be worthwhile too. You can see how adding a video affects each.
Conversion metrics
If your video is placed at the conversion end of your visitor journey, then keep an eye on your goals such as contact forms, click-to-call, or email conversions. And if your video’s page is sending them to a conversion page (contact us etc.) then you can use “previous page path” as a secondary dimension in Google Analytics to determine attribution.
You could also use tools like Vidyard to add direct CTAs to your video and measure conversion from there - more on that later.
Social media metrics to keep track of
Play rate & watch time
Similar to the website metric we listed above, social analytics (plus some paid-for tools like Emplifi if you fancy more detail) will help you find views, average watch %, and more. A huge indicator of the success of your video is, first and foremost, if it was consumed!
Reach and engagement
While more of an indicator of the sway you have over your social media community, reach (impressions) can also help you see which posts are more effective. Once you start experimenting with post times and video content, you’ll be able to watch impressions and the differences there. Your more popular videos and post times will get more reach.
Though likes are somewhat a vanity metric, comments are gold. Actual community input on a video will let you know that the content you’ve put there is inspiring some action. It also showcases your video in the feed of the person who has liked that video - sharing it across a new community.
On par with comments are shares. Like comments, shares situate you in other’s community feeds, bolstering your impressions and hopefully engagement. What shares reveal that comments don’t, is advocacy. You can see who is openly recommending your content.
And while it's not something you might think of keeping track of, any private messages (DMs), or conversations you have with prospects (or your audience) where they mention your content is worth noting too!
Click-through rate (CTR) & conversions
We’ve lumped these two together because generally a click-through is seen as a conversion as far as social media traffic is concerned. While the click may not mean a lead is in the bag, it means the social post or ad has done its job.
The best way to measure CTR is with a Universal Transverse Mercator (or UTM for non-cyborgs). UTMs are a line of code that sits on your website link that tells Google analytics where the traffic has come from and can get very specific.
Want to build UTMs for your social media posts or ads? Use this simple builder - it’s free.
Adding direct CTAs to your videos
Another way to be sure of the ROI on your video is to add a direct next step once it’s been watched - or during your video. Adding a CTA button is simple in most video tools, and can be a great way to signpost where the watcher should (or could) go next.
You’ll need to nail the appropriate next step and the copy you go with - just ensure it matches the result the user expects. You can then start registering conversions (or an event) through analytics, get feedback from a survey or whatever the end goal is.
By adding a direct call to action, you’ll be able to see how much your video is contributing to your goals.
It’s worth mentioning that this isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. It all starts with having a clear goal for your video, and deciding whether a call to action link works, or not.
Your CTA copy
When you’re thinking about your CTA copy - ask yourself “what’s the logical next step?” You don’t need to overcomplicate it. Point them in the right direction and alleviate a fear or objection if you can:
- “Give our team a quick call now”
- “Contact us for a response in 24 hours”
- “Tell us about your project and get a free quote”
- “Schedule a demo”
Simple A/B video testing
We think running an A/B test gives you the best chance to understand the potential return on investment from your video, at least where leads and bottom line are concerned (more on that in the next section).
Running an A/B test for several weeks, or months, gives you data on what impact your video is having on landing page performance - are you getting more engagement? More leads? And so on.
With an A/B test, you can assign measurement objectives to find out if your video is having the impact you’d hoped. So long as you have the right goals set up in your analytics, you can measure your test.
Never done one before? Don’t worry. We’ve written a quick step-by-step guide to setting up an A/B test to measure the impact of your video. So check that out if it’s the first time you’re attempting anything like this.
You could measure engagement metrics, you could look at lead generation, you could look at specific click-through rates … the list goes on. The more specific your goals are, the more specific things you can test. By assigning a goal to your test, you’ll be able to define how your landing page performs with and without video. Then there can be no doubt of its impact!
“I’ll just run the video and compare my page’s performance to the previous months,” you say? No, don’t do that. The problem with simply comparing performance to the last 3 months (or similar) is that if there are any fluctuations in your sector, or beyond, you’ll never be able to replicate them. Testing is the TRUEST comparison.
You could run these kinds of tests on your ads too
While it won’t function in the same way as an implemented website A/B test, you can see how video assets impact your ads.
Simply run one campaign including video assets and one that doesn’t. You’ll need to make sure that your campaigns are like for like in their build and targeting, but then swap out the assets.
If you’re trying to define the impact of an animated video (or similar) on an ad set, running them at the same time will always give you a fairer result.
Sorry, we said this above but it bears repeating - the problem with simply comparing to the last 3 months (or similar) is that if there are any fluctuations in your sector, or beyond, you’ll never be able to replicate them; it’s not a TRULY fair comparison.
Want an ROI that talks purely £s? Get attributing.
If it’s all about the money for your ROI measurements then you’re going to need to dig into your data and make educated guesses around your attribution.
To keep this clear, we’re going to take you through an example, starting with the amount you spend on your video project.
This approach works best with top-of-the-funnel content, as fewer (or no) touchpoints would seriously impede your ability to make educated guesses at attribution. If there are multiple touchpoints before your video plays into a conversion, you’ll need to be aware of them. The only way to be really sure about that is to understand and map your visitor’s journeys, and we’re not covering that here.
If you’re not aware of previous touchpoints, the % you attribute to your video is going to diminish in some unfathomable way.
This model works best on an ad or page level OR if you’re confident in your journey attribution (sorry).
Define your project cost
Your project cost should include what you paid your animation agency, plus your distribution budget. For example:
- Project cost = £15k
- Promotion costs = £5k
- Overall cost = £20k
Great, now we’ve got that out the way, we can move to our educated guesswork. The better your data, the more educated your guessing will be.
Define your lead value
There are different ways to do this, but we’re going to assume you’re using some form of decent customer relationship management tool (CRM) that helps you capture this data.
Your lead value can be calculated by first understanding how many leads convert out of a selection of say five. For instance, your lead-to-conversion rate might be one in every five (20%).
You’ll then need to understand what your average deal value is. Again, your CRM should be at hand here to help you work this out. For example, we’re going to say that you work out your average deal value at £200,000.
We know that on average every 25 leads becomes one sale and that sale is worth £200,000 so we have:
£200,000 ÷ 25 = £8,000
Now, we have your lead value.
Time for more educated guesswork.
Decide your video → lead attribution
Yes, we know. This one sounds like a total stab in the dark. But it doesn’t have to be:
A little earlier in this article, we talk about A/B testing. The idea here is that you can find the conversion % increase your video brings to a landing page or an ad by running a controlled test.
If your page had a 1% conversion rate before the video and a 1.5% conversion rate after adding the video - that’s a 50% increase. But of the new percentage, only a third of it now presents the conversion rate your video is driving. Therefore you can say your video contributes to 33% of any leads coming through the page. That’s a data-led decision.
Anyway, back to deciding your video → lead attribution
Ultimately, you need to decide what % of attribution your video is accountable for. We (above) defined our lead value at £8,000, and now we need to decide whether the video is worth:
33% video → lead = £2,666 as per our example.
Take an educated guess (using data as your guide) on the impact your videos had on a landing page, an ad or elsewhere and settle on a %.
For this example, we’re going to attribute 33% video → lead, meaning that for each £8,000 lead generated, £2,666 of that lead comes from our video.
Now, to put that all together.
Hey presto, we have a monetary ROI for video
So by putting all the above thinking and numbers into a single calculation, how many leads do we need to break even? Here we go:
- The video project = £20k overall
- Average lead value = £8,000
- Video → lead attribution value = £2,666 (based on a 33% video → lead attribution)
- £20k project spend ÷ £2,666 video → lead attribution value = 7.5 leads.
So, anything above 7 leads during the video’s lifetime value is money in your pocket.
This all changes if you know your page journey attribution.
Let’s say you’re a data whizz and you have ALL of your attribution data tied up.
You’ve got an event setup in GA4 that allows you to track attribution between the pages on your website. You start the event when someone clicks play on your video on a landing page. The funnel event you’ve set up sees the visitor go to 2 subsequent pages before filling out the form on your contact page.
That’s four pages viewed (in total) before a conversion.
That would give each page in this particular website journey a 25% conversion weight. And we could be sure of that because of your fancy funnel event tracking in GA4.
33% video → lead attribution ÷ 4 = 8.25%
Interested in configuring this elusive funnel? Here’s a guide that might help.
Social media & ad campaigns
What about if you’re primarily using your video for social media and ad campaigns?
Well, we’ll have to assume that your potential customer/client is seeing your video ad, or maybe organic post, and is the first step in their conversion journey.
You’ll need to make sure you’re using UTMs (we talk about creating those in the social media metrics section of this article) to understand where your traffic is coming from, which ad they clicked and further details if you so choose.
So long as your UTMs are nicely tuned, you’ll know exactly how many leads/sales your video post or ad is pushing to your website. And, in time, you can build up the data to understand how many of those clicks result in real conversions, sign ups or whatever it may be.
Like in our above website-specific example, the more you can understand your averages (clicks into leads, leads into sales etc.) the better time you’ll have in attributing value to your video.
Some different ways to look at success
Time is money, friend…
Not all the value from your video will come from the revenue it directly generates. Animation is a great informational tool, and can help free up time for other team members by taking over repetitive tasks. It can even bring them closer together …
Let’s have a look at a few example cases.
Save your sales team time
It's hard work being on the front end of things! Constantly taking prospects through the product architecture can be time consuming, not to mention inconsistent. Providing an animation that they can use in their process can help free up time for other activities.
Aligning internal messaging
A video project can be a great conduit for creating alignment between your sales, product, and marketing teams. Get everyone in a room to discuss the key USPs, and you’ll quickly see where the inconsistencies are.
Measure your client’s understanding
A lot of the return on investment you’ll get from a video will come down to the clarity of your message, and therefore knowledge imparted (which you can assess). You could:
- Gather a net promoter score (a measurement of customer experience that can help predict business growth) from your clients.
- Send surveys or ask for feedback that showcased the understanding that your video had helped them gain.
You could monitor your brand mentions (brand lift) to see if your video’s got people talking about you.
As mentioned above, not all return on investment conversations have to be about money. And just because they’re not about money, doesn’t mean they’re not commercial.
Another way to measure the impact of your video marketing is to see if they’ve got people talking about you. Tools like Hootsuite, Buffer and BuzzSumo all allow you to track your brand mentions across social media and in that way, measure sentiment. While this may be more utilised in the B2C space - the opportunity is there for B2B too.
This is only a metric you’ll be interested in if you’ve recently been doing a lot of brand-related activity, or if you’re already a well-known brand in your space looking to measure specific campaign impact.
But if you’re looking to be the talk of the town and see where you’re being mentioned or referenced across the world wide web - this would be something to look at.
So there you have it.
Those are some of our best tips for helping you measure and understand ROI when it comes to video.
Video isn’t useful in every scenario, but when used correctly it can be an invaluable tool for increasing engagement and revenue.
If you’d like help creating a killer animation for your fintech, or you’d like to talk to us about getting started, or even want some help in where your video fits within a wider marketing strategy, reach out to us.