Got a great video? Check.

Got a great video marketing campaign to complement it? Um…

Video marketing has been on-trend for quite some time, and it’s destined to get even trendier as we head into 2019. A whopping 78% of us watch videos online each week, while forecasts suggest that online videos will account for 80% of all internet traffic by 2020.

To make video marketing count for you, you need to be taking a look at your metrics. Not just any metrics but 8 of the fundamentals. You need to know what people are watching when they’re watching and if any of this is affecting your bottom line. Then, you can make the necessary half-time adjustments to your campaigns.

Join us as we take a look at the top 8 video marketing metrics you should be tracking.

Play Rate

Play rate (and replays, too), is a good metric to monitor because it gives you an insight into how well-placed your video is on your website.

Moreover, it gives you a clue as to how “clickable” your video is. For maximum exposure, and especially if you have an explainer video, the best place to put your video is front and center on your homepage. This way, it’s one of the first things site visitors see.

Replays are worth keeping an eye on, too, because they show how much someone liked your video. Is there a bigger compliment than repeat views?

How to track:

If you are using paid video hosting platforms like Wistia, it’s going to show you the play rate as well as some other more advanced video marketing metrics.

If you host your videos on YouTube, head over to Analytics for your video.

Watch Time

“Views” is a metric, but it’s not necessarily a key metric. A high view count is nothing more than a vanity metric is your watch time is down.

Your aim with a video should always be to keep people watching until the end, before encouraging them to take a specific action.

How to track:

To find out how much your video is resonating with people, take a look at your watch time. If your 5-minute video has an average watch time of 30 seconds, it’s a bad sign. In such a case, take another look at your video and see how you can improve engagement.

Shares

Okay, maybe there’s a bigger compliment than repeat viewings — and it’s called sharing is caring.

The more times your video is shared, the higher the chances are that people really liked it.

On the other hand, if your videos are hardly ever shared, you need to tap into what it is that makes people love something so much that they want to share it. Word of mouth is as hugely important as ever, and often the two main reasons we share something is because it’s either entertaining or educational/helpful.

If your video isn’t being shared, you might want to take a look at your CTA. Could it be stronger? Could you directly ask for a share?

How to track:

YouTube has a pretty handy feature that shows you exactly when and where the viewers shared the video.

Comments

Leaving a comment requires a bit more effort on an individuals part. As such, if your video is encouraging comments — good or bad — it’s doing enough to cause a response.

Comments are important to monitor because they give you an insight not only into how many people are enjoying your video enough to leave a comment, but also an insight into what they feel about it and your brand. You can use the comment section to interact with people and build a sense of community. If people ask you questions, don’t hesitate to answer them with a solid, valuable answer.

How to track:

Monitor the questions section on YouTube or any other video hosting platform that you use. As a side bonus, the questions people leave to your videos might be a great source of blog post ideas.

Likes

One of the simplest metrics to measure is your likes.

It’s simple enough — the more likes your video has, the more obvious it is that people like it.

However, if your likes are up but your shares are down, it’s a sign that your video clearly is doing something good, but it isn’t offering quite enough value to encourage people to share it.

How to track:

You can find the number of likes right underneath the video. YouTube also provides insights as to how the video compares to other videos in terms of likes.

Click-Through Rate

In video marketing terms, the click-through rate refers to the number of people who clicked your videos CTA (this comes at the end of the video). It’s a conversion metric that gives you an insight into how much your video connected with someone.

If your CTR rate is high, it means you are connected so much that viewers are intrigued enough to move onto the next step.

How to track:

To establish a high CTR rate, you need to find a way of keeping viewers engaged until the end, and you need to finish with a strong, direct and compelling CTA that tells them exactly what action to take next.

Traffic Sources

Whatever your main source of traffic is — be it YouTube, Facebook and so on — you need to double down on it. It’s clearly working. Instead of kicking back and enjoying the good times, work harder to optimize your visibility even more.

How to track:

Moreover, traffic sources as a metric help you understand your audience a bit more. When you understand which platforms they use, you understood more about how they consume media. This can be used as a weapon to build an even better campaign next time around.

And if there’s a really below-par traffic source that’s clearly not working? It might be time to save yourself some cash and time by ditching it.

Viewer Demographics

One of the most important metrics of all, viewer demographics gives you a major insight into what your audience is exactly.

Your viewers need to align with your targeted persona(s). To find out whether they do, take a look at your traffic sources (see above) as well as their interests, industries, age groups and so on.

Your viewers need to align with your target personas.

If your viewers are totally unrelated to your target persona, it might be the reason your watch time — for example — is down.

In such circumstances, you need to get better at finding your core demographic. Otherwise, this is going to impact all your efforts for the worse.

All in all, since video content is unlikely to disappear for a long time, it’s important that you check these core metrics frequently. By doing so, you’ll be able to refine your campaigns so that you reach and please more people.

Of course, it all starts with a great video. So get to it!

About the author:

Aljaz Fajmut is a digital marketer, internet entrepreneur, and the founder of Nightwatch— a search visibility tool of the next generation. Check out Nightwatch blog for SEO and marketing tips and follow him on Twitter: @aljazfajmut