3 Myths About Video Marketing Analytics

When was the last time you did a reality check on your video marketing KPIs? If you’ve been using the same benchmarks to measure success for more than a couple of years, the truth is that you’re probably not getting the most out of your data.

The digital environment we operate in is one of constant change, driven primarily by evolving customer behaviors and expectations. This means marketers need to be on their toes, taking advantage of all the information and insights that can help them keep pace.

Advancements in both available user data and a more precise understanding of what those metrics mean are helping make it possible. Amid this innovation, many common perceptions about measuring the impact of video marketing—and improving it—are no longer accurate.

Here’s a look at some of the biggest video marketing analytics myths to shine a light on which metrics and tools will get you the insights you need.

Myth #1: Views are the most important metric in video marketing

Going viral was once upon a time seen as a golden ticket—the magic moment when your brand achieved internet fame and fortune. Racking up video views was the key to making it big.

If that was ever truly the most valuable aspiration for a video marketer, it isn’t anymore. Yes, going viral still happens, but rather than the explosive exposure it once afforded, it’s more of a flash in the pan.

Reality check: Different metrics matter at different times

Video is a mainstay of our current digital culture. People have grown accustomed to engaging with video as entertainment, education, and part of the purchasing process.

That path to purchase consists of a few distinct inflection points. At each of these points, different metrics hold more weight.

Analytics tip: Know which metrics to watch

Want to know what’s working at each point along the path to purchase? These are the key metrics to watch for by stage.

Awareness: While views are not the most important metric overall, there are points in time at which view totals are a valuable KPI. The awareness stage is one of those points.

Consideration: Watch time, or engagement, is the key metric for measuring the impact your video has on viewers. Engaged audiences watch longer. If your audience is checking out at the same point in time, it might be worth recutting the video to ensure it doesn’t lag and is driving quickly to what’s most valuable.

Conversion: Viewing the full customer journey through touchpoint mapping can help you understand the role your video content plays in earning conversions. Interactive video is especially helpful for ROI analysis because it yields specific details about how audiences engage with your content and can drive directly to shopping carts or lead gen forms.

Retention: Engagement data will tell you a lot about how invested customers are in your product or service. You will want to look at engagement metrics for videos that focus on training, add-ons, and upselling.

Learn more about using metrics to measure success throughout the buyer’s journey.

Myth #2: Social media platforms provide all the analytics you need

Ah, the siren song of native video statistics, lulling marketers into believing they’re sailing toward a wealth of KPIs.

But what are you really learning from viewing these isolated analytics? At best, you can tell how your content is performing for the audience on each specific platform, but are you really getting the full picture of reach and impact?

Reality check: Analytics viewed in isolation don’t tell the whole story

In order to truly understand how your content performs across channels, you need to have a single view that pulls analytics from every platform where your content is published. Only then can you see how various versions of your video perform for different audiences, what works across the board, and where you’re seeing the most success.

Analytics tip: Integrate your social data

Why bounce between platforms, manually extracting data and trying to make sense of it on your own, when you could simply empower a single analytics platform to do the work for you?

By integrating your social accounts with an enterprise-grade streaming platform, you’ll be able to dig deeper into the data, do side-by-side comparisons, and discover new insights that will improve future campaign performance.

Learn more about how to repurpose existing content with a strong social video strategy.

Myth #3: Measuring video ROI is too hard

Calculating ROI has always been a bit of a headache for marketers, but it is a necessary step. With convincing ROI data in hand, you can prove the impact of your video marketing efforts and secure future investment into your video marketing strategy.

It’s understandable that marketers struggle with their confidence in measuring ROI. Marketing is about drawing the crowd, creating the experience, and eliciting desire for what you have to offer. Not exactly easy to measure the effectiveness of a single asset that ties directly to results. But there’s good news.

Reality check: It’s getting a lot easier and more straightforward

New technologies and integrations have opened the door to richer video marketing analytics. With machine learning and AI technology powering attribution modeling, marketers can assign sales and conversions to touchpoints in conversion paths.

With each new data point, we gain a better understanding of how customers discover brands, engage with content, and decide to purchase.

Analytics tip: Link tracked behaviors to ROI

By integrating your streaming platform with your CRM, you can access insights that track audience behaviors throughout the full buying process, from awareness to purchase.

Some metrics that deliver a more accurate ROI include:

• Touchpoint mapping, which shows the number and types of videos watched at different funnel stages and sequences.
• Engagement behaviors, such as dwell times, skips, and rewatches of specific sections.
• Interactive video behaviors, including in-video navigation, poll submissions, and click-through rates from video to a landing page.

Learn more about interactive video and ROI.

Keep current with video marketing analytics trends

Looking for some dependable sources to stay on top of what really matters in the fast-changing world of video marketing analytics? Here are a few we recommend:

• Martech.org: They specialize in marketing analytics technology, including video. Especially valuable to follow as the upcoming transition to Google Analytics 4 looms.
• Social Media Today: A reliable source for the latest in social media, with regular updates on new measurement features.
• Wyzowl Video Marketing Blog: This frequently-updated blog covers everything from creating videos to measuring their impact. Wyzowl also has a dedicated resource page for video marketing data.
• Adweek - Video Marketing: The well-regarded news outlet has a dedicated feed for video marketing, but requires a subscription.
• Marketing Dive: Keep an eye on both the Video and Data/Analytics feeds for quality coverage of both.

What’s trending now

Moving from fiction to fact, here are the important trends you should be familiar with in the ongoing evolution of video marketing analytics:

• AI-powered video analytics are changing the industry in a big way. Machine learning enables precise touchpoint mapping and ultimately enables more accurate ROI figures.
  Who’s leading:JUMP Insights is an AI-powered analytics integration that puts your data to work for you.
• Single-source livestreaming across all channels. Broadcasting wherever your brand has a presence means your audience finds you where they’re at, producing rich engagement insights.
  Who’s leading:Accedo One is an over-the-top (OTT) system that delivers your content across all channels without congestion and at high quality.
• Interactive video. Enabling more meaningful engagement between customers and your video content improves brand recall and, as mentioned earlier, leads to more nuanced measurement capabilities.
  Who’s leading:Wootag is an integration that lets marketers add business triggers as interactivity within their videos.

Invest in a trusted platform

Investing in an online video platform with robust video management and analytics capabilities will open doors to analytics you might not have even considered. Don’t forget: the centralized management piece is essential to producing meaningful omnichannel analytics.

The dashboard of this platform will give you an at-a-glance feel for how various campaigns are performing across all channels. With a platform designed specifically for managing videos and measuring video performance, you can get the latest insights and stay on top of video analytics trends.