by Joe Monzo | Mar 21, 2023 | General
Applying analytics to marketing strategy will look different for everyone. The results and how you respond to them will have a lot to do with which platforms on which you host and promote your videos as well as the goals for your campaign. Keep your unique situation in mind as you read your analytics report.
In part one of this video marketing analytics series, we defined the common analytics vocabulary so that you can easily read your video reports. In this next part, we will dive deeper into what those results mean for your marketing strategy.
High Impressions With Low Views
As an example, you might have a branding video on the homepage of your website. You’re noticing in your analytics report that you have ten thousand impressions but only two views.
If you are seeing a high number of impressions paired with a meager number of views, there are a few ways to interpret the results. On the one hand, it is common for views to be lower than impressions because of the nature of how platforms count impressions and views. There is also no real standard to the threshold that a view rate must reach to be considered satisfactory. On the other hand, if the number of views is much lower than you feel it should be, there are a few issues to consider.
Your Video Is Easy to Miss
One issue that could cause a low view rate is that people are not actually seeing the video on the page. Assess where you’ve located the video, such as if it’s on the bottom or easy to miss. Remember that many platforms count the loading of a video as an impression without considering whether the person actually scrolls to see it. To rectify this, you should put your video as close to the top of the page as possible.
Your Site Host Is Blocking the Data
If visibility is not the issue, another thing to consider is that the website might be blocking data from the video hosting site. In this case, there’s not much you can do without changing the code. Embedded code is typically better than embedded URL links for this reason, but understanding that data is not fully reported would at least solve the discrepancy.
Unappealing or Nonfunctioning Video Player
One of the most common mistakes in video marketing is a nonexistent or unappealing thumbnail. Without a thumbnail, visitors have a difficult time understanding what the video is about and why they should watch it. Appealing thumbnails catch attention and persuade visitors to at least give the video a chance. Consider adding or changing your video thumbnail to improve the view rate of your video.
In addition, video players sometimes don’t work properly depending on how you’ve added them to your website. The visitor might be clicking play, but the video doesn’t work or takes too long to load, both of which will seriously impact your view rate. Ensure your video player is working properly by testing your site’s functionality and speed.
Low Average Watch Percentage
The average watch percentage is really important because this result determines whether people are engaged in the entire video and reach the end. Most of the time, it is critical that the viewer reaches the end of the video so that they are exposed to your chosen call-to-action (CTA).
If the average watch percentage is only 5%, that means you’ve already lost your audience’s interest in the first few seconds of the video. If this is the case, review your video and ask yourself why the audience might be losing interest at the beginning of your video.
Unengaging or Highly Persuasive?
Commonly, the average watch percentage is about 30-50%. One way to interpret this rate is to understand that your story might be too slow or that it might hit a lull in the middle. Maybe your video makes big promises and catches attention at the beginning, but takes too long to get to the punch line.
Alternatively, this percentage range isn’t always a bad thing. It might also mean that your audience is converted before they reach the end of the video. For this reason, lower average watch percentages are not a perfect indicator of effectiveness – they should be taken in stride and combined with other analytics results, such as CTA clicks and submissions.
Interpreting the Number of Clicks and Submissions
When it comes to comparing your social media and website results, it is normal for the views on your social media to be lower than the views on your website. If you’re running targeted paid ads, make sure you’re paying attention to the clicks and submissions analytics related to those ads to make sure you have a significant ROI. You can retarget your ads to invest in a target audience that is working for you based on your analytics to improve your ROI.
Spend time reviewing your analytics to understand what they mean for your campaigns. If no one can find the video, or the video loses the audience’s attention, then you’ll likely have lower clicks and submissions regardless of where it is posted. Ultimately, clicks and submissions are the most important part of your analytics because this is where the buyer journey accelerates.
If you need more help understanding your analytics reports, contact Monzo Media Productions.
by Joe Monzo | Mar 10, 2023 | General
Producing and distributing a video marketing campaign is only half the battle. Now, you need to monitor your results and use them to improve future campaigns. Without the vocabulary for your key performance indicators (KPI), you’ll have a difficult time understanding how much your video marketing is really benefiting your organization.
Learning analytics vocabulary is essential to reading your videos’ analytics reports and understanding what those KPIs mean. Further, you’ll be able to pinpoint the weak spots in your campaign and course-correct.
Part one of this series lists the most common and useful analytics terms and what they mean. The next part will help you implement what you’ve learned to improve your video marketing return on investment (ROI).
Impressions
An impression is counted by a platform when your video is loaded and noticed by someone. It’s important to understand that this is different than when someone watches your video. An impression is not a play, so your impressions will almost always be higher than your views. In other words, an impression is when you are scrolling through a feed and pass by some videos that you haven’t necessarily clicked on or watched but noticed as you scrolled.
Views
While impressions are counted just by scrolling through, views are tougher to accomplish. Each platform has its own policy for what counts as a view, but all of them require the person to take an active role in watching the video beyond scrolling past it. Some platforms require that the person clicks play, while others require that the viewer watches for at least three seconds or longer. Before you analyze your results, make sure to research each platform on which you host your video to understand which actions count as a view.
View Rate
View rate is different than views because it is a percentage rather than a number amount. You can find the view rate by dividing the number of views by the number of impressions. In other words, the view rate is the percentage of times a person scrolling by a video stops to watch it. If five people watch your video for every ten times a person scrolls by it, then there would be a 50% view rate.
Average Percentage Watched
The average percentage watched should not be confused with the view rate. Instead of the number of times a person has watched a video, the average percentage watched is the term for the average duration of a video that is watched. To calculate this percentage, you would divide the length of the video typically watched by the full length of the video. In other words, if a person has watched three minutes of a five-minute video, they would have watched 60% of the video. You could choose to calculate this number across all platforms hosting your video, or look at the average of each platform individually for different analyses. Overall, this result is a great way to start understanding whether you have high-engagement videos.
CTA Card Clicks
Not every platform has call-to-action (CTA) cards, but if you are publishing on a platform like YouTube or Vimeo, you’ll have the option to create CTA cards that tell your viewer what to do next after watching the video. For these platforms, you’ll have the opportunity to analyze how effective your CTA cards are as well. The most common analytic for CTA cards is “clicks,” which would tell you how many times your viewers have followed through on the direction you’ve given them.
Submissions
Finally, “submissions” is another analytical tool that isn’t available on every platform but is very valuable to use. The number of submissions will tell you how many times your viewers have submitted information through a form you’ve created for the video. For example, if you prompt them to submit their email address, you’ll be able to see how persuasive you were in obtaining email addresses through your video marketing campaign.
Use Analytics to Understand Your Video Marketing ROI
Looking through data isn’t an exciting task for most people, but it’s necessary. If your goal is to obtain an email list of prospects, how will you know if you’re successful without digging into the number of submissions your video has gained? By learning to read analytics, you’ll more deeply understand how your audience is interacting with your videos and what you can do to create more effective video marketing campaigns in the future.
Analytics helps you get a tangible ROI from your video marketing efforts. In the second part of this series, we will dive into how you can turn this knowledge into actionable insights.
For more information on understanding analytics vocabulary, contact Monzo Media Productions.
by Joe Monzo | Feb 22, 2023 | General
When you realize your footage isn’t where you thought it was, it can be devastating. Even the most seasoned professionals have experienced this issue once or twice – we’re all human. All the time, money, and energy that went into producing high-quality footage is now lost, but take a deep breath. There’s always a way to recover from losing footage.
How you’ll solve the problem of lost footage will depend on the subject of the footage and who is at fault for the loss.
Who Lost It?
If you were working with a video production partner who is at fault for the lost footage, then there is a certain etiquette the partner should follow. Generally, the video production partner should attempt to recover the footage or provide alternatives. Hopefully, you’ve read the contract you’ve signed to ensure it has a policy about lost or damaged footage. Remember to stay calm and approach the problem as a team, as this will provide the best chance for a high-quality finished product.
If you were shooting your video in-house, then you’ll need to retrace your steps and pinpoint the source of the problem. Did you overwrite the footage? Did you lose or damage the SD card? Did you think you lost the footage, but instead, you accidentally sent it to a different folder on your computer when storing your videos?
Losing footage doesn’t always mean it’s lost permanently, so make sure you do everything you can to recover it before you move on.
Reshoots
In the case that your footage is certainly gone, you’ll need to assess how important that footage was to the overall project. If you lost a large portion of your video footage, or the lost footage had a key scene or cast member, you might need to consider a reshoot.
Reshoots can be inconvenient and expensive. Originally, it might have been difficult to schedule film day so that all the cast members could attend at the right location and time. Trying to schedule again could cause serious production delays, but if it’s unavoidable, do your best to only reshoot the necessary footage.
Unfortunately, reshoots are only possible with certain types of videos. For example, lost footage from an event will be unrepeatable. Instead, you might need to supplement with other types of footage and effects, or in extreme circumstances, abandon the project.
Use B-Roll Or Evergreen Content
If you’re not going to reshoot, then you might be able to skip the lost scene altogether. Less important footage won’t necessarily be missed by the viewer, and you could try to replace it with other footage. Planning ahead of time to film more b-roll and interview footage than you’ll need is a great way to lessen the sting of these mistakes. You might also be able to use evergreen footage in your archive from past projects if the footage is relevant.
Learn From Your Mistakes
Reshooting and replacing footage is not the best-case scenario, but these solutions still achieve a polished finished product that engages your audience. Done with skill, your creative solutions will leave the audience completely unaware that any footage is missing. Lesson learned: you’ll shoot more footage than you need in the future and take better care of your footage when transporting, storing, and editing.
If you need more help with recovering from lost footage, contact Monzo Media Productions.
by Joe Monzo | Feb 15, 2023 | General
Creating a high-engagement video requires careful planning and filming, but your target audience will never enjoy the video if they’re not tempted to click on it in the first place. Thumbnail graphics are an essential part of communicating with your audience, giving them a snapshot of what they can expect when they click play. Unfortunately, overlooking thumbnails is one of the most common mistakes in video marketing. Without good thumbnail graphics, your videos may not get the clicks and views that your brand deserves.
Having an effective thumbnail graphic is an important tactic in grabbing the attention of your ideal audience and increasing viewership. Here are my top tips for using thumbnails to capture more viewers.
Use a B-Roll Shot
Thumbnails are first impressions, so using a high-quality still is a priority. One easy way to use an impressive shot for your thumbnail is to capture it from your b-roll footage. A still from your b-roll will naturally be relevant, high-quality, and engaging for the video’s ideal audience. Consider a drone shot of the location or a still of one of your cast members as your thumbnail. Your chosen image will work as long as it has to do with the video’s story.
Avoid Stills of Interviews
While using your b-roll is a smart choice, taking a still from an interview is not recommended. Only a few minutes into trying to capture a still from an interview, you’ll realize how difficult it is to take an appealing still of a person who is mid-sentence. It will take too much time – if it’s even possible – to find a high-quality still of their face in a nice neutral position.
Add Brief and Relevant Text
In addition to using an engaging picture for your thumbnail, you’ll want to pair it with a brief and informative snippet of text. This text could be the title of the video, or it should at least communicate the point of the video in an eye-catching and interesting way.
Use a GIF
Spice up your thumbnail for an even better chance at increased viewership by using animated GIFs. GIFs are not always allowed as thumbnails on video hosting sites, but you can use this feature on Vimeo. The best part is that it’s not common for video creators to use GIFs as thumbnails, so your video will stand out even more on feeds. Keep creative features like this in mind when choosing platforms for sharing your videos.
Make Sure There’s a Play Button
When helping my clients use their websites for video marketing, I don’t recommend uploading videos straight to the website. Hosting videos on your website can cause a host of problems. One of the issues could be the way the video presents on your site – the chosen video player might not make it obvious that the video is actually a video. You also miss the opportunity to build up an audience across channels and improve engagement on a video hosting site like YouTube. Instead of uploading your video directly to your website, you should embed it.
In the case that you choose to host rather than embed, or your video player is customizable, make sure you make the play button visible. The visible play button over the thumbnail lets your site visitors know they can click on the video to begin watching.
If you’re interested in learning more about creating the best thumbnails for your videos, contact Monzo Media Productions.
by Joe Monzo | Jan 26, 2023 | General
While there is a mix of DIY and professionally-produced video online, most videos are user-generated – and for good reason. It can be easy to think about the positives of DIY, such as affordability, accessibility, and authenticity for smaller organizations. When it comes down to it, both DIY and professional video have their positive and negative factors, but DIY videos can be more effective for informal situations.
At the same time, it’s crucial to weigh the pros and cons of DIY video production. Which route you should choose comes down to your intentions and experience with producing and distributing videos.
DIY Video Production Tends to Lack Strategy
Many organizations want to create videos, but they often feel lost as to where they should start. If you don’t know exactly how to produce a high-engagement video that resonates with your audience, then your attempts to DIY your video marketing will be a huge waste of time.
When discussing a video marketing strategy, you should know your target audience, the message behind your video, and exactly which shots you’ll need to accomplish the finished product. You’ll also need to know exactly where and how this video will become a part of your marketing funnel. If all of that is foreign to you, then I highly recommend talking to your video strategist partner.
Production Quality Often Suffers
A marketing video doesn’t need to be the same caliber as a Hollywood film, but there are still a lot of baseline standards for producing effective video content. You could have the most expensive equipment like cameras, lights, and microphones, but if you don’t know how to set them up properly and use them, the quality of the finished product will only be as good as your skill.
Rookie mistakes like filming with a window behind the subject,obnoxious distractions and poor audio quality are enough to turn away an audience member before they get through the video. If your target audience isn’t making it to the end of the video, they almost certainly are not following through to the next step of your marketing funnel.
DIY Is Sometimes Appropriate, but Sometimes It’s Not
Think about where and how you will use video. Will your videos be embedded on the home page of your beautifully-designed website? Will it be the first impression of your brand? Or will it be distributed to existing customers? While an informal DIY video might be fine to communicate with current clients or post on social media, it certainly will disturb your otherwise pristine first impression on your website.
Brand Development Matters
While we never like to say that we judge a book by its cover, prospects will subconsciously judge your brand based on discrepancies between professional brand assets and DIY ones. If you can show your audience that you value investing in them through professional videos, they’ll be more likely to work with you.
First impressions matter. Prospects might lose trust in you if they see you tried at first to make a good impression with your website but gave up halfway through the process to DIY your video.
Time Is Money
Time is so valuable, and you cannot get time back. When you invest money, you do so with the intention of making it back. We can’t invest time that way, which is why DIY video production is so risky. It takes an enormous amount of time to learn how to use a camera properly and to understand the right setup for producing high-quality footage and audio.
Many DIY video producers also underestimate the amount of time it takes to edit until you get to your polished end product. Further, time is wasted if there’s no effective marketing strategy for the distribution of the video.
Save Yourself the Trouble – It’s Worth It
While I completely understand the draw of DIY video production – and I affirm its value in less formal situations – I recommend professional production for the majority of the time. When an organization has little to no experience with video production and marketing, it will almost certainly fight an uphill battle and come out on the losing side of video marketing.
If you choose the DIY route, understanding the cons will help you avoid common mistakes. Plan out your videos in detail, have a good strategy, invest in learning about video production and distribution, and avoid video faux-pas that cause a loss of viewership.
If you’re interested in professional video production for your next campaign, contact Monzo Media Productions.
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