The Power of Analyzing Video Consumption

Are you producing video content? If so, how do you know if your videos are resonating with your audience?

Video engagement stats can tell you a lot about your viewers and help you produce better content that drives them to action.

Tracking video views is a popular metric for measuring the success of a video. You can also track completion rates, showing how many people watch until the end.

This can give you an idea of how many people watch your videos and how often they watch them. But do you know who is watching them?

Understanding the videos audiences are watching, for how long, and what actions they are taking before and after they watch are all clues. Let's dive into how these signals can help you understand your buyer and build better relationships.

How do I analyze video engagement metrics?

Start by auditing your current video library. This will give you an idea of how your content performs and opportunities for quick wins.

Some essential data points to note for each video include:

• Publish date
• Length of video
• Number of views
• Average view time

Depending on your video host, you may be able to get details like likes, comments, or shares on social media.

For B2B marketers looking to drive an audience to a measurable action with their video content, you'll want to include:

• The call-to-action and its placement
• The response to that CTA (click, website visit, form submission, etc.)

If you are using a B2B marketing platform like Parmonic to host your videos on your website pages, you'll be able to see how a video is doing on every page it appears on.

If the video is doing well on one page or underperforming on another, how can you repeat your success or avoid falling flat in the future?

Auditing video content is a great way to see patterns in how audiences are receiving your video content.  

How do I measure video conversion rates?

Measuring video conversion rates is a matter of asking: What action did we ask the audience to take, and did they take it?

You can also dig into when you asked them or how many times, but all videos should have at least one call to action.

If your goal is to increase brand awareness, invite your visitors to learn more about you with an outro video bumper that includes links to your website and social profiles – consider using QR codes!

If your video is posted to a social platform like YouTube, calling your audience to "Like" or "Subscribe" at the beginning and end of the recording will give you measurable data about your audience. The engagement will also signal to YouTube – and Google – that your content is valuable and should be recommended to viewers with similar interests.

In a recent webinar about analyzing engagement data, Parmonic's Ben Tosado explains:

"So now, an audience that was viewing a piece of content, a video, and they're taking some type of action on it. They're not necessarily converting, so they're not raising their hand and saying, 'Hey, I want to talk to you, guys.'

"They're not necessarily filling a form out so that who they are yet, but they're doing something like liking a video or sharing a video or commenting on a video, or following your feed so that they can get additional information from your organization as you keep going and creating content, right?

"You still don't know who these folks are, but you are getting much better information on whether or not they were interested in the content.

Now, that you got eyeballs on your content, that's always step number one, right? You've got to get people to look at what you're presenting. that the audience is watching the content at least enough to get an impression and take some action.

"Even though it's not the final action that we want, we want to have a conversation to turn this into a customer usually, or one of our other program objectives, if they're already a customer, et cetera, but they are taking some action that lets about the value of the content for them.

"So getting eyeballs on the content, it's making an impression on a member of your audience, and then they're going ahead and taking some type of specific action on that content, again a like, a follow, a share, that type of stuff. These are really important metrics."

How do I know if my marketing video is effective?

While video engagement stats can give clues on who engages with our content, they don't tell the whole story.

For example, we may notice that a particular video gets many views but not many conversions. This could mean that the video is resonating with viewers, but they're not interested in taking the next step to download a resource or ask for a demo of your product.

Is your CTA suitable for the audience? Are your viewers dropping off before you make your call to action? Are you including a link in the video and the page details, and are they going to the right page on your site? Do you have too many CTAs? These are all questions to consider if you're not reaching conversion goals.

On the other hand, you may have a video that's driving many conversions but isn't getting as many views. This could mean that the video hits the mark for our target audience but isn't very shareable.

This is an excellent opportunity to make long videos into short content. A one-hour webinar often has many insightful, delightful moments from subject matter experts, but audiences don't want to be handed an assignment to find answers.

Marketers can learn to use free editing tools or pay a professional to make new content from their video library. Or they can use Parmonic's AI to quickly create short-form videos that can be exported for use on social media, embedded on website pages, and converted to animated gifs for emails.

No matter what the engagement stats show, diving deeper into understanding your video viewers and their actions after watching your content shows your success beyond vanity metrics. Define what you want your audience to do and measure it by a specific effort to measure the actual value of your video content.  

How do I know who is watching my video content?

Many video platforms collect demographic data about viewers like age, gender, or location. If you've mapped out your buyer personas, you may be able to infer who is watching your video based on these clues.

For example, your product or service may be helpful for mid-career professionals in their 30s and 40s who tend to live in US cities. If your videos are popular with teenagers in Japan, you might need to adjust your message.

Marketers using business video platforms like Wistia, Vidyard, or Parmonic can get even more detail about who is viewing their content by integrating their marketing platform.

For example, Parmonic has an app with HubSpot that sends viewing details to a contact record and is developing similar integrations for Marketo, Pardot, and more.

Whether you're making an informed guess or can see a timeline of what your buyer watched, knowing who is watching will help you understand how you can keep delighting audiences with video.

Understanding who is watching your videos and how long can help you produce better content that resonates with your audience and drives them to take action.

Measuring video consumption drives results.

Understanding who is watching your videos, for how long, and what actions they are taking before and after they watch give you valuable insights into your buyers' behavior.

Along with basic engagement metrics like view count, marketers can analyze video effectiveness by carefully defining the action a viewer should take and if they were successfully engaged.

You'll identify audience-approved content by analyzing what videos are successfully generating actions. Use your insights to create new content or reuse and repurpose those videos across your marketing, sales, and customer success channels. What insightful messages can be unearthed from your video library?

Book a demo today to see how Parmonic makes it easy to create omnichannel content with video, analyze the results, and prove the ROI of your marketing campaigns.

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