Is Video Marketing ROI Measurable?

I’m not one for beating around the bush, so we’ll answer the big question this headline poses right away. Here it is:

Sort of. It depends… Maybe?

Not satisfied with that? Hmm. Surprising. Let’s break it down a little bit further.

The Determining Factors

To know whether or not you can effectively measure a video’s ROI, you first have to understand all of the elements that will make that possible…or impossible.

Medium – The method you choose for distribution is a huge determinant of whether or not you’ll be able to effectively track a video’s ROI.

On digital channels, you’ll have access to a lot more data about your video and how people interacted with it. 

On typical broadcast formats, you’re much more in the dark. You may have a vague idea of how many viewers were watching the channel you chose around the time that your ad aired, but other than that, you’ll be pretty much in the dark in terms of statistics about viewers.

This isn’t an argument for which is more effective, but those who choose to go the typical broadcast route will just have to be prepared for the realities presented by a format that’s much more difficult to track.

Target Metrics – Tracking the effectiveness of a video ad may have a lot to do with your definition of what “effectiveness” is. 

Certain metrics are easy to track. Others, not so much. On most digital platforms, you can see all sorts of information that makes life easy and tells a lot of the story. Views, average view time, link clicks, subscriptions (if relevant), and so on, and so on.

As you might imagine, that makes tracking the brand awareness a video generates a piece of cake. It also helps you to understand how effectively your message was communicated and if it’s resonating with the people that are watching it.

Tracking other metrics isn’t always as easy. While you may be able to use unique landing pages, direct links, and other tools to help understand more of the picture when a user watches a video and then takes another action soon after, other users may watch a video, seemingly disappear, and then return three weeks later to make a purchase or take the next step.

Tracking tools (such as the Facebook Pixel or Google Analytics) help to an extent. With their aid, you can often put a lot of pieces together as long as the platform you’re using allows it. Typically, the more that can happen on your own website, the better.

In some cases, it’s not possible to track the user at all and you’ll just have to rely on educated assumptions about how the lead was generated and if video played a part.

Call to Action – If a specific call to action is important to your video marketing campaign, it can be a huge asset in determining ROI. Sending people to a specific landing page or having a button for them to click right there on the video goes a long ways towards helping you track when people are taking the right kind of action.

That said, a video’s ROI doesn’t always end with the CTA. In many cases, massive amounts of brand awareness is generated by a campaign even if link clicks or some other metric are relatively low.

So is Video Worth it?

Thank goodness there are people out there who do giant studies that the rest of us just can’t. Take a look at some of these well-documented cases:

73% of people have bought a product after watching a video. (Source: OptinMonster).

80% of users recall a video ad they viewed in the past 30 days. (Source: Small Business Trends).

Among those surveyed, 81% saw an increase in sales. (Source: OptinMonster).

Product videos can increase purchases by 144%. (Neil Patel, 2017) (Source: Hubspot)

Almost 50% of Internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store. (Google, 2016) (Source:  Hubspot)