How to Measure Video ROI

What is ROI

ROI (Return on Investment) is simply measuring the return that you receive from any given investment.

“A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.”

ROI is easy to measure when a company has for example paid £500 for a newspaper advert and they get £5k of business back. They know the return that they have received. So how do you measure your ROI on video? Below are a few ideas of how we could help you measure your video ROI.

Tracking viewers

With any video it is really important to know how often your video is being watched. Not only the number of viewers, but where they have navigated to the video from, and where they went after they watched your internet video production. You can use Google Analytics to do this…

Using Google Analytics to measure Video ROI

If you set up alternative landing pages for an advertising campaign, one with and one without the video for example. You can then track the conversion rate of the customers that landed on each page respectively. This will then give you a measure of the video success rate. Another way with Google Analytics is to track individual website users and see how they interacted with your site. One of our clients DAPW found that customers were 50% more likely to buy from DAPW if they had viewed their video.

Promotion codes embedded in your video

A timeless technique! This has been used for years in all forms of advertising, a unique code that is only on that advert, poster, TV ad, internet video, newspaper etc etc. Add an end screen saying something like “get £10 off when quoting “great video 123” (or something to that affect!) You can then track the number of enquiries that used that promotion code.

Links at the end of your internet video production

A more direct method of the above is to have physical links at the end of the video. They can link to a ‘buy now’ page, or ‘contact us’ for example. You can then track the percentage of people who clicked the link. The disadvantage with this method is that many people will not watch the video to the final frame, they may leave when they see there is only 5 seconds left on the video. To ensure you can track your return on investment, ensure your call to action is placed in the optimum location. A/B testing is a great way to play with CTA placement.

Phone Numbers

Quite simply, have a different phone number in your videos. That way when the phone rings, you know that the person on the other end of the phone must have seen your amazing video production!

Other points for non e-commerce

Not every website is there to sell a customer a product. Video can also help decrease man hours in your business, thus saving you money. For example, you may find customers asking about similar problems and your technical staff explaining them again and again. If you then produced a video answering this problem for staff to point people to, you could track the amount of saved man hours in your company. The video ROI might not be as explicit for this example, but there definitely is value in cutting customer enquiries for questions which may not get you a lead.

There are many other applications for online videos not covered above, so leave a comment if you need some specific help!

Overall, don’t be put off by using internet videos, thinking that the ROI is really difficult to measure. Yes it is more difficult than more traditional advertising methods, but it isn’t impossible!