Video production – can you measure ROI? Yes, and here’s why you should

You’ve made your video, and distributed it across your channels – so how do you know if it’s doing what you want it to? Metrics, baby.

As we discussed in our previous post, metrics are how you track what your video is doing in terms of views, click through rate and other measurable data, but now we’re going to tell you how to see what sort of a Return on Investment (ROI) you’re getting for all the hard work you put into planning, creating and getting your video up and out into the world.

Video is a tricky one to discern the ROI on as there are so many variables on why you might have made your video. Did you make it to get new subscribers, or increase engagement with your brand? To generate leads or save time for your employees by making an educational or explanatory video for your customers? Is it in internal video to spread a company message or a content to be disseminated to the public at large?

So, the first thing you need to do is work out what your own objectives for the video were. Here are some suggestions:
• Views
• To generate leads
• Gain subscribers
• Gain customers
• Sales
• Time-saving for your employees
• Information for customers
• Information for employees

So, you need to set the parameters of what your ROI is for you your video.

Next you have to work out what the costs of your video, which is known as your ‘investment costs’.

Investment costs can be anything from the cost of producing the video to the distribution costs, time spent internally working on the video to outsourced work.

So, your ROI calculation looks something like this:

(Investment Gain – Investment Cost)
_______________________________ x100

(Investment Cost)

And that’s how you work out your ROI. It can be a little tricky to nail down to a definitive number but have some way of measuring the effectiveness of your video, and if it’s achieving what you want it to is essential to knowing how your video is performing.

And if you need tips on how to improve your ROI – don’t worry, we have that too.

The most simple way to increase your ROI is either to reduce costs or increase gain.

Reducing costs is possible, but as high quality video is essential to cut through the noise, it’s better and more effective to look at how to increase your gains. And you do this by creating content that really speaks to your audience. And how do you do that?

Let us tell you.

1. Know your audience

If you’re a B2B company, you’re less likely to want some hip, young fun message that you hope will go viral – so why create it? Instead, make sure you look at who you want your video to reach and what you want them to do, and speak to them as you imagine they would want to be spoken to.
Of course, if your audience is young, hip, trendsetters – obviously create content that appeals to them, not business-like, informative videos, but fun, engaging content that captures their imagination and encourages them to share. Knowing your audience is essential.

2. Spread the word

Now you’ve done all that work in researching your message and creating your video you want to spread it – if no one sees it, it can’t do anything for you. Investigate the best distribution channels for you and your business. Is that through Facebook or Instagram? Not only do you have to decide the channel, you have to decide the best time to distribute the video too. If your audience tends to be checking their social media after 6pm, there’s no point uploading at 2pm – they’ll miss it by the time they’re scrolling through or it will get lost amongst all the other branded content around.

3. Have a call-to-action

You’ve done all this work and spread the video far and wide for a reason – you want the viewer to do something with what you’ve given them. So what is it? Make sure you have a call-to-action so it’s very clear what you want people to do with what you’ve given them. And it makes it easier to track your ROI too.