The following is adapted from The Game Changing Attorney by Michael Mogill.
The first part of a successful video marketing campaign is planning for and creating value-driven video content that suits the needs of you and your business.
That’s only half the strategy, however.
Successful video marketers know you must track the results your video produces once you put it out into the world. When you’re tracking video, you will have tons of metrics at your disposal. Each has its own value and tells you something unique. While views are often the sexiest metric to track, they only tell you part of the story.
In this article, we’ll look at the metrics you need to know—including the most important one—and see which metrics relate to different phases of the buyer’s journey, which is the process potential customers go through before becoming paying customers. We’ll also examine the benefit of tracking the qualitative (i.e. harder to measure) impact.
Website Metrics
Using Google Analytics, you can measure the leads you have coming in, and also what’s driving those leads. Particularly noteworthy metrics include:
- Time on page: Once you’ve added a video to your page, are people staying there longer? Typically, we’ve found that when you add video, visitors remain on your page up to three times longer, sometimes even more.
- Bounce rate: This is the percentage of visitors that navigate away from your site after only visiting one page. Basically, they show up and then click away. If your bounce rate goes down, that means the people who found your site visited multiple pages before navigating away, which is a good thing.
- Total sessions/website actions: How many times does a visitor return to your site? What did they do on the site? For instance, did they submit forms? Did they watch videos? Did they download an eBook? Did they read blog posts?
Again, Google Analytics can help you track these metrics. If you set goals using this platform, you will start to have a much clearer idea of how your site is performing.
Video Metrics
Again, views don’t tell the whole story.
How do you know you have the right people watching for the right length of time? The following metrics will help you measure your performance against basic goals.
- Reach: Generally speaking, the greater the reach, the greater the view count.
- Play rate: This is the percentage of visitors who bother to watch your video in relation to how many times it was shown. The better the play rate, the more your video attracted visitors’ attention. Two things to consider to optimize this metric are video size and what thumbnail you use.
- Engagement: The length of time someone watches your video will tell you whether you’ve made a quality piece of content. Did they click away after five seconds, or did they watch all the way through?
- Conversions: The number of people taking action (e.g. submitting a form or contacting your office to setup a consultation) after watching your video.
- Shares: Social shares are a great way of gauging word of mouth and can help promote social proof.
Pay special attention to the engagement metric. If you find people are consistently dropping off at a certain point, you can take action to increase engagement. You might edit that part out or cut the video into shorter, more digestible pieces.
Marketing and Sales Metrics
Ultimately, these metrics measure humanity and trust. How effective was your marketing? Did it lead to real-world results? Here’s how you can find out:
- Leads generated, number of new clients, and revenue: This is the bottom line metric. Keep track of how many leads and clients you’re getting per month—and how much revenue that’s leading to for your business.
Strong metrics here are a sign that your marketing efforts are successful.
Consider the Buyer’s Journey
Whenever most people develop a pain point that needs resolving, they go through a buyer’s journey that includes awareness, interest, evaluation, making a decision, and showing loyalty. With those five phases in mind, let’s look at the metrics that can tell you whether your video marketing is moving buyers along in their journey.
Awareness
Metrics: Traffic, views, shares
To determine whether you’ve successfully captured your ideal clients’ attention, look to metrics like traffic, views, and shares. Essentially, each is a way of measuring leads.
Interest & Evaluation
Metrics: Time on page, engagement, clicks, leads generated
At this phase, you’re demonstrating what sets you apart. If you’re doing this well, you should see indicators that your ideal client wants to learn more about you, making metrics like time spent on the page, clicks, and leads generated crucial.
Decision
Metrics: Number of new clients and cases, revenue
Here is where you start to see whether your leads are converting into clients who generate revenue. Measure the effectiveness of the content you produce, how well it continues to engage your audience, and what actions it leads them to take.
Loyalty
Metrics: Referrals, Net Promoter Score, repeat revenue
Client referrals are my favorite way of measuring loyalty. Nothing says loyalty like a client recommending you to their friends and family. Also, look to see whether your clients remain engaged. When you put together a community event, for instance, what is their interest level? Do they show up? Do they tell others?
Don’t Forget about the Qualitative
While we’re talking about measuring video in this chapter, it’s important to acknowledge the qualitative side of things. We’ve found that one tremendous benefit of video is that it humanizes you and makes you approachable. Factors like this can be hard to track, but we’ve seen it in play too many times to ignore it.
To make your videos feel more personal and increase trust, put more people on camera. Use real people (such as real clients), not actors. Feature people from your firm who are passionate and knowledgeable about their practice area.
Then, pay attention to conversations surrounding your business on social media. This goes beyond simple social sharing. You want to know how people are spreading the word and what they’re saying about you and your business.
For instance, we have clients who, when they put their videos online, started seeing them shared with comments like, “You are a godsend. I am so grateful for the impact that you’re making in our community.” When people say things like this about you, it feels incredible and is more important than how many likes that post got.
Sometimes the most shareable content has nothing to do with your services, but rather with the impact you’re making in their community—the fundraisers you put on, the celebration of somebody’s birthday, a recap of a team outing, etc. Remember, it’s not just about the services you provide, but also the human element that comes with it.
For more advice on tracking the results of video marketing efforts, you can find The Game Changing Attorney on Amazon.
Michael Mogill is Founder and CEO of Crisp Video Group (www.crispvideo.com), the nation’s fastest-growing legal video marketing company and the author of the “The Game Changing Attorney” (available on Amazon). He’s helped thousands of attorneys — from solo and small firms to large practices — differentiate themselves from competitors and earn millions in new revenue. Crisp has been named to the Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest-growing companies and has been awarded Best Places to Work. A sought-after speaker, Michael often presents at national conferences on innovative ways to create exponential business growth. His advice has been featured in publications such as Forbes, Inc., Avvo, ABA Journal, The Trial Lawyer, Huffington Post, and Wall Street Journal.
