It is hard to craft a perfect animated video, but it is harder to direct it towards the intended audience. Be it a piece of entertainment, infotainment, or another addition to your business promotion strategy, your most powerful tool to success is the understanding of specified data; in other words, your intended audience. And that’s what YouTube analytics is all about.
With the necessary knowledge, sharp strategy, and engaging content, the use of google analytics will do wonders for your newly made YouTube channel or brand promotion through video marketing.
Through its highly succinct metrics, it helps you to understand your audience while enabling you to refine your approach through trial and error. Moreover, staying relevant to the audience’s intent; the most important factor, especially, if you’re into video marketing.
So stay put and brace yourself as we jump into the technical world of analytical metrics because a lot of technical (but helpful) jargon is coming your way. As we proceed through this article, we will try to learn everything from scratch, and hopefully understand it by the end. And additionally, provide you some useful tips that could help you improve your chances of success in the world of video making.
So pick up your pen and copy and start taking notes!
What is Video Marketing?
Video marketing is promoting or describing your product or service with the help of online videos. It can be in the form of helpful videos with references to a specific product or service, or brand promotion through online content, whether animation or live.
If done perfectly, it can be an effective prospect in your online sales funnel, paving the path for increased conversion. Videos, unlike written form articles, are more engaging, more intriguing, and give a proper face to your online presence. That too, while staying fully committed to the audience’s intent.
Although not a new idea, the use of video marketing saw its rise in 2017, later to be used as the primary tactic to attract and convert leads into potential buyers and customers. As of now, every budding and established business organization makes use of it, directly on their main website or through video sharing platforms like YouTube. This leads us to our next point, what sort of videos can be used for products promotion?
What sort of content can be used for video marketing?
As you may have known by now, your content should be engaging and persuasive, and the product or service promoted should be coherent to the context of the video to establish a legit conversion funnel. Keeping this in check, the following types of videos can be used for the purpose:
- How-to/instructional videos
- Webinars
- Explainer Videos (Animated / Live Action)
- Testimonials or case studies
- Brand videos
- Product descriptions
- Informational videos
- Demo videos
Why does YouTube Analytics matter?
YouTube is the largest video platform on the Internet. You can get lots of traffic to your website by posting videos on YouTube. It allows people to share your videos and if it is
done right, it might even go viral and create a serious buzz. So all of these
metrics and analytics matter when it comes to monitoring the performance of your
videos. How to know if you are performing well if you can’t see the data?
For example, according to Alex Safavinia’s interview with Noobpreneur, the animated explainer video that they’ve produced for a bank has gone viral on YouTube within 2 months and achieved more than 2 million views.
How to access YouTube analytics
Before we dig deep into the intricate details of YouTube analytics, let us tell you how to access it:
- On desktop browser
- Log in to your YouTube account.
- Your profile icon is situated in the upper right corner of the window; click on it.
- A list will unfold, containing the title “YouTube Studio”, select it.
- The summary metrics will appear straight away. For more detailed information, select analysis from the left-hand menu.
- On mobile app
If you use android or iOS, download the YouTube app from Playstore or Appstore, and follow the below-given steps:
- Open the app, go to YouTube Studios, and sign in to your account.
- The main dashboard with a brief overview of some metrics will appear.
- An option “View More” will also be available there to see further metrics.
- Now you can toggle between the different metrics such as Overview, Reach, Engagement, etc to view different analytics.
Important metrics to track
Well, there are a lot of metrics in the analysis section. To ensure you take full advantage of them, it’s important to remember the significance of each of them. This will come in handy as you design your new strategy:
a) Views
As the term refers, it’s the number of people who have watched your video or have spent at least 30 seconds on the video. However, the number of views can be as deceptive as it is good.
In other words, if you are promoting a service or product through an animated video, a mere 30 seconds stay won’t do much.
You want the audience to stay, watch, and visit your directed link. If you get a lot of views with a poor conversion rate, maybe it’s time to put some work into your video and content approach.
b) Traffic source
It means where people are finding your videos. There are two types of it:
- YouTube traffic source
- External traffic source
YouTube traffic sources include basic YouTube features like search, suggestions, and playlists, etc. this is purely powered by internal YouTube algorithms and the audience generated is already on YouTube.
External sources refer to other search engines, websites, or social media where your video appeared on people’s searches or feeds.
If your audience is driven from any of the aforementioned sources frequently, it means your SEO strategy is effective and worth sticking to. You can track these sources in advanced mode by visiting playback locations.
c) Impressions
Impressions mean how many times your thumbnail appeared to the audience on YouTube. YouTube analytics allows you to check if your impressions are going up or down after a specified duration. It also provides good knowledge of your videos’ rankings for specific keywords.
d) Click-through rate
The click-through rate tells you how many times your video is clicked or watched after the thumbnail appears on the feed. A low click-through rate means either your thumbnail is not attractive enough, or your title isn’t relevant to the user’s intent. In any case, you should change both to get results.
e) Average View duration (from impressions)
This shows how much time people (collectively) spent on your video after clicking on the thumbnail. Now, this is the real test. If your video quality and context are coherent to the title and thumbnail, the average view duration is likely going to be good, or may even contribute to the conversion funnel. It all comes down to what you claim and show.
f) Watch time
Unlike the average view duration (from impressions), it shows the overall watch time of all sources over a selected period. You can easily monitor this from YouTube analytics. This helps you identify the engagement level you have with the audience.
g) Playback Locations
Playback locations show where your audience is generating from. In this area of metrics, you will find different websites or sources that are generating clicks for you. You can also use this as a potential source of collaboration.
Make what your audience like
What’s the point in making videos if it doesn’t generate the desired results? No matter how much work you put into it, it’s the audience who decides. To garner success on an online video platform like YouTube where competition is at its all-time high, gathering a following can be quite a chore.
However, it can be achieved by providing them what they like while fully integrating your message into it. It will not only increase your viewers but find you, loyal followers. This in turn ensures more ad revenue and increased conversion rate with effective product promotion.
Quality over quantity…or both?
We most often hear “quality over quantity”, but why not both? Remember! It’s all about developing a connection with your viewers. And that can only be achieved if you frequently remind them of yourself through quality content.
Creating a sort of series is quite an effective way to achieve this. It will keep them anticipated for the next part, even if you are…err…a bit slow? Our animator buddies can take full advantage of this though.
