Measuring Video Marketing Success on Facebook

Social media space is ever-changing and marketers are constantly looking for ways to cut through the noise and arrive to meet their audience’s needs. Although it’s sometimes difficult to find new and exciting ways to solve common problems or serve common needs, it’s becoming increasingly clear that video marketing is poised to remain the highest-converting medium. Throughout the marketing revolutions of the television, the personal computer, and now the smartphone, videos have reliably held a vibrant and effective spot in the hearts and minds of consumers.

But why does video convert more than other media? As humans, we love the continuity of stories, the experience of joining into a shared (digital) space and seeing other people interacting with each other. Most notably, we like interacting with products or services. We simply can’t get enough of social media because it allows us to access the fundamental human need for community in an instant.

Measuring Video Marketing Success on Facebook | Starting Points

So whether you’re just getting into video marketing or have been at it for a bit, how do you know if you’re having success in this medium? Here we’ll discuss some of the starting points for measuring video marketing success on Facebook, given some new guidelines.

1. Measure View-Through Rate

Just as websites are looking to garner healthy click-through rates, the behavior associated with videos is interpreted as a view-through rate. A bit obvious, but how can you turn that into numbers?

Up until recently, Facebook defined individual video views as someone having watched a video for at least three seconds. Now, a recent announcement has revealed the new average watch time metric video marketers will inevitably be looking toward.

In a somewhat confusing plot twist, Facebook is now looking to count a “play” once when someone watches a video within a 30-minute session referred to as a “user session.” Essentially, even if someone rewinds the video because they’ve missed the beginning, Facebook will only count this as a single play, regardless of the fact that someone’s actual watch time may exceed the length of the video itself.

This metric is trying to shed light on the average watch time per viewer, rather than the average watch time per play. Basically, this is an attempt to factor in repeat viewers and how popular videos actually are rather than how long they’ve been played.

2. Engagement and Conversion

Now for what it’s worth, your cat could bump the computer and a Facebook video might end up playing to the end, but that doesn’t mean anything has come of that view. The other half of getting a healthy view-through rate is your audience’s engagement, and ultimately, conversion of your audience after having completed your desired marketing goal. Really, this is the crux of measuring video marketing success on Facebook. 

In many cases, only around 9% of your entire audience is going to be directly exposed to your video without the synergy of organic shares, comments, tags, etc. This means that if you have around 100 followers, 9 will reliably see this content. It seems low, although that is the true incentive in creating that engagement with each video you create.

This, of course, is not taking into account paid or boosted posts, or even campaigns that warrant a post all their own to really get the gist. Your metrics for engagement are going to consist of how many likes, comments, and shares a video received, in combination with the clicks to play, link clicks, and other clicks. Finding this data is really as simple as clicking the Publishing Tools tab at the top of your page and selecting a video in your Video Library.

3. General Production Tips

So the bottom line is this: If you’re not making videos for fun, you want to get people down the line to help your business or buy your product. But how can this happen with average view times of 10 seconds?

• Catch and keep attention quickly in the first 3 seconds
• Introduce your product in a way that’s instantly understandable (even without sound!)
• Provide easy-to-read text and captions throughout
• Ensure that your audience knows how to complete the next steps
• Provide the link you want to be clicked
• Make it something people actually want to decorate their timelines with
• Bring in emotion whenever appropriate

Really there’s no magic formula and each product or business demands its own approach. Still, getting a hold on what your viewer metrics and engagement are looking like is a great place to start in measuring video marketing success on Facebook. Additionally, doing some cheap A/B testing with different video lengths, cover images, and audio can provide insight into just what your audience wants and how they’ll continue to respond.