How To Know If Your Video Is Successful? | Part 1 of 2
A client recently asked,
“How many views make a video ‘successful’. If I only have 50 views in 2 months, is that considered a failure? If it’s 50,000, that would be better. Where is the break even point? How do I know if my videos are successful?”
My answer wasn’t what they expected.
“You know your video is successful if it achieves your goal. Success is not revealed in view counts.”
If your goal is to have a viral video or if you business model relies heavily on ad revenue then views may be your goal. In this instance, I was talking to someone who wanted very specific changes to their industry and the industries they serve.
If change in that specific market is the goal, then views are not an effective measure of their video campaign’s success.
Sure, they can make a video series that seeks to educate about what they do . They could do it in a really fun way that gets lots of attention and goes viral with 5 million views.
But if the views are from people in New York and LA or overseas, then the video is a failure, because they want to see results in their own backyard, not NY or LA.
In order for the video to be successful it needed to change the local community.
5 views or 5 million, if it accomplishes that change, it is a success. 5 views or 5 million, if it fails to accomplish that change, it is a failure.
When planning a video project, one of the most important questions you can ask is,
“If I could have one result from this video, what would it be?”
From that point on, that is the metric by which you measure success.
Ask yourself, “Is the video you are making actually going to connect with the specific people I’m trying to reach?”
Don’t think like you have to blow everyone away with your large scale campaign that reaches out to every heart and mind.
Think like a sniper.
You don’t fail if you only reach a couple people. In fact you are trying to pick high quality targets and reach them as specifically as possible.
Below you will find an example of a highlight video we produced and edited for Tropical Smoothie Cafe.
It covered their Franchisee of the Year Award winners and was played at their annual convention in Orlando in 2016.
