10 Important YouTube KPIs to Measure Marketing Success

There’s no doubt that YouTube marketing is on the rise – according to a survey, 71% of B2B marketers and 66% of B2C marketers use YouTube marketing. And for good reason, it sets the brand apart from the other online marketing tactics, building highly targeted traffic for a longer time. Industry experts have been talking about its importance for some time now.

What are the essential YouTube KPIs that every YouTube marketer should measure?

YouTube provides an array of metrics to track your video performance. YouTube equips its own set of analytics and KPIs. We have to apply the right (relevant) metrics to measure your results and progress, adjusting strategy accordingly. A solid video marketing strategy evolves from the following YouTube metric/s.

Here is a list of must-track KPIs for YouTube to watch out for:

1. Watch Time
2. Video Views
3. Audience Retention
4. Views-to-engagement ratio
5. Actions after viewing
6. Subscribers gained and lost
7. Subscriber Demographics
8. Traffic Source
9. Daily active viewers
10. Top videos by views & average view duration

Let us look at each of them in detail:

1. Watch Time

Traditional wisdom suggests that a list of YouTube KPIs should begin with the number of views. Much as views are important, it is the watch time that is the real indicator of how engaging people find your videos. YouTube’s algorithm focuses more on watch time as it is easier to get a high number of views with clickbait titles and tactics. With a high YouTube watch time, you also stand to reap another significant advantage, to do with YouTube’s algorithm. With a higher watch time, the probability of your video moving up in search results and recommendations is that much higher.

Action Points:

• Compare the average watch times of different videos and set internal benchmarks.
• Group videos by lengths, themes and styles and analyze watch times.

2. Video Views

It stands to reason that an important KPI for a video is the actual number of views it gets. This metric helps you identify the most popular videos and benchmark them. What is important, however, is to read this metric along with that of watch time. If a video is high on views but low on watch time, you could get several insights related to:

• Content quality
• Relevancy of title and description

Action Points:

• Comparison between videos with the highest and least number of views can offer insights into content strategy
• Read video views along with watch time to understand viewer preferences.

3. Audience Retention

Much like the watch time, this is an important KPI to measure. Suppose you notice that a sizable percentage of the audience stopped watching your video within the first 30 seconds, for example. In that case, it’s a clear indicator of the need to revisit your content. Figuring out exactly where in the video audience retention starts to take a beating can go a long way in offering insights into future video content and structure. In your audience retention report provided by YouTube, you also get details about which parts of your video your audience likes to rewatch.

Action Points:

• Analyze where exactly in the story audience interest starts to fade.
• Analyze the parts that your audience loves to watch again and create content accordingly.
• It also throws insights on whether your audience targeting is accurate.

4. Views-to-Engagement Ratio

Engagement is one of the important metrics when you analyze a YouTube video. In other words, you want to see what kind of likes, comments, or shares the video elicits. While comments hold more power than likes, it is a combination of both that determines the video’s popularity. YouTube algorithms also rank those videos higher, where a user watches a video and then likes or comments on it. It is therefore imperative to look at the views-to-engagement ratio. Pro tip: Consistency is a key to driving engagement, as your regular viewers will potentially be the ones who interact with your videos.

Action Points:

• Analyze audience reactions to figure out the kind of relationship you have built.
• “Dislikes” are also an engagement metric, a substantial number of them may insist you rethink your storytelling.

5. Actions After Viewing/Click-through rate

An important factor in how to grow your YouTube channel is also to gauge what happens after your videos are viewed. It will mean analyzing whether the viewer clicks on the link or the buy button or gets more information at the end of the video. It isn’t just indicative of the engagement levels but also whether or not the call-to-action was strong enough. The metric ensures that the buying intent data does not fall through the cracks.

Action Points:

• Analyze, if you have a strong call to action.
• Actions after viewing can throw up insights on the true impact your videos are having

6. Subscribers gained  

The number of subscribers gained and lost over a timeframe is a good indicator of the strength of your channel. Since people who subscribed to your channel watch more of your videos as compared to non-subscribers, they are the key to improving your YouTube watch time. By analyzing the type of videos your subscribers are hooked on, you can create the best content for YouTube that your ideal audience enjoys and thus widen your subscriber base that is interested in your channel. In addition, if you focus on subscriber growth, you automatically tend to focus on other valuable Youtube KPIs, namely more views, watch time, and engagement.   Pro tip: In reading the number of subscribers, take into account that only subscribers who have made their subscription public will appear in your analysis.

Action Points:

• Tailor your content to audience preferences to ensure that you can gain subscribers exponentially.

7. Subscriber Demographics

In addition to subscribers gained and lost, it is also important to study subscriber demographics. It could be to do with the age group of subscribers, gender, and the devices through which they are accessing your videos.   Analysing the subscriber demographics data will tell you who’s your actual target audience. But this data can also be used to have a different approach – since you will get to know which audience is not engaged, you can try to change your content and video strategy to impress that audience and gain their likes and views too.

Action Points:

• Analyze if the subscriber demographics are close to the target audience for which you had planned your content.
• Alternatively, tailor your content to suit the demographics.

8. Traffic Source

It’s imperative to ascertain how your viewers tend to discover your content. Some of the sources could include:

• YouTube Search
• YouTube Recommendations
• Channel Pages
• External sources and more

You cannot only find out which sources are working better for you, but you can also determine the search queries that led to the visits and analyze the average watch duration that accrues from each of these sources.

Action Points:

• Understanding the traffic sources will allow you to add the right tags or include the right keywords to enhance discoverability further.
• If the “impressions” from YouTube recommendations are flat, a deep dive into the structure of your videos is in order.
• Using this data, you can improve your YouTube channel and video promotion strategy.

9. Daily Active Viewers

Simply put, daily active viewers are the top fans and evangelists of your YouTube Channel. It is a number that you would want to grow. Therefore, it is good to keep an eye on how these numbers are growing and study a trend of whether or not they differ by weekdays and weekends. To increase these numbers, consistency in posting videos and tailored Youtube marketing efforts are key. It is easy to start losing these evangelists if your posting process is tardy and you cannot live up to their expectations.

Action Points:

• Study the numbers to see if there is a pattern to active views by day.
• Map the frequency of your posting to these numbers.

10. Top videos

An analysis of the top 10 or even 5 videos by views & average view duration can help you determine what content resonates with your audience. Additionally, it can also throw up important insights about what day of the week or time works best for posting your content. You will also get to know which generic keywords work the best for your videos, which tags boost audience engagement, and what kind of thumbnails attract clicks.

Action Points:

• Determine your content strategy basis high-performing videos.
• Uncover trends on days and times of posting that work well.

Tracking the above KPIs and empowered with the right data sets, you will be able to model your video content strategy and move engaged viewers through the sales funnel. Some additional YouTube KPIs you should keep an eye on are the number of shares per video that will show how engaged your audience is, the playlist engagement that will help you with creating better YouTube playlists, and clicks per end screen element which will help you design better thumbnails and make better suggestions, and also tracking the lead generation. Should you need any assistance with YouTube performance metrics and your YouTube channel to reach its highest potential, reach out to us? You can know more about our YouTube services here.