So, you’ve just posted the latest video in your content marketing strategy. You’ve been watching the numbers, including views and shares, but what do they actually mean? What’s the return on investment (ROI) for your video, and how can you make sure it’s optimized?

51 percent of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI, but measuring and maximizing that ROI can be rather complicated. While certain video KPIs are obvious, such as the fact that social video generates 1200% more shares than texts and images combined, other insights are a little more difficult to measure and  demonstrate to upper level management.

How do you show your management team that by using video you have the opportunity to grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users? And how can you demonstrate that your video is driving organic traffic by as much as 157%?

In this five-part blog series titled The Definitive Guide to Maximizing Your ROI from Marketing Videos, we’ve outlined what it takes to measure and improve your video ROI to get the best results possible.

Step 1: Do Your Research

Before creating your first video and developing a video marketing strategy, you need to do some research to determine the type of video content your audience wants and know when to deliver it.

For example, this video published by TopBuzz Syndication was made just in time for the Brexit drama and covers key news stories that viewers will be most interested in.

One of the simplest ways to research what videos might work well for your audience is to look at past engagement stats—likes, shares, comments, views, and view rate. If you’ve never created marketing videos before, check the engagement stats of other types of content produced, such as blogs, social media posts, and email campaigns. This information can provide valuable insights into your target audience and their content preferences. By using historical data as opposed to trial and error, you can then create videos and develop a distribution strategy based on what will get you the most ROI.

Step 2: Be Wise with Your Investment

One of the most important things to ask yourself before creating each video is, “Is this worth the amount of time and money I’m investing?”

Not every aspect of video marketing is worth your time or—often limited—budget. For example, hiring an outside video production team may not be the wisest investment, particularly when your company already has the video talent needed to make great videos in house. By using video production tools, taking advantage of pre-made templates, and saving money on music and clips, you can produce quality videos without breaking the bank.

Making budget-conscious decisions at every stage of the video marketing journey doesn’t have to mean compromising on quality or forgoing ROI. And if you ever need to give your ROI numbers a little boost, look no further than our guide “THIS Is the Best Way to Improve Your Content Marketing ROI,” which identifies video marketing as the best bet for increasing Content Marketing ROI while offering tips to achieve this.

Step 3: Create High-Quality Videos Without Breaking the Bank

It’s possible to create high-quality videos without breaking the bank, if you’re smart about it.

The first step is to move your video production in-house, as discussed above and in “How to Make Awesome Marketing Videos In-House on a Budget.” This can dramatically cut down your video creation costs by eliminating the need to pay for a professional studio. Moreover, your marketers know your brand story best and have everything they need to make great videos so long as they have the right tools at their disposal.

A platform like Wochit is designed to simplify the video creation process and gives you everything you need to make quality and impactful videos within your budget. Some of the perks include:

• A selection of dozens of templates and storyboards allows you to create on-target videos quickly (in 30 minutes or less) and easily video creation.
• A media library composed of thousands of files make finding the right media—videos and music—easy.
• Editing software, assistance with social media distribution, and more makes for a simple video creation process that is both cost-effective and generates ROI.

The faster and easier it is to create quality videos and get them out to your audience, the more ROI you’ll generate.

For example, this Wochit-created video by Cox Media Group uses screenshots of tweets as well as pre-recorded video snippets of pilots and still Getty images to tell the story of the U.S. Strategic Command’s weird tweet. It also takes advantage of Wochit’s audio library for the final result.

Step 4: Make Sure You Have a Clear Strategy

The best way to increase your video marketing ROI is to have a clearly defined strategy for success from the get-go. A video strategy should include all the elements and step-by-step plans required to achieve your brand’s goals—more customers, improved customer retention, increased impressions, etc. Once you have a set strategy, the only other thing you have to worry about is watching the ROI roll in.

These are the six elements to consider when creating your video marketing strategy:

1. What are your goals? Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely (SMART) and they should match your overall company objectives.
2. Who is your audience? Knowing your audience will help you figure out what type of videos will be most effective at earning ROI.
3. Where should you distribute? Not every channel will be effective at garnering engagement, viewers, click-throughs, and CTAs. A distribution strategy based on your audience and past engagement metrics will help you choose channels appropriately—social media, email, landing pages, etc.
4. What are your CTAs? Every video should have a clear call-to-action that you’re prepared to measure to determine your video’s success. CTAs should be action-oriented, compelling, and straight forward.
5. Can you repurpose content? There’s no need to reinvent the wheel if you already have content with good ROI. Instead, consider transforming written content into a video—a blog that can become a video series—or reuse a video in new ways—a five-minute video can be broken down into multiple 30-60-second sound bites.
6. How are you tracking results? Finally, you can only improve ROI if you can prove your video results. Make sure you have software—such as Facebook, YouTube, or Google analytics—set up to track your video KPIs.

You can learn more in our blog, “6 Ways to Increase Your Marketing Video ROI.”

Step 5: Monitor Response

As mentioned previously, tracking the results of your video marketing efforts is the only way to know if you’re generating ROI. While measuring viewer responses to your video content  might sound complicated, with the right tools in place and a solid understanding of your goals and KPIs the process can be simple.

Here are some “Tips for Measuring Your ROI from Marketing Videos”:

• Set Goals: Keep in mind your SMART goals from your video strategy so that you know what success looks like for each piece of content.
• Determine KPIs: Shares and comments, average watch time, conversion rates, CTA clicks, subscribers, and view-through rates are all examples of KPIs you can work with to determine if you’ve reached your goals.
• Implement Tools: Facebook Analytics, Google Analytics, and similar tools are useful for measuring the reach and engagement of every video.

By monitoring these metrics and determining how well your audience responds to each video, you can then modify your video strategy accordingly. An in-depth analysis of every video will allow you to better understand your audience and improve your marketing efforts. This will enable you to produce quality, on-target videos with optimal ROI.

By doing your research, being careful with your investment, focusing on quality, setting out a strategy, and measuring the results, you can optimize your video ROI and be sure that none of your video marketing efforts go to waste.