THE BEST PERFORMING CREATIVE CONTENT: DEFINING CONTENT SUCCESS

Content View count (Use if: Stakeholders care about this KPI)

Measuring the success of a video production and its publishing by view count alone can be dangerous in our opinion. Views can be bought, and money can be thrown at a campaign to achieve this, so it’s always best to layer this with a secondary source of success measurement if possible. However, with the rise of video first, organically viral content platforms such as TikTok, we certainly take time to pat our video production team on the back in the instance campaign material catches the “viral wave”.

Content Engagement (Use if: Starting a conversation)

This form of measurement – be it comments or forwarding/sharing – is the most relevant KPI if your marketing campaign is designed to be disruptive, encourage audience members to partake in a topical conversation or if aiming to be controversial. Value-based creative content might be best suited for your campaign, along with those with political or emotional touchpoints.

Content Conversion or click-through rate (Use if: Selling a product or seeking subscribers)

When selling products like hotcakes (maybe even hotcakes like hotcakes) is the objective of the marketing campaign, it’s worth ensuring that your campaign has a very clear funnel (an easy click-through journey to your desired end point) and a very objective way to analyse any pain points in that funnel ongoing.

Watch time (Use if: The key message or audience takeaway is most important)

It’s very rare that you’d use watch time KPI as your only performance indicator, but it can certainly be a crucial one in understanding if there are any hurdles within the design of the video content itself. By knowing when an audience member is scrolling away (or “switching off”), this can help in determining whether a re-edit is required, or if future video content can benefit from the learnings.

Brand Awareness (Use if: You are thinking longer term)

And lastly, general brand awareness can be a core reason (and quite a common one at that) for executing a marketing exercise or creative content rollout. If brand awareness is the primary measurement criteria for a campaign’s success, it’s worth noting that further surveying of a key demographic may be required. This would be to determine whether a random selection of the key demographic have said awareness of your brand, and – if not – how to reach them.

Long story short, there are many ways to measure the success or your marketing content, and it’s always worth getting key stakeholders on the same page early about how or when a campaign should be deemed successful. And, better yet, this clarity can drive all decisions right from ideation and strategy, through to pre production and planning, right through to video production and animation stages and post-production.

The biggest key to success is ensuring your brand and creative content agency are on the same page from the outset.