11 Eye-Opening YouTube Marketing Metrics to Grow Your Audience Faster

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The video-sharing site, YouTube is a great place to make your business grow. It has millions of users and tons of potential customers who are looking for the products or services you offer. But there’s more to it than just posting videos in order to monetize them with ads. You also need to focus on metrics that will help you grow your audience faster, so here are 11 Youtube marketing metrics every marketer should know!

Based on this compiled research by Backlino, 43% of all global internet users watch YouTube every month, which is more than Facebook and Instagram. Currently at 197 million YouTube users in the US,  the number of YouTube watchers is expected to reach 228 million by 2024.

Backlinko YouTub Usage Growth 2006-2020 Graphic
Sources: Backlinko, USAToday, Core, The New Yorker, CNBC, SiliconBeat, YouTube, Alexa

As a content creator, it’s easy to get lost in all of YouTube’s features and metrics, but there are a few that you should be paying attention to if you want your videos to reach beyond just friends and family.

In this blog post, we will discuss 11 Youtube marketing metrics that will help you grow your audience faster!

Let’s get started!

1. Total Number of Unique Views

We will start with the most apparent YouTube marketing metric. Unique views are the estimated number of viewers who watch your videos in a given period. It doesn’t include if a person watches more than one video or watches the same video repeatedly. 

datapine total number of unique views
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It is a critical metric because it can give you an idea of the actual size of your audience: Is your watch time coming from a few people, or do you have a large audience coming to your channel? 

You can derive other exciting information from this metric. For example, if you have several unique viewers lower than your subscriber’s number, then your subscribers are not watching your videos. 

Ultimately, you can take action to re-engage them. To make sure people have activated the notifications on their YouTube marketing account, remind them but not too frequently. To make sure people are watching your videos, you can request to add it to their playlist or as a suggested video.

2. Total Number of Subscribers 

Needless to say, the total number of subscribers is a good indicator of how well your channel has been performing. 

The total number of subscribers may not be an excellent way to check how well each of your videos has performed but can still give you an idea of what kind of engagement and viewership that you have had over time.

datapine total number of subscribers
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Every new subscriber is like approval to your content and overall message. You are doing something right to help others. Additionally, they can help you increase your watch time and help your video rank higher. This metric shows that there are more chances a subscriber is going to watch your new videos often.  

People having a blog or website and using YouTube to drive traffic to it may have an email list, and in most cases, the email subscribers are also subscribed to the YouTube marketing channel.

It is a good idea to send a newsletter, using a newsletter service, each time you publish a new video, and if they weren’t subscribed, encourage them to subscribe. 

YouTube lets you see which video, location, and time have gains or loss of subscribers, so you can pinpoint what makes you lose them or what makes you gain subscribers. 

You can create videos that prioritize what your audience needs and wants and increase your success rate. 

3. Comments Per Video 

Comments on YouTube marketing videos are a great way to measure engagement, which is why this metric deserves its spot on the list. This metric is an easy and quick way to see how well your videos have been performing in terms of engagement rate compared to the number of views.

People comment on videos when they’re really engaged with the content. The better the engagement, the more comments you get. 

There is no point in having a channel if there is no interaction with the audience. Is the topic you are discussing important and add value to the viewers? It is possible to track the comment to view the rate. For example, if a video gets 1000 views and gets five comments, then the ratio is 200:1.

renderforest youtube channel screenshot of comments on 3D Broadcast Globe video
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You can aim at lowering the ratio, possibly 10:1 per 1000 views, by making your videos engaging and directed to solve people’s problems. 

4. Likes Per Video

Likes not only reassure your video’s engagement but also define what your audiences like and want to see more of. 

Renderforest likes per video screenshot

The more likes you get, the better your videos must have been performing on YouTube, and that’s a good thing! Likes are directly correlated with views in some cases, so keep an eye out for patterns throughout your video timeline.

5. Watch Time 

Watch time is the length of time a viewer has spent watching your videos. It is the total amount of viewed videos on your channel. It allows you to see how your YouTube marketing channel is performing over a period of time and lets you know if you are going in the right direction. 

datapine watch time graphic
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YouTube tends to rank higher videos and channels with a higher watch time since it presumes that the channel or video engages the audience. 

So, this begs the question of what creates an acceptable watch time for your YouTube Marketing content. We suggest creating content that is either engaging, entertaining, or thoughtful.

Length of video should be between two and fifteen minutes. This allows for engagement with the audience but also ensures that they can see some form of result before getting bored.

Watch time goals are different depending on what type of channel you have established for your company.

For example: if you’re a video tutorial channel teaching your users tips and tricks in the social media marketing industry, then goal for watch time would be at least five minutes. If you’re a channel that is focused on creating funny content, the goal should be around fifteen minutes.

A good way to work towards these goals and make sure your videos are qualitatively strong is by using an online video editor tool. These services allow users to create video content on the fly.

There are also other tools like TubeBuddy that allow you to manage your YouTube marketing account.

6. Average View Duration 

Video length and frequency are factors that can impact this metric, so keep an eye out for ways to improve them to grow your audience faster through YouTube video marketing.

Here are several examples:

average view duration graphic

The most important thing you need to know is how long people spend watching each of your videos. Watch time is the average time spent viewing a video from a viewer. It is typical to find that the average watch time rarely reaches 100% for every video. 

A 100% average view would be like a 100% conversion rate, which is nearly impossible.  The average watch time tells you if your content is well received or not. It can help you answer the following questions:

  • Is your video answering people’s questions?
  • Are they getting what is promised in the title?
  • Is your video created in a way to keep people’s attention? 
  • Are there technical problems that make people leave the video?

You can probably figure out more ways to improve your channel from the data derived from this metric. For example, if you see a sudden drop in the average watch time, you can see if you changed something in your videos and remove it. 

Most creators use tools for video making to make their job easier and faster while using great design features to make their video attractive. 

On the other hand, if you get a sudden increase, you may have done something good worth re-implementing. Typically, the average watch time should be between 50% or above. 

7. Audience Retention

This metric shows the percentage of viewers who watch and leave a video for every single moment of the video. 

datapine audience retention graphic
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You can spot the part of the video that makes people leave and figure out the reason for it. Once you have figured out why, you can start using a video editing app to format and edit your videos properly. 

Is the video boring, or is there any other problem? Whether the topic is not interesting, or are you talking about something different than what is promoted in the title? 

You could try to make your videos more enjoyable with a great intro and outro. In this way, you can retain viewers. Another great idea for audience retention is to work on personal branding for your YouTube marketing videos and channel so that people can remember you and build a brand recall value. 

The audience retention metric can help you to locate the exact point that needs improvements. Based on this report, you can build a video strategy for the following videos, where you can take out anything that could be a problem. 

8. Shares Per Video

This metric will tell you how many people share your videos on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

Having low shares per video indicates that people may not be finding your content compelling enough, or they might just want to share it with their small group of followers.

Find ways to improve this metric by creating content that a considerable part of your audience can relate to. This will help your video get passed around. Sharing is an active form of engagement on the part of the audience, compared to a like.

A comment is a more active participation, but a share is a form of endorsement. They are telling their followers that your video is important. 

Additionally, YouTube allows you to see which platforms your videos are being shared on, giving you valuable information for possible social media traffic from cross-channel promotion. 

9. Conversion Rates (Number of Viewers Who Take The Desired Action)

If the end purpose of your videos is to get people to click on one or more links to get a commission from affiliate programs, this metric will help you measure the success of your efforts.

The conversion rates per video can tell you how many out of 100 viewers take the desired action, visit your site, or subscribe to your channel. The call to action can be anything, right from clicking on a link to subscribing to your channel. 

What you measure as the conversion rate from your channel depends on you. 

You can track conversion rates for the following things:

  • Traffic to your site
  • Money earned through affiliate programs
  • Money earned through the YouTube marketing channel 
  • Subscribers
  • Sponsorships

Those are just examples. You can set your own goals and keep measuring your results based on metrics.

10. Cost-Per-Viewer/Click/Conversion

Cost per conversion alludes to the price you are paying for every conversion. If your video can make people subscribe, then this metric will tell you how much money it takes off from your marketing budget per action.

For example, some YouTube marketing creators advertise their videos to get traffic. If this is the case and $100 were spent in ads, resulting in 10 clicks to the video, it is easy to see that in this case, a click costs $10 to the creator. 

Cost per view is another way to bill creators. The idea behind it is that a marketer pays for a visual contact generated by the advertisement medium. It is similar to the cost per action, but it doesn’t require an actual action from a visitor or viewer. 

Typically, the cost per view is billed between $0.10 and $1, based on the playback duration. CPV is finally calculated by dividing the total advertisement costs by the number of views.

11. Impressions Click-Through Rate

This metric tells you how often your video is being clicked in the YouTube feed, i.e., the percentage of people who saw your video in the feed and how many of them clicked to watch it. 

renderforest impressions click-through rate graphic
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It is an important metric since it is the gateway for any other things to follow, like affiliate sales or monetization through ads. 

Just like everybody else, your intention to start a YouTube channel is to make money online. For this purpose, the click-through rate is a metric that needs to be monitored closely. Sometimes, even a 2 or 3% improvement can significantly change the earnings. 

For people to click on your video, you must have a catchy title and attractive and clickable thumbnails that convey your message to the viewers. 

Experienced YouTubers put some work in creating the thumbnails since they can create a drastic change in the click-through rate. The good thing about it is that you can test different versions of thumbnails, test various titles for your videos, and implement the one that works the best. 

Takeaway

YouTube has many reports and metrics available to the creators to help them analyze their channel and create a proper marketing strategy. And if you’re one of the top influencers on YouTube or want to become one, you need to get organized with your approach in analyzing your YouTube metrics.  

It is vital not to get lost or confused with all the graphs and numbers and know the most important metrics, what they mean, and how to use them to further market the channel. 

If you are looking for a social media management tool to help you tackle your social media marketing plan, then check out eclincher. eclincher is one of the best social media management tools on the market today. Get in touch with their team for a free personal demo and sign up for a free 14-day trial.

Leave a comment if you have a question, or let’s use the above metrics to create a successful YouTube channel.

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