Your company worked tirelessly on its latest video campaign. Now you need to know whether it’s working or not. We know you have good taste, but is it the right taste for your target audience? Within the online marketplace, it can be tough to pinpoint the precise audience with whom your message will resonate. This is why most major services, such as MailChimp offer A/B testing. There is no better method to truly measure conversion rates than with A/B tests.
An A/B test measures conversions of specific components or campaigns that you are testing. It does this by testing two different experimental variants on the same tool–a video in our case. Sounds easy, right? It is, but testing effectively has proven to be more challenging and can even veer in the wrong direction.
What’s there to test?
The color, narrator, title, length, views, interactions, and content are all conscious decisions that you’ve made as the creator for specific reasons. Measuring different aspects of your video can help you evaluate how beneficial these decisions were and what to change to make your video more appealing. To make sure you fully understand if your video campaign needs to be modified, then review our list of the best components to measure when testing the success of your online video.
1. Image Thumbnail: We all judge books by their covers, whether we admit it or not. Try changing the video image and see if it generates different rates of engagement. If so, review deeper and find out if the engagement is from your ideal market. Directing the right viewers to your video is key.
2. Call to action: The method that prompts a viewer to watch your video could vary and has an effect. Test a few different ‘call to action’ requests to understand how your audience wants to respond to you. For instance, maybe they prefer to fill out a contact form rather than call the office.
3. Video attributes: Questions like, “should you include your narrator in the image frame?” or whether you should extend your video another 15 seconds can and should be tested.
4. Video performance: Studies show that “a 1 second increase in (startup) delay increases the (video) abandonment rate by 5.8%” Test different hosts or even servers to ensure that your video is functioning at its best. After you try a few methods, test the bounce rate to see if speed and functionality made a difference in people’s viewings.
If you want to visualize the results that your company video is producing and maximize your video marketing strategy, A/B test your video and let the numbers decide.
