Measuring resonance over reach
Mark DiCristina, Head of Brand at Mailchimp Studios, shares the impact binge-worthy content has had on their business so far.
The more of your series people watch, the more connected they feel to your brand and your values, and the more likely they are to spread the word about your business, in turn creating the opportunity to build brand affinity. In order to be successful with your Brand Affinity Marketing strategy, you have to change the way you think about ROI to account for advocacy, rather than just awareness or conversion.
Remember that in order to build brand affinity, you have to create long-form content that adds value to viewer’s lives and isn’t just focused on moving them from one stage of the funnel to the next. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t measure the impact your video series has on the overall lift of your brand. To that end, there are three core metrics you should use to measure the success of your shows over time.
Brand Search Impressions
This metric, which can be found in the Google search console, essentially tells you how many people are searching for terms like your brand name or show name. If your show is doing its job and improving word of mouth, this metric should increase over time, correlating heavily with with the viewership numbers for your wider content.
Time Watched
Time spent with your video series is a great relative measure of the impact you’ve made on your niche audience. It’s not about aiming for love at first sight—time spent is a good measure of a meaningful interaction, rather than engagement, which simply measures interactions. There are two ways this metric can be positively influenced—either your existing audience watches more of your content, or you're introducing new audiences to your offering. Both improving is a mark of success, and will be reflected by an increase in Time Watched over time.
This metric tends to peak with new content releases, which is why it's ideal to develop multiple shows and commit to a regular publishing schedule. It's only through time spent with your brand that someone is likely to generate true affinity.
Subscribers
This metric tells you how many people have liked your show enough to give you their email address so they can receive more content or timely notifications. In other words, it represents how many fans you’ve acquired so far through marketing and distributing your show. This number is unlikely to go up every month and will tend to fluctuate in line with new episode and show launches, which is why a cumulative view is the best way to look at it.
Linear growth in this number represents real success, as you are growing an owned audience of fans that are likely to spread your message far and wide.
