Getting Views for Your Videos

By Neil Myers / Oct 18, 2013

Blog-image-GettingViewsforVideo-2013-07-01Two questions clients ask me all the time about online video are “how many views are enough” and “how can I get more views”. These are great questions. The answers might surprise you.

How Many Views are Enough?

We did a study a while back and found that they ‘typical’ YouTube video coming from a high tech vendor targeting B2B gets about 220 views. That is pretty bad, but some videos get a lot more. If I analyze all B2B tech videos and created a grading curve it turns out you need 1,100 views to get a B and more than 3,000 to get an A.

So, for B2B tech videos, a good target is 3,000 views.

How Can I Get More Views?

This is where it gets surprising. Nothing you have heard matters. We performed sophisticated regression analysis on the data (more than 2,200 videos from the top 50 technology vendors) and guess what? The length of your video makes NO DIFFERENCE to the number of views you will get (although few will watch longer videos all the way through). And production quality is irrelevant to views (although highly relevant to your brand manager!)

So what does matter? First, does the viewer care about the story you are telling? And, even more importantly, do they know the video even exists? Let’s tackle both in turn …

Study your prospect personas and match the story to their needs, interests and affinities. Is your target a deeply technical? Better tell a technical story. Is your target a business decision maker? Better avoid tech and focus on business issues. And whatever you do, don’t pump out bland, soft generalities. Nobody wants to hear that. Tell them something they can use to do their job.

And how do you make sure your prospects know the video exists? Promote it!

  • Place it prominently on your website
  • Link to it in a blog
  • Pitch it to social media
  • Work your SEO (ex: YouTube lets you upload the video transcript)
  • Link to the video in a social media release

And the best tip for getting more views? Focus on building your YouTube channel – something that builds views for ALL your videos. More on that in a future post …

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