How to Measure the Success of Your Nonprofit Video 📈

Nonprofits have powerful messages to share, and videos are a key way to deliver them. But how can you tell if your nonprofit video is communicating its message effectively?

This guide will help you measure your video's success in simple steps, ensuring your important message is heard and makes a difference.

Consider these questions:

• What do you want your nonprofit video to achieve?

• What are the best ways to get feedback on your nonprofit video?

• How does your video help tell your nonprofit's story over time?

What do You Want Your Nonprofit Video to Achieve?

Think of your explainer video as a key tool for your nonprofit. It serves various purposes, from motivating enthusiastic volunteers to conveying your innovative message and simplifying intricate research into more understandable terms.

But how can we assess its effectiveness?

Intelligent goal-setting is the solution to this problem. When the aim is to recruit volunteers, the focus is on counting who signs up. If the goal is to explain complex subjects, success is evaluated based on the clarity and understandability of the material to the audience.

Consider the NHS’ (National Health Service) approach as an effective model.

They measure the success of their nonprofit explainer videos not just through basic metrics like views or shares but by how clearly and effectively the message resonates with a select group of people representative of their wider audience.

This process includes getting feedback from various groups, such as patients, staff, and caregivers, during the video's creation and post-production phases.

What are the Best Ways for Nonprofits to get Feedback on their Videos?

Here’s a special formula called S.C.R.E.A.M. to determine how well your nonprofit explainer videos perform. This plan will help you see if your videos are doing their job.

Here's what each letter in S.C.R.E.A.M. stands for:

Surveys: Ask your viewers questions for feedback about the videos.

Conversions (or CTR): Look at how many people take an action, like signing up or clicking a link, after watching a video.

Reach: This is about how many views the video gets.

Engagement: Check if people are talking about your video, sharing it, and clicking the 'like' button.

Analytics: Use special tools to see who's watching your videos and how they watch them on YouTube.

Media: See if major newspapers, TV networks, or websites discuss or embed your videos.

Surveys: Find Out What People Think of Your Nonprofit Video

Surveys involve asking many questions to learn what people think about your nonprofit videos.

• Surveys Before We Make the Video (Pre-Campaign): Before making your explainer videos, you can ask people what they hope to see. This survey process will help ensure the production process goes smoothly.

• Surveys After the Video is Out (Post-Campaign): Once people watch your video, ask them again what they think. Did your video help them understand what you initially aimed to communicate? Did it make things clearer?

By asking these questions before and after your videos, you can tell if your nonprofit videos are doing a great job in achieving their goals.

Conversions (CTR): Understanding Clicks and Actions from Your Nonprofit Videos

When we talk about Conversions, we mean checking how many people objectively take a specific action after watching your nonprofit videos.

A "conversion" could be clicking a link, signing up for a newsletter, or taking another action that shows they're interested in our cause.

What is Click-Through Rate (CTR)? CTR is a way to see how many people click on something in your video, like a link or a button. It's like counting how many people go from just watching to taking action because of your video.

For example, we didn't just look at how many people watched the video in a campaign for a think-tank in Westminster. We checked how many people signed up for the newsletter after watching. This metric helped us see how effective the video was.

Reach: Who Sees Your Nonprofit Video and Why it Matters

Reach tells us how many people watch your nonprofit videos. But it's not just about big numbers. We also need to know if the right people are watching.

Understanding Reach: Reach is counting every person who watches your video. You can also look at where these viewers are. This detail helps you see if people who care about your issue are watching.

Why the Right Audience is Important: If your video gets watched often but not by the right people, it's like we missed our target. For example, if we make a video about an issue in the UK, but most views come from another country, we're not reaching the people who need to see it.

Focusing on Reach ensures the right people, not just many people, see your videos.

Analytics: Exploring Viewer Behaviours of Your Nonprofit Video

YouTube Studio is a great analytics tool for nonprofits to understand and enhance their video performance.

Here's a breakdown of how YouTube Studio works:

• Video Views After Publication: YouTube Studio shows how long videos take to get noticed. Sometimes, a video gets more views after a month or two. This information helps nonprofits know when their videos start to become popular.

• Subscribers Tracking: This tool tells if people subscribe or unsubscribe after watching a video. It's important because it shows if viewers like the videos enough to want more.

• Where Views Come From: This feature shows how viewers find the video. Are they finding it through a YouTube search or maybe from a link on a website? Knowing this helps nonprofits understand how people are discovering their videos.

• Viewer Engagement: Nonprofits can see what percentage of their videos people watch. It's a good sign if more than half of the viewers watch the entire video. It means people are getting the full message, including calls to action.

Media Impact: Gauging Public Attention of Your Nonprofit Video

When a video makes the news or sparks conversations online, it's a big win for nonprofits. The message reaches many people if news channels, websites, or social media influencers discuss the video.

Note these successes to demonstrate the video's success to stakeholders at your nonprofit. Anything from retweets by influencers with thousands of followers to your video being embedded in a big news website like the BBC or The Guardian.

Does the Video Compliment Your Nonprofit’s Wider Mission?

Making a video for your nonprofit is like adding a new piece to your story. It's important to check if this new piece fits with the nonprofit's wider plan for talking to the world and sharing your mission.

Is our video in harmony with our other messages? Does it reflect our values and goals? Are the visuals in harmony with our other materials? Is the language used in the video in harmony with our nonprofit's voice? Ensuring this alignment is crucial for maintaining a consistent and powerful brand image.

Lastly, compare your video's performance with peers in your sector. It's not very useful to stack your numbers against, say, a hit pop music video. Instead, focus on similar entities – hospitals should look at other hospital videos, think tanks should compare with similar organisations, and so on. This makes your assessment realistic and helps you understand whether your video strategy is on track.

At the End of the Day…

It isn't easy to get it right the first time. Here at Leon! Animations, we excel at clarifying your nonprofit's message so that it becomes simple and clear for your audience.

We are passionate about what we do and love talking about it, too! Call us!