Your last video got 50,000 views. Your CEO is thrilled. Your marketing report looks great.
But how many of those 50,000 viewers signed up? How many became customers? How much revenue did that video generate?
If you can't answer those questions, you're measuring the wrong things.
The vanity metric trap
Views are the most dangerous metric in video marketing because they feel meaningful without being meaningful. A video can get a million views and generate zero revenue. Another can get 5,000 views and drive $200K in pipeline.
The SaaS companies that grow with video are the ones that track metrics tied to business outcomes, not social proof.
The metrics hierarchy
Here's the framework, ranked from most to least important:
Tier 1: Revenue metrics (Track these or don't bother)
Revenue attributed to video. How much money did video-influenced deals generate? This requires attribution modeling, but even rough attribution is better than no attribution.
Cost per acquisition from video. Total video spend divided by customers acquired through video-influenced touchpoints. Compare this to your other channels.
Pipeline influenced by video. What percentage of your sales pipeline includes a touchpoint where the prospect watched video content? Track this in your CRM.
Tier 2: Conversion metrics (Leading indicators)
Video-to-signup rate. What percentage of people who watch your video take the desired action? This is the metric that tells you whether your video is doing its job.
Landing page conversion rate with video vs. without. A/B test this. Pages with video typically convert 20-80% higher. If yours doesn't, the video is wrong.
Sales cycle impact. Do deals that include video touchpoints close faster? Track time-to-close for video-influenced vs. non-video-influenced deals.
Tier 3: Engagement metrics (Diagnostic only)
Watch-through rate. What percentage of viewers watch 50%, 75%, 100% of the video? This tells you where you're losing people. Useful for improving the next video.
Engagement rate. Likes, comments, shares divided by impressions. This matters for organic distribution but doesn't directly predict revenue.
Click-through rate. What percentage of viewers click your CTA? Measures the effectiveness of your call to action specifically.
Tier 4: Vanity metrics (Stop celebrating these)
Total views. Meaningless without context. A million views from the wrong audience is worth less than a thousand views from your ICP.
Impressions. Even more meaningless. This counts how many times the thumbnail appeared, not how many people watched.
Follower growth. Correlation with revenue is weak at best. Followers don't pay bills.
How to set up proper tracking
Most SaaS companies don't track video properly because it requires connecting multiple systems. Here's the minimum viable setup:
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UTM parameters on every video CTA. Tag every link in every video description, annotation, and associated post. This connects video views to website visits.
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Video player analytics. Use a platform that tracks watch-through rate and engagement at the individual viewer level. Wistia, Vidyard, or even YouTube's native analytics.
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CRM integration. Tag contacts who interact with video content. Create a "Video Viewer" property that flags video-influenced leads.
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Conversion tracking. Set up event tracking for video-specific CTAs. Measure the conversion rate from video view to desired action.
This setup takes half a day to implement. The alternative — guessing whether your video investment is working — costs you every month you operate without data.
The benchmark trap
"What's a good view count for a SaaS video?"
This question gets asked constantly and the answer is always the same: it depends entirely on your audience, your distribution, and your goal.
A highly targeted video shown to 500 VPs of Engineering at enterprise companies is worth infinitely more than a viral video shown to 500,000 people who will never buy your product.
Stop comparing your view counts to other companies. Start comparing your video metrics to your own non-video metrics. Is video outperforming your blog on a cost-per-lead basis? Is it outperforming paid search? That's the comparison that matters.
The one metric to start with
If you track nothing else, track this: video-influenced conversion rate.
Look at your signup or demo request page. Segment visitors who watched a video before converting vs. those who didn't. Compare the conversion rates.
If video-watching visitors convert at a higher rate, you have proof that video works for your business. If they don't, you have a content quality problem that more views won't solve.
Start there. Add more metrics as you get more sophisticated. But never lose sight of the question that matters: is video making us money?
