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C h a p t e r 1 9 Tracking Performance 219

easy enough to track the traffic from the YouTube site (www.youtube.com) to your
site. If you see a spike in traffic from YouTube after you post a new video, it’s a good
bet that the traffic was driven by that video.

More sophisticated website analysis tools track traffic from specific pages on the
originating site. This makes it even easier to determine which videos are driving the
most traffic back to your site.

Alternatively, you can include a special code for each video you upload to YouTube.
The easiest way to do this is to display a unique URL for your main site in each
YouTube video; the URL should lead to a unique landing page on your website. For
example, you might create a series of landing pages for each of your videos, with
URLs such as www.yourwebsite.com/youtubepromo01/, www.yourwebsite.com/
youtubepromo02/, www.yourwebsite.com/youtubepromo03/, and so on. This makes
it easy to track hits on each specific landing page, providing a detailed analysis of
the effectiveness of each originating video.

Tracking Conversions

Another way to measure video success is to determine what kind of response you
want. Is the video designed to generate direct sales, either via your website or 800-
number? Is the video designed to drive traffic to your website? Is the video
designed to enhance or reinforce your company or brand image? Or is the video
designed to reduce customer or technical support costs?

This is key—to measure the success of your YouTube video, you have to first deter-
mine what it is you hope to achieve. Then, and only then, can you measure the results:

• If your goal is to generate sales, then measure sales. Include your web-
site URL and 800-number in the video, along with a promotion or
order code, and then track sales that include that code.

• If your goal is to drive traffic to your website, then measure your traffic
pre- and post-YouTube video. Use web analytics to determine where
site traffic originates from; specifically track that traffic that came
directly from the YouTube site.

• If your goal is to build your brand image, measurement is more diffi-
cult. You’ll need to conduct some sort of market research after your
YouTube campaign has had a chance to do its thing, and ask customers
what they think of your brand—and where they heard about it.

• If your goal is to reduce customer or technical support costs, measure
the number of support requests before and after uploading the YouTube
video(s). The more effective the video, the lower the subsequent calls
for support.