Creating a video and posting it on YouTube is just part of the process. How do you measure the success of that video? The first key to measuring success is to determine what kind of response you wanted. Did you design the video to generate direct sales, either via your website or 800-number? Did you design the video to drive traffic to your website?

Did you design the video to enhance or reinforce your company or brand image? Or did you design the video to reduce customer or technical support costs? This is key: To measure the success of your YouTube video, you have to first determine what it is you hope to achieve. Then, and only then, can you measure the results:

• If your goal is to generate sales, measure sales. Include your website’s URL (ideally to a unique landing page) and toll-free 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, measure your traffic page views and unique visitors pre- and post-YouTube video. Use site analytics to determine where site traffic originates from; specifically track the traffic that came directly from the YouTube site.

• If your goal is to build your brand image, measurement is more difficult. 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 fewer the subsequent calls for support.

Of course, another way to measure your video’s success is to count the number of views it achieves on YouTube. This, however, is a false measurement. Just because many people view your video doesn’t mean that it has accomplished the goals you set out to achieve.

A video with 100,000 views is nice, but it means nothing if you wanted to boost your sales and it didn’t do that. Entertaining YouTube viewers is one thing, but generating sales (or establishing brand image or whatever) is quite another.