The Only YouTube Analytics That Matter for Business

If you go to your YouTube Studio right now, you're probably going to look at it like, what? Because you have no idea what any of that crap means. Don't worry. If you're selling a product or service and you're using YouTube for business, there's only a few analytics that you really need to care about, and we're going to get into those today.

YouTube Analytics for Business: What Truly Counts

Before we get started, I want you to know that I help my clients use YouTube for business, meaning if they are selling a product or service, they want to make sure that they can attract the right people and get them to buy whatever it is that they're selling. They're not really concerned about the regular monetization goals that most content creators have. With that said, I want you to know that we do not focus so much on views, subscribers, and watch time. Those are not the things that we care about when we're trying to use YouTube for business, here’s why:

Views: A high view count doesn't necessarily translate into success. You can accumulate an impressive number of views and still not see substantial revenue.

Subscribers: While building a subscriber base is fantastic for cultivating a community, it often falls into the realm of vanity metrics. Many viewers won't hit the subscribe button, but they may still engage with your content.

Watch Time: Essential for YouTube monetization, but less critical for businesses focused on sales and lead generation.

So, what should you focus on instead? Let's explore the metrics that genuinely hold the key to your business's success.

Impressions Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The first metric that we really care about when looking at our client channel’s is the impressions click-through rate. Now, the impressions click-through rate is the percentage of people who have chosen to watch that video after looking at the thumbnail. What is the percentage of them actually clicking through to watch the video? This is going to be something to where we want this impressions click-through rate to be as high as possible.

Benchmark: Aim for an Impressions CTR of at least 4-5%. Some clients achieve even higher rates.

Factors Influencing CTR: Several factors affect your CTR, including your video's topic, thumbnail, title, video description, and chapters.

Just think about how humans act search for things. How do you make sure you're going to click onto the right video and don't waste your time? That's how we teach it in the YouTube SEO course that I have inside the shop.

Traffic Sources: Where Your YouTube Views Come From

Understanding where your viewers come from is important for refining your content strategy. Analyzing your traffic sources provides valuable insights that can shape your YouTube strategy. Most of the traffic source names make sense, but there are a few that may be a little confusing. Let’s explain those

Browse Features: Viewers who stumble upon your video while browsing the YouTube homepage, subscriptions tab, or trending sections.

Channel Pages: Traffic originating from viewers exploring your channel.

Suggested Videos: Traffic from suggestions that appear next to or after other videos, and from links in video descriptions.

YouTube Search: Viewers who discover your video through YouTube's search results.

External Sources: Traffic coming from websites, apps, or social media platforms where your YouTube video is embedded or linked.

Benchmark: Ideally, you want to see growth in both YouTube Search and Suggested Videos. This suggests that your content is gaining visibility and longevity. Additionally, have Google Search become a primary external source, given Google's dominance as a search engine.

Average Percentage Viewed: The Key to Audience Retention

The average percentage viewed is exactly what it sounds like. It is the average percentage of the video someone watches. This is going to be really important for me to kind of say, because this may be another one that rocks the boat.

Benchmark: Aim for an Average Percentage Viewed between 30-40%. If our clients are doing between 30 and 40% average percentage viewed, then we are doing good. That may be a little bit different than what a content creator would typically want. They will probably want a longer period than the 30 to 40%, but when it comes to educational type of videos, these talking head videos, for our clients, that tends to be the average that we want to shoot for.

That's going to be our benchmark because also we have a very specific way of scripting our videos to make sure that we are attracting and repelling the right people that are a best fit to be with our client, to work with our client.

We don't want to just bring anyone to this video. We want to make sure that people can self-qualify. We want to make sure that people can know if this expert is for them, right? Because when you think about it, YouTube is filled with people who really just want the answer to their problems, but what we know is that people may be looking for answers to their problems.

We want to attract a person who is just looking for the first step and who knows that they don't know everything and that they can't really do it by themselves. They want to find someone to help them, and they're really using YouTube to source out that skillset. That's kind of a little bit more deeper, but that's basically it.

We don't want people who want to watch the video to be like, "Get to the point, tell me the answer," so that they can kind of just use the information and then just go. Knowing that that's just one piece of the entire puzzle that is holding them back from the success that they really want. We want these YouTube videos to be building blocks to help them understand that, "This is the answer to your initial problem, but that is not the answer to the full on problem."