6 Easy Ways to Increase ROI for Your Online Training Videos

The eLearning industry is booming. Educational video is one of the fastest-growing categories of digital media. Globally, the number of students enrolled in higher education has more than doubled since the year 2000. Young people today are “digital natives” who desire their education in a digital format such as online training videos.

This blog will look at how to increase ROI—return on investment—for your online training videos. In the US and Canada alone, revenue from online video will reach $25 billion by 2021. Large and small businesses are investing tons of money in online training videos via the use of video hosting and live streaming solutions.

That said, how can you make this process efficient? In this post, we’ll share 6 methods to increase ROI for your training videos. Our goal is similar to that of Microsoft, a company that was able to avoid annual costs of $13.9 million by investing in a video training platform. In other words, that amounts to an ROI of 569% on their initial investment in the system. If you’re ready to boost your ROI with video, read on.

Table of Contents

How Increase ROI for Your Online Training Videos

1. Minimize costs

2. Capture leads

3. Maximize video quality to boost viewer satisfaction

4. Secure your content

5. Brand aggressively

6. Get actionable insights with analytics data

Conclusion

How Increase ROI for Your Online Training Videos

Video is great for ROI. As one example, 51.9% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI. Once you’ve chosen video, however, there are still plenty of ways to make your online training videos more effective and to boost ROI. Here are our top 6 methods. Depending on how you’re using online training videos, some of these may apply more directly than others.

1. Minimize costs

The first and simplest way to maximize your ROI is to minimize costs. There are many different ways to do this, of course. And you don’t want to skimp on quality. But a few simple tricks can go a long way.

For example, one way to minimize costs is to shoot all your videos at once. This reduces time setting up and taking down equipment, leading to higher efficiency. It also directly reduces costs if you’re renting gear or hiring filmmakers. The less time you spend filming in this case, the better.

If you’re on a very tight budget, you’re probably tempted to use YouTube. That’s fine—just be aware of the consequences. Anyone will be able to view your content, and you’ll have much less control.

If you have more advanced video hosting needs, I recommend looking at a professional video hosting solution. Depending on the list of features you need and your budget, you have a range of choices. On the high budget, end are platforms like Brightcove. Wistia can be a good choice if you are focused on video hosting with no need for live streaming. Dacast offers professional video hosting solutions starting at $39 per month.

2. Capture leads

Like any other modern business, an eLearning company should have some sort of sales funnel. That is, you want to invest in marketing, advertising, and other methods to interest people in your product, and then to make a sale.

Marketers who are using video are seeing 49% faster growth in revenue. In addition, another way to boost your ROI on online training videos is to capture leads via email capture technology.

Email capture does just what the name implies. This simple tool allows you to add a pop-up inside each video player window that prompts users to enter an email address to keep watching. You can position the pop-up at the beginning, middle, or end of a video. This is ideal as part of “teasers” or promotional videos. Alternatively, you could offer your first lesson for free to garner interest among potential viewers. Then use email capture to get their contact info and start targeted marketing to their inbox.

In short, capturing leads is a simple but very powerful method for boosting sales and, as a result, ROI.

3. Maximize video quality to boost viewer satisfaction

One of the best ways to boost ROI is to generate satisfied customers. Happy customers are more likely to become repeat business, to share with their friends, or to leave a positive review.

So how do you make people happy? Well, a huge part of this is creating excellent content. That’s largely beyond the scope of this article since the specifics of that vary hugely depending on what you’re doing (a quality yoga class is different than a quality physics lecture).

We can, however, talk about technical quality. Here are a few areas of focus.

– Use quality equipment –

Again, here is where it pays off to invest in a good-quality video camera and audio equipment. One survey showed that 62 percent of viewers are likely to view a brand more negatively if they publish a poor quality video.

– Deliver with a fast CDN –

Avoiding buffering is also critical. What’s the point in investing time and money creating awesome video classes if they don’t reach your audience? You’ll get no return: just frustrated and unsatisfied viewers who click off at the buffering symbol, never to return to your classes again. Therefore, choose a streaming host that uses a top-tier CDN (Content Delivery Network).

– Use adaptive streaming to reach all users –

Ensure your videos get the return they deserve by enabling adaptive streaming. This will allow your subscribers to enjoy your classes wherever they are in the world, even if they’ve got a weak internet connection. Enable HD streaming for viewers on strong connections and quick, reliable streaming for weak connections at the same time. Your videos will reach everyone. No viewers left unsatisfied.

– Choose a fast, lightweight video player –

It’s also important to choose an online video hosting with a fast, lightweight video player. Online videos with a start-up time exceeding even two seconds have significant abandonment rates, with each incremental second propelling another 6% of viewers to jump ship. Choosing a fast-loading HTML5 video player will ensure compatibility with every sort of device and minimize loading times.

4. Secure your online training videos

Alright, we’re halfway through our list. The next ROI tip is about security. When your video content is your income, or when the public release could be embarrassing, security is important. Globally, Digital TV Research estimates that by 2022, piracy will cost businesses $52 billion annually.

You can’t expect your audience to pay for your videos when they can get them for free. And you definitely don’t want any pirates stealing your content and passing it off as their own. Here are a number of security features you can set up to ensure your videos are secure and avoid ROI hits:

– Use password protection

Allow only subscribers to access your training videos by setting up password protection for your content.

– Encrypt your video streams

AES encryption will protect your video from unauthorized downloads and from man-in-the-middle intercepts.

– Use domain restrictions

Domain restrictions allow you to block non-authorized sites from embedding your video stream. This ensures that your content can only be embedded on your own website, providing another layer of security.

– Watermark your video

Another good way to brand your content is to “watermark” it, by adding your brand name or logo to each video. This makes it so that no one can pass your classes off as their own, even if they manage to download your content.

5. Brand aggressively

A video is already a powerful tool for branding. Eighty-two percent of viewers say they prefer seeing a live stream rather than a brand’s social posts. But branding can be diluted on free social video platforms.

Social video platforms always contain corporate branding and link back to the homepage, such as YouTube. Professionals should instead use an online video platform that allows for white label service. This allows you to use your own logo and drive brand awareness.

You can also go the extra mile with a white-label cname, which removes references to your video host–even from the code on your page. Or, you can set up a completely white-label platform if you’re using a “reseller” business model involving clients or users having access to a video platform.

6. Get actionable insights with analytics data

Forrester reports that 74% of firms say they want to be “data-driven,” but only 29% are actually successful at connecting analytics to action. Doing so requires that you gather the right data then make intelligent decisions based on that. This can be a huge way to increase your ROI. You’ll learn which type of class your viewers respond well to and which ones they don’t, so you invest your time and resources in the areas likely to give you a bigger return.

Use video analytics to track your videos’ popularity and engagement metrics at a glance. This will save you time and frustration pouring over confusing data.

Conclusion

Building a business based on online training videos presents unique challenges, but also opportunities. We hope this post has helped you to better understand a few of the methods to boost ROI for your video learning business.

If you need a video platform to help host, organize, and deliver your online training videos, you should consider Dacast. Dacast offers both video hosting and live streaming. Also, if you are focused on on-demand video hosting, you might want to use our advanced video hosting platform (Vzaar) until we unify the platforms. This advanced video hosting platform offers more advanced features for publishers or businesses focused on VOD, such as AES encryption, an advanced bulk video uploader, and a very easy video management system. Contact us for more info.