Why Calls-to-Action at the End of a Video Don’t Work

Adding a call-to-action at the end of a video has become a hot topic for marketers.  After all, the more places we can encourage engagement the better.  In theory, it seems like a great idea – a prospect watches your video, you have a link at the end of the video to more great content like a related video or a report on the same topic, the prospect clicks through and continues to engage with your content. Problem is, very few folks are making it to the end of your video.

In the AdAge article, Why YouTube Viewers Have ADD and How to Stop It, Matt Cutler shares the results of a VIsible Measures study of over 40 million unique videos.

[The study] shows a consistent rate of viewer drop-off. Within the first 30 seconds of a video, you can expect to lose 33% of your viewers. At 60 seconds, 44% of the audience that started viewing the clip will have left. And so on.

That views number you work so hard to increase is not a realistic gauge of how many peaople completed the video.Your video management software should have these stats for you, i.e. video engagement. If only a fraction of your audience makes it to the end and only a fraction of those people click the CTA, you are engaging with far fewer folks.

So, if you shouldn’t add that call-to-action at the end then when? YouTube gives you a couple of options on how to add a CTA that is not an “end card.”  If your video is on your own site – a much more controllable environment – you can have calls to action in other places around the video. Using a customizable HTML5 player, you can do all kinds of cool stuff, like calls to action on the page that only appear at a certain point in the video or a pop up that only appears when the video is paused or ends.

Still want to add that CTA to the end of your video? Maybe it makes sense for you.  Perhaps you only want the most engaged folks or people who have watched the entire video to be able to take the next step. Just don’t blame me when you have 10,000 views and only 10 clicks on that CTA.