How to Use YouTube Analytics to Grow Your Channel Faster

YouTube is the world’s second most popular search engine after Google. This makes it a highly valuable platform for advertisers. Whether you’re a vendor or affiliate, YouTube is packed with opportunities to sell & promote products. However, to succeed on YouTube, you should be looking at analytics and act according to the data and numbers provided there.

This article gives actionable tips on which YouTube metrics to look at and how they can help you grow a successful YouTube channel faster.

Why Use YouTube Analytics?

YouTube analytics provides you with valuable data regarding your audience’s behavior. It also lets you discover trends among your followers. Basically, you get a bird’s eye view of what works well on your channel.

These metrics help you understand whether your audience is growing, how they find your channel, and whether your viewers enjoy your content.

Access YouTube Analytics

To access YouTube analytics, log in to your YouTube account, tap on your profile picture, and go to “YouTube Studio.” Next, select the Analytics tab from the left-hand menu to enter your Analytics dashboard.

You’ll see various charts such as Watch Time, Views, Subscribers, and more. The default setting shows data trends for the past 28 days, but you can tweak the date range for any time period you want.

How to Use YouTube Analytics

To make the most of the analytics page, you have to know which metrics matter the most.

Important metrics help you answer the following questions:

Are you reaching the right audience?

You can track the demographics, location, and other information about your audience in the “Audience” tab. Your YouTube audience description should match your target audience.

How do people find your videos?

You can find the answer in the “Reach” tab. Check the traffic sources to see which source brings the most audience to your channel and which needs more work.

Do people actually watch your content?

In the “Engagement” report section, you can see how much time people spend watching your videos and which ones are most engaging. Pay special attention to the “watch time” metric because it shows how valuable your videos are to the viewers.

Does the audience enjoy the content?

The “Audience Retention” section shows you at what time people stop watching your videos. The goal is to keep as close to a 100% retention rate as possible.

Are you getting more subscribers?

The more subscribers you have, the more views your YouTube videos get. You can use the Advanced reports to check which videos or demographics have the greatest impact on your subscriber rate. You can then promote videos that bring more subscribers to your channel.

Other metrics of note include:

Top search terms. Find which words lead people to your content under “Traffic Source,” then “YouTube Search.”

Click-through Rate (CTR). Compare the CTR for individual videos to see the percentage of people who clicked on your video’s thumbnail and analyze videos of high and low CTR. You can find these metrics in the “Reach” tab of your Analytics page.

Unique viewers. This is the unique number of people who watched your content. If one person watches the same video four times, this metric only counts once for unique viewers (channel views count as four). You can find this on the “Insights” page for each video under the “Views” tab.

YouTube Marketing Analytics Done Right

To succeed in YouTube marketing and grow your channel faster, you have to know the ins and outs of your YouTube metrics. Knowing which parameters to look at helps you understand how your audience responds to your content and how you can make it better. Analyze and act on the YouTube metrics provided in this article and you’ll be surprised to see how much it can boost your channel performance.