7 most common mistakes when creating a comercial
Over the past 10 years, we at Markusfilm have created advertising campaigns for both international companies and small to medium-sized businesses, and during that time we've gained valuable experience in advertising preparation and execution.
Unfortunately, we’ve also witnessed the same notorious mistakes made over and over again by marketing departments. That’s why we decided to write this article: "The 7 Most Common Mistakes in Advertising."
This article is based solely on our own experience. It’s not an official guide, but we believe it can still be very helpful in planning your next advertising campaign and it could even save you money in the end. :)
1. Mistake: The commercial appeals to the marketing team but not the target audience
Advertisers often believe that a good ad is one that they and their colleagues like. Then they’re surprised when the ad doesn’t succeed.
We often find ourselves trying to convince clients that a particular ad could perform very well with the target audience, even if the head of marketing personally dislikes it.
Example: Imagine you run an e-shop selling longboards, penny boards, clothing, helmets, and accessories.
Who is your target group? Your 45-year-old coworkers? NO! It’s mostly teenagers, people a generation younger, with different values, slang, and opinions of what’s cool and what isn’t.
We’ve had a lot of experience with this phenomenon, especially in influencer campaigns among YouTubers, who often know their audiences better than marketing agencies do. They know what kind of content and language to use in their ads.
There were times when clients gave us and the YouTubers creative freedom and the result was, for example, this ad, which gained over 1.7 million views and thousands of clicks to the e-shop, all on a fraction of the usual budget.
In our experience, company owners who truly listened to their target audience had far more successful advertising strategies and sales results.
Quick test:
Do you think this thumbnail looks terrible? So did we. And so did the client... except it doesn't matter! :)
This preview image performed extremely well with the target audience of 12 to 15 year-olds. So well, in fact, that the video has now reached over 1.7 million views and brought in hundreds of new customers.
2. Mistake: Uploading a video to YouTube and expecting the views will flood in
Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Every minute, hundreds of hours of video are uploaded to YouTube, each one competing for viewer's attention.
No one is sitting around waiting for your video to go live. If you don’t already have a strong channel with a loyal subscriber base, there’s a good chance nothing will happen after you publish it — it’ll simply get lost among the billions of other videos.
You can learn more about this topic in our article: “How to Make a Successful YouTube Video.”
It’s essential to know from the start, who the video is for, what value it offers them, and why they should watch it.
We always advise our clients not to blow their entire budget on just making the video. Keep some resources aside for promotion.
If the video is entertaining or provides valuable information, there’s a good chance it can reach decent viewership on social media even with a small budget.
No one is waiting for a small business or company to upload a new video to YouTube. There are millions more already there.
That’s why your video needs to be supported by paid advertising.
3. Mistake: Wanting a beautiful website
We’ve worked on the creation of many websites, whether for large corporations with 11,000 employees worldwide needing a local branch site, or for freelancers and small businesses who just wanted a basic service page.
Too often, we saw the same mindset: They wanted a site that looks nice, not one that actually sells.
It doesn’t matter that much whether your website has a sleek design, great fonts, animations on hover, and other technical beauties when it doesn’t persuade users to take action, engage them, or gather contact information from them.
The paradox is that websites that actually sell are often not that pretty at all!
So, what do you do with a beautiful website? It’s useless.
You’ve just invested money into it, spent lots of energy, effort, time, and had phone calls with web designers, coders, or a web agency, and the result?
Nothing. Potential clients visit, maybe they like the website, think it’s beautiful and modern, but they don’t buy, don’t leave their contact, and just leave.
This is the difference between a performance-oriented mindset and a mindset like: I’ll make a website because everyone else has one, or I’ll make a website because it’s nice to have a website.
Don’t fall into this thinking stereotype.
With every website, it’s important to create personas, do user testing, guide the customer toward conversion, and so on. Whether the website is beautiful is secondary.
Plus, beauty is a very subjective thing.
4. Mistake: I want Facebook because everyone has it
Managing Facebook isn’t an easy task at all.
It requires constantly coming up with new posts, working with graphics, replying to comments day and night. Yes, people on Facebook expect a reply within minutes, not hours, etc.
I know this from experience; I’ve managed Facebook for large institutions and companies.
So, think about whether investing time in having a Facebook page is worthwhile, because it’s not always necessary.
Before creating your Facebook page, clarify a few things:
1) Do you have time to post at least 2-3 original posts a week?
2) Is your business one where your clients would appreciate having a Facebook page, or will a website suffice? (A classic B2B business: I once had a client in the engineering sector who didn’t even know why they had Facebook, and it went months without being managed, which doesn’t look very good. If you have a garden, take care of it...)
Not always is Facebook needed, and often it drains energy without real results. Think about whether you need Facebook for your business.
5. Mistake: Pretty girls always sell...
A common mistake, especially among smaller businesses and freelancers, is the belief that a pretty girl will always be a good solution for successful advertising.
At meetings, we often hear things like: Let’s put a pretty girl there, and the sales will just roll in. It’s important to realize that having models in advertising is only suitable for certain types of products.
For perfumes, clothing, designer products, expensive alcohol, or sports cars, yes, advertising with a sexual undertone makes sense because it evokes certain emotions.
For others, it can have the opposite effect.
For example: Imagine seeing a commercial for construction materials, where an older man in overalls talks about the advantages of a type of roofing material because he’s been building houses for 30 years. Then the same thing is said by a twenty-year-old girl. Who will you believe? What will you buy?
Don’t make the same mistake as others and consider the ad concept to be believable, real, and convincing.
Advertising is different from a music video or a film, where pretty girls have their role and meaning.
I recently noticed this photo on buses in Karlovy Vary. It’s for a wood shop...
Wouldn’t the ad be more effective if it had a man in overalls on it? Or was it just a stereotype that a pretty girl sells?
In contrast, in a successful campaign for Hornbach, there are no sexy models or model-like women at all.
It’s just a sweaty guy hammering a nail somewhere on a country house. Thanks to this, potential customers can easily relate to the scene and are more likely to go to Hornbach to buy something.
6. Mistake: Not setting goals
What is the goal of your ad? To build a brand, increase sales, increase post reach on Facebook, or something else entirely?
Before you start planning anything, clarify the goals of your ad. They could look something like this:
a) Sell products from my online store worth X thousand CZK.
b) Increase website traffic from my target audience by 50% compared to last month.
c) Increase the reach of my Facebook posts by 30,000 people per week.
d) Achieve 100,000 video views within 3 weeks of release.
Many people don’t set goals and fail to align them with their long-term strategy. The result is a kind of shooting in the dark and spending money on ads that don’t bring the desired results.
That’s why with every client, we discuss in detail what the video will mean for them, where it will be placed, and most importantly, what results they expect from it. A recruitment video for a large company serves a different purpose than a product video for a small e-shop.
7. Mistake: TV is all-powerful
This statement was true in the 90s and maybe in the first decade of the 21st century. Yes, back then, television was really the most powerful medium.
Today, however, we are in the midst of a digital revolution, and everything has changed. The internet now plays the first violin in the media and advertising world, primarily on Facebook and Google.
Not only can you target ads far more precisely, but with a bit of creativity and knowledge of online advertising, you can achieve phenomenal results.
So, think carefully about whether it’s worth spending money on expensive TV ads or focusing on a digital campaign.
I will elaborate more on this topic in the article: Why TV Commercials Are Useless? 5 Compelling Reasons That Will Convince You!
We’ve produced very inexpensive ads that then received hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube and tens of thousands of clicks to e-shops or company websites.
We believe in the internet. It’s younger, more agile, and, most importantly, much more effective.
That’s why we constantly educate ourselves in Facebook, Google, and email marketing and help our clients target their videos better online. We leave TV production to other studios. We don’t like wasting our client’s money on a circus that won’t yield sales results.
Here are the results of one of our Facebook campaigns: For 0.8 CZK, we achieved a click-through to a job position page, the ad was seen by 40,000 people, and it cost 3,500 CZK, which isn’t bad, right? :) A similar ad on TV would certainly cost a lot more. 
Did this article help you? Contact us, we look forward to working with you! :)
We’ll advise you on:
✅ How to make YouTube videos that people will watch and what’s crucial?
✅ Important tips and advice on creating websites, how to make a simple website that will be effective for your business.
✅ How to handle social media—do you even need them for your business? Tips and tricks on how to set up effective campaigns.
✅ Influencer marketing—does it make sense, and when?
And more...
When you close this page, you probably won’t return to it, we know that from experience. :)
>>> CONTACT US HERE <<<
Have a beautiful day and successful tomorrows!
Mgr. Marek Dvořák
Owner of Markusfilm Studio
Translator of the article
Patrícia Truchlíková, DiS. art.
Also, read these other articles:
How to create ads that sell? 5 principles that work
YouTubers in advertising, how to choose the right one?
How animation is made? From design to finished video
How product videos will increase sales?
BONUS: Case Study ALBI
For the company Albi, we shot a commercial for the board game "Do You Know Me?" with just a better home camera and minimal production. It had a good preview photo, a great description, tags, and in the video, influencers participated. After analyzing the target audience for the board game, we wrote a script that simply had to work.
To this day, the ad has achieved 1.7 million views and thousands of clicks to the e-shop. All that for a fraction of the cost compared to large productions. We’ve shot dozens of similar ads for companies like Rockstar, Bohemia Chips, Trenýrkárna.cz, Kytary.cz, and others.