Video is such an important part of marketing these days as it accounts for such a large and growing number of internet traffic. When developing video content for your company there are many mistakes you can make, we covered a lot of these in our post Corporate Videos – Mistakes not to make but here are a few more which are relevant to any advertisement video including TV ads.

1. Great expectations – If you are setting out to make a viral video expect to fail (one in a million make it – but it’s a pain in the nuts to get right). The point to creating a video advertisement is to generate client growth and expansion not to stroke your company ego.  
2. It’s All About The Sound. We can probably all remember some ads over the last few years which innovated the use of music in their ad campaigns like Sony turning Jose Gonzalez into a household name with his much loved ‘Heartbeats.’ Or  the rerelease of an old Elvis classic after Nike utilised it in one of their campaigns. You don’t want to overdo it and you certainly need to keep it relevant to the tone of the video but understand the point that music can catapult a video to the top of the league tables.
3. Don’t forget the brand – There are plenty of ads which are engaging right from the beginning, make you laugh and keep you talking, however, when relaying the details of that great ad to friends or colleagues and they ask the question ‘What’s the ad for? What company? What are they selling?’  Cue the open jaw blank look of utter confusion ‘I have absolutely no idea!’ Never forget the Brand. Make sure people know what you are selling.
4. Short sweet and to the point – Time is of the essence, most people have a short attention span. There is so much out there that there is no time for patiently crawling through content to find what you are looking for, if you don’t get to the point within the first 10 seconds you’ve lost half of your potential clients. And if you do get to the point in 10 seconds….why is your video 5 minutes long????
5. Call to action – Much like remembering your brand you should also remember to guide potential customers/clients to the next step in the purchasing process, So you have a nice advert, well done, but how do people buy your product, avail of your service? Try including something like Call us today….pop on down to our store….visit our website etc. to get people buying.
6. Have a Strategy – Don’t let your video die a painful death starving and neglected on some hidden page of your website ignored by the world. Implement a strategy to distribute this content as well as possible. One great tip is to also create a mini video or edited version to post on your twitter to drive traffic to your site.
7. Be original. Trying to reproduce successful content is counterproductive, most of the Recently, Christmas eCards have become very popular among marketing professionals due to the staggering facts associated with promoting your business via video.
8. Know the legals, as we have previously said, you should under no circumstances try to make it yourself, if you do, and even if you hire an agency you should probably know your rights and responsibilities beforehand such as where you can shoot, who, and when.

Every business is different so if there is one thing you should remember it is to also remember what is relevant to your business and create video content that is honest and reflects your unique brand.