Maven Marketing with Brandon Welch

The One Marketing Shift You Can’t Ignore in 2026

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Short-form video isn’t just for influencers anymore.

If you run a service-based business, ignoring it might be the most expensive mistake you make in 2026.

In this Maven Monday, Brandon and Caleb break down a surprising shift that’s quietly reshaping how real customers search, choose, and trust local businesses.

This isn’t about trends, dances, or overnight fame. It’s about a simple strategy business owners can use to get seen, get remembered, and get picked… without spending more on ads.

Inside this episode:
 • Why short-form video suddenly matters for every local business
 • The overlooked reason your competitors are getting found faster
 • How small, scrappy videos can outperform polished campaigns

If you’ve ever wondered how to show up online without feeling salesy or silly, this conversation will point you in the right direction — and help you step into a huge opportunity before the crowd catches on.

#MavenMarketingPodcast #ShortFormVideo #SmallBusinessMarketing #MarketingPlan2026

For entrepreneurs wanting to grow without wasting money, join the Maven Marketing Mastermind → https://www.mavenmethodtraining.com

Our Website: https://frankandmaven.com/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/frank-and-maven/

Host: Brandon Welch
Co-Host: Caleb Agee
Executive Producer: Carter Breaux
Audio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera Guy

Do you have a marketing problem you'd like us to help solve? Send it to MavenMonday@FrankandMaven.com!

Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer Here: https://a.co/d/1clpm8a

Brandon Welch:

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I'm your host Brandon Welch and I'm here with Caleb the Plaid Dad. AG. Hey, right back at you. It's a nice flannel.

Caleb Agee:

It's flannel day. I won't tell you what day of the week it is, but it alliterates with flannel when we're recording this. But yeah.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, we've officially busted out our flannels. It's actually Maven Monday right now. It is Maven Monday, but it was Frankly Friday back when we recorded this. Yeah. Flannel Frankly Friday. So yeah. We are here, and in the season of Flannel is also the season of marketing planning. We've been doing a lot of that. We are helping dozens and dozens of companies put together their final plans for 2026 so they can start with a bang in January. You should be doing that too. By the way, there is uh a handful of episodes we have coming up about how to build your marketing plan for 2026. You're gonna want to watch out for those. But while you're doing that in the meantime, there's a tactic we want you to definitely include.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

And uh you know that the Maven Marketing Podcast is all about eliminating waste in advertising, growing your business so you can achieve that big dream. And we typically don't fall for short-term trends.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

We speak of principles and we speak of uh what we call the Maven method, which is how to strategically lay out a marketing plan no matter what media or budget you know is at play. If you want that playbook, you need to get yourself a copy of the Maven Marketer or join the Maven Marketing Mastermind and go get it. Mavenmethodtraining.com, two plugs in ten seconds. Um but if you've been here a long time, you know that we're more um principles.

Caleb Agee:

I think there are a lot of agencies or marketing people, they're like, you have to do email marketing, and that's the thing they're all about, or you have to do digital marketing. We we don't do that.

Brandon Welch:

When when when the real principle at play is like just keep in touch with your past customers. And email marketing is one of the ways you could do that.

Caleb Agee:

One of the best tools. It might become the most obvious. And so in this case, uh we're gonna talk about something today that is not necessarily new. Uh Vine started it in 2010. Uh yeah, way back in the day.

Brandon Welch:

And this could have at one point been a shiny object and a and a sound bite.

Caleb Agee:

But things are changing in the landscape, and the thing that we're alluding to right now is short form video. Short form video. Short video. Short form video. Um, think TikToks, think reels, think YouTube shorts. These are usually vertical videos. We call them verticals around here a lot because um it's the most uh simple way of explaining uh what we're talking about. But a vertical video, it's usually, you know, you think about the style. There's usually there's lots of different styles, but they're usually very quick, they're short, um, they're engaging, they're exciting, and you go from one to the next, get a little chuckle, yes, and then you move on.

Brandon Welch:

And it used to be like the you know, stuck just to influencers and you know, cats swimming in jello and things like that. I would actually watch that video. Cats swimming in jello. Uh look in the link. We're gonna make that happen. We're gonna make AI make that happen. But um, now if you have a service business, if you have a law firm, if you have a medical firm, if you are a local expert of any kind and you were previously waiting for somebody to come into your four walls and ask you for your expertise, you are missing a part of the population, and actually an increasingly big part of the population, and the way to reach them and to build that relationship with them now is in the four corners of the screen, not necessarily the four walls of your business via short form video.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. So landscape-wise in the world, TikTok is not banned, it's still alive and it's moving forward in the United States. Instagram is now indexing all of your videos and posts if you've if your privacy allows that, which for your business, you should allow them to do that. Um, that means people can search for something. Your video on Instagram could show up now, and it did not previously. And Google has added a tab that is called short video. If you search for, uh, I think I did like some auto repair repair search, uh, how to change my spark.

Brandon Welch:

The shade tree mechanic.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, yeah. Uh if you search for that, the next tab after all will be short videos.

Brandon Welch:

Which used to be images. Used to be images, and then there was like two or three down the map or the line was maps and then um videos. Now it's short form videos.

Caleb Agee:

It is short videos. Google is favoring it here. Um, and we're gonna talk about how some of even the platforms that have been around longer than TikTok are even changing to favor this kind of form.

Brandon Welch:

And then in uh in about five minutes, we're gonna get to exactly how to do short form video if you're a service business and you're not, you know, doing things like cats and jello and stuff like that. Like, you know, fun influencer type stuff. So, okay, so we know it's been a thing for a while. Uh, no secret. Um, phones, just about every phone is capable of not only shooting short form video, but editing it. Uh, there are some great apps like CapCut and Video Leap. Uh, and you know, Adobe has a bunch of them. There's a bunch of those videos that make this super easy, and we're gonna get to those tactics. Um, but you should know uh the biggest shift for small business is that people are actually going to look for answers now. Yeah, they're looking for um tips on how to pick a uh roofer or how to make their own estate plan or do they need an attorney for an estate plan? And it's becoming YouTube has been the second largest search engine for a long time. Yeah shortly, you know, second to Google. Uh but now even even uh Meta, uh even Facebook, just people are searching for how-to's and and really local uh search suggestions um in that video search box. And so um it's gone from it's it's like it's really the ultimate in-between today customer mode and tomorrow customer mode. Yes, people are looking for that in-between exploratory experience. Whereas before they might have sent five leads, now they're just watching five, you know, videos.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, so 78% of people prefer to learn about new products via short video. Sprout Social says that. That is a crazy, crazy statistic. 78% prefer to learn about new products.

Brandon Welch:

And if you think about the old way of doing, you know, video, it's like bring out the crew, bring out the lights, do some sort of you know, intro script and try to make it like you know a VHS tape from back in the day. And this is just you get to punch right in with your face, with your likeness, with your tone, uh, with your expertise, with your competence, with your warmth, um, with everything about you that you carry as a professional into somebody's home or into their life. And now you just get to immediately like it's it's it's acceptable, it's socially and social media acceptable to just jump in and be yourself.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

And that's really what we talk about in tomorrow marketing. And it's really, really hard to write uh a campaign that makes you real and likable. We that's one of the things Frank and Maven is um really like the best at, is making people famous and liked. Um, but this is a an extra layer to that because this may not make you super memorable, but it will make you super helpful and trustworthy when people are seeing you in that format.

Caleb Agee:

All of this authenticity, you know, really allows anybody to jump in. And that's what makes this we are all about efficiency here with the Maven method. That's what really makes this uh one of the more efficient medias you could you could chase down. Um and so we the thing in efficiency as far as media goes, the big equalizer is always CPMs, which is cost per millet, which means thousand.

Brandon Welch:

How much does it cost me to reach one thousand people?

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, and and or be seen one thousand times. To be one, yeah, seen one thousand times. Could be the same person a thousand times or some mix of an in between. The thing we need to clarify right now is there's two kinds, just like in search engines, just like in regular social media, there's two kinds of this. There's organic, which is I just posted it, no dollars. For free. For free, I have an account, and there's that. The other side of that is I post it and I put some sort of paid advertising behind it. I boost it, is how you know Facebook might call it, or you create an actual ad out of that. And um depends on the platform, right? Uh, and those dollars make it go further than it would have naturally.

Brandon Welch:

Right. Um in both cases, though, for now, as of uh November in 2025, um, Facebook and Instagram and Google are all so ticked off at TikTok. Yeah, they're ticked off. Um uh that TikTok has stolen so much of their like time spent by the average user, yeah. Um, they are trying to like win some of that short form audience back for themselves. And so they are boosting that short form video uh much, much farther than they would another organic post, which is giving you the effect. And in some cases, we're getting like like two to five dollars CPMs. So if you think about when people ask me, well, well, should I put my money in social media or radio or TV? And I'm like, um, you need to do the one you can own and you the one you can afford to reach the most amount of people the most amount of times for the least amount of money. And so CPM is one of those leveling metrics for that. That's how you know which one's sort of more efficient than the other. Well, uh, we've said for a long, long time TV and radio tend to be the most efficient. Now, for reaching large groups at a time and with forcing a commercial to them, that is still true. That will be true for quite a while. Yeah. Uh big screen is still very, very, very much in play. But if you're talking about in terms of just efficiency, short form video is competing for the first time ever that any online video has ever competed. It's competing in that like two to ten dollar range and and cost per thousand viewers. And then sometimes uh it can actually be a significant amount of people for no actual media dollars at all. For now, that will change, people will get better. You know, they'll they'll stop incentivizing it, they'll stop subsidizing the the algorithm. But right now, for for businesses especially, uh service businesses especially, there's a really low CPM involved, even whether you're paying for it or you're not paying for it.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, the big shift here in even the cost or what they reward is that it's rewarding not what you follow, but what you watch. And that is that is the big shift here. And as we pivot into the kind of content we want to create, the kind of content we want to produce, you have to pay attention to especially TikTok, they've pioneered this algorithm that essentially pays attention to what do you pause on, what do you slow down, what do you watch, what do you um engage with, of course. Yeah, but it will it will then trend in the direction if if Brandon's into watching videos about uh airplanes, yeah, guess where his algorithm will lead him. And um, if somebody's in the mode of repairing their home, guess where their algorithm's gonna lead them. Right. And so what we have to do is be inside of these interest based, this algorithmic bliss that's happening. And it's it's such a strange thing because it's not about gaining followers necessarily. You can be an overnight success. That's why you see all these TikTok stars that just show up all of a sudden. It's because they they accidentally landed in the algorithm.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah. So before to be effective on social media as a small business, you had to spend lots and lots and lots of time and effort to get a really, really big audience, like 10,000 people or more. And then even then, when you posted, you might reach a few hundred. Yeah. Now, with the right piece of relevant serviced expert-based content, you don't have to have a following at all. You just have to have the right content in the video, and you could reach thousands of people locally, nationally, or internationally. And that has a way uh bigger return on investment for your time because all you have to do is get the content right. So efficiency is there, uh, obviously, user behaviors are there. Um, now we're gonna talk about what actually works. And there's five types of videos uh that we are using, and I want to share those and just a just a couple of snippets about what you might do uh for a service type business. So yeah, the first is what we call proof videos, and that's like before or after. Now, this is cool to me because it can be it can be really in the tomorrow marketing um category because uh it doesn't matter if I even have a deck, if I see an old, you know, gray gray deck get transformed into a beautiful restored natural wood, that's entertaining. Oh, yeah. Or as my 10-year-old would call it, uh, that is satisfying. Satisfying. Yeah, that's so satisfying. That's what the kids are saying these days. Exactly.

Caleb Agee:

Hashtag satisfying. Hashtags are dying too, by the way, guys.

Brandon Welch:

Yes, they are. They're dead. Instagram killed them. It's gone. They're gone. Hashtags don't matter anymore, folks. So if you if you can show some sort of visual nature of a transformation, a before and after, that is um, that is like multiple birds with one stone because uh you're drawing an audience that just thinks it's cool anyway. And then when people go searching for you for like, you know, your company name or whatever, because of the way Google is indexing these videos, that might show up as a result. Um, and it's like it's a lot of street cred for you. Uh, and then also they're actually pretty dang easy to make. It's probably work you're already doing. You just need to set an iPhone in the corner and either do a time-lapse video, yeah, um, or take some 10-15 second videos and then loop them together, cut them down.

Caleb Agee:

We're talking about like a $20 tripod with an iPhone mount in the corner of your job site and they watch a whole house change or they watch a whole deck change, or um yeah, they're watching the transformation.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah. So, and then there's also these like um, I think, you know, everybody likes the tension of a hoarder's show or some like really, you know, gross thing, or whatever. You can say, This is what we found under this roof, and people are like, you know, ooh, I never knew that might be under my roof. And it just endears them to you because you're the one that showed them behind the scenes. So second type of video is an authority video.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. That's um, that's where you really show your expertise. You're wanting to show them that you know what you're talking about and you're giving them little tips to help make their lives better. And if, as we know, if you make somebody's life better before they need you, guess who they're gonna call when they do need what you sell. Yeah. Um, so examples might be um what's due in the first 24 hour after hail hits your roof.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, if you're the one who had that video out and none of the other roofers, they're they're all waiting, you know, until their Google clicks until it hails, but you're the one and and you know, somebody shares that, and then some neighborhood, you know, because because they're paying attention to those signals, some neighborhood person shares it, and then now 500 of their other neighbors see you, the honest, helpful roofer saying, Here's what you need to do. Man, you you you're like first in line.

Caleb Agee:

I know we have a few roofers listening to this podcast. Yeah um, I want to challenge you in March when it hails for the first time or whatever. I want you to walk outside, if it's in your neighborhood or nearby, I want you to drive as close as you can to the little hail pebbles on the ground, run out there and shoot your video on your iPhone selfie mode and post it. Let's see what happens.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, it's raining golf balls in Bartlesville. Let's go. Just so you know, the hail report. Uh, it's a hail of a good time, I hear. So, okay, so authority videos are the second thing. Just like teach them something. It could be um uh if you're a dentist, it could be, hey, here's here are the ages when you need to consider braces. Or, hey, uh, if your kid had a you know crooked tooth come in after they lost their first tooth, don't panic. Like just that sort of stuff. Uh speak to needs, pains, hopes, and fears. Nothing has changed there, folks. It's just do that in a short form, yeah, less produced way.

Caleb Agee:

The the the crazy thing is before you would make like a really long, I say long, three to five minute video about that and you put it on your website. Here at Pineview Dental. Yeah. We really care about pediatric dentistry. Now, what you can do is you can just say, hey, we see this all the time. Uh you your kid loses a baby tooth, and then the other one comes out kind of behind it in a weird angle. Googly eyed. No, no big deal. Uh uh, you know, and you can just just break down their fears so that they're not uh mom's not scared anymore of what's happening in the kid's mouth.

Brandon Welch:

That's an authority video. You do it every day in your own sales presentations, just put it in a short form video. The third is like a people and culture video. So um I think you can overdo this one, uh, but it it can also in the right blend, it can be an endearing way to show that you are a real company and that you have that uh that bond to your local community. Um, so I I think that like meeting the technician or meeting the nurse, especially if it's like their birthday or something, and it and people always want to wish somebody happy birthday. Like if you're a human, that's just a thing you do. Yeah. And so so maybe something like that. Um, and then a quirky detail about them. Uh, but don't overdo it here. Don't tell their life story, don't talk about their long walks on the beaches, don't name all their dogs and fish and all that stuff, just like one quirky thing. We don't need to know that Caleb likes to knit, uh, for example.

Caleb Agee:

I actually used to knit. My mom took a class and I learned with her.

Brandon Welch:

You're not kidding. All right. Let's not nitpick that anymore. Okay. So that's people and culture videos, just show one of your real people. The fourth is a story video. How is that different than a feature?

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, I think the story shows how your product or service solves, it changes things for the customer. So usually you want to lead with the problem. And I actually would emphasize not maybe a problem, but you need to lead with a hook in some form and all of these.

Brandon Welch:

It's a good place to show your actual customers talking about you. Yes.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, and it and it's gonna be their transformation story. It's gonna be like, my deck was ugly and now it's not. You need to make it more interesting than that, but that is the the premise of what you're doing.

Brandon Welch:

We called four other people, and one said it would cost this, and one said it would cost this, and these guys came out, man, they were way more reasonable, and they could do it next week. And wouldn't you know it? They made um they made our yard better than we, you know. They left our whole place better than we found it. Yep. Uh sorry. And wouldn't you know it? They left our whole place better than they found it, and these guys are just awesome. And so just those little endearing things. You don't want to overdo that. That's not a 90-second video, that's like a 20 to 40 second video.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. The tough part usually on these is getting people to say the short version of what you really want them to say. Yeah, the that can take a few more minutes because it's not you saying it, it's them saying it. And so you want to you want to chop those up and trim any bits that are unnecessary.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah. So uh last one is what we call proof of care videos. And this is like showing how you um fully landed the plane, or these could also be like second opinion type videos, and it's like make sure if you have a contractor do this for you, or make sure if you are talking to an attorney about this, that if they don't ask these five questions, you're in big trouble. Like, so giving them some sort of certifiable, like you you want to imagine this is something they can screenshot and go, ooh, I'm gonna ask about that. Yeah, um, I'm gonna save that for later, right? Yes. So uh some some sort of checklist or authoritative process or proprietary way that you ensure a standard. Uh, and this is all sounding very, very encompassing of tomorrow marketing. Yeah. We say in in the tomorrow customer, uh, to win over the tomorrow customer, you need to have three things present. One is commitment, one is quality, one is relationships. Commitment to them and their well-being, quality, a certain standard of quality, which is like all of these things, uh, and then relationships as you keep showing up and you let them see you real. So quick recap: we have proof videos, we have authority videos, we have people and culture videos, story videos, or proof of care videos, which are that authoritative like checklist type thing. So um, if you do those things and you do them, you know, maybe you're doing one of those a week and going in a different category every week. Um, or if you have a person, you have 30 people on your team, just make sure every other week you're featuring one of them or something like that.

Caleb Agee:

The big thing to keep in mind anytime you're producing any content for any media, but especially in this one, you need to pay attention to how people consume the media. Uh, and in this case, they are literally flipping on their phone. You have one to two seconds to pique their interest. Yep. And if they smell an ad, if they smell a business trying to sell something, if they smell a long setup.

Brandon Welch:

If or now a lot of people ask me, it's like just jump into the thing.

Caleb Agee:

You gotta start me right in the middle of the story. You gotta start me right in the middle of the solution. You gotta you have to, it's like Star Wars, you gotta start with a battle and then tell me why why the battle is is going on. So that is a that is really an art of storytelling in general.

Brandon Welch:

You can even uh cut in like to the very first word where it almost cuts it off. Like you don't don't even wait for that you know breath of open. It's just like people are you almost want to make them feel like they just missed something. Yeah. And uh you'll see the videos that you watch and that have hundreds of thousands of views and likes, they're doing that sort of stuff.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, they're way more intuitive, and so you gotta give them a lot of credit that they'll figure out what you're talking about when they need to figure it out.

Brandon Welch:

And when you can force them to fill in the gaps uh without losing them by being way too random, but you can get in that sweet spot of like forcing them to fill in what you're talking about, that that is the magic of engagement. That is what that is the definition of attention.

Caleb Agee:

I think we're gonna do a short video post this week with a cat swimming in jello.

Brandon Welch:

I think we must. Yes. It's gonna happen. Yeah. Uh that that's a that's also a good hack. You can take something that's well known and already, you know, interesting and has nothing to do with you, um, like a cat swimming in jello. That's not really well known, but it will be we're done with it. Yeah, we'll be more done with it. So, okay. So this is only going to get more important. Uh, we've talked about um why short video belongs in your service business now, uh, how people are using short form for search, um, how you might uh produce a regular content schedule. And the reason we ultimately decided to talk about this now and think that it's going to be a mainstay uh is that it's just it's continuing to snowball into just a mainstay of people's uh behaviors and how they shop.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, it's really how uh I mean it's definitely in the daily life of most people that you hop in there and people without even realizing get their phone out of their pocket and they will start scrolling these videos anyways. And so you deserve to have a place there. Your business deserves to have a chance because every everybody else is speaking, and this is an effective way to really reach people.

Brandon Welch:

So you need to bring short form video to your service-based local business in 2026, and you want to be doing weekly either a proof video, an authority video, a people and culture video, a story video, or a proof of care that shows some sort of checklist or second opinion thing that you offer. You do not need large production, you do not need trendy dances or any of these other influencer type.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, you don't need to chase chase your tail on all the things that all these people are doing. Do it your way. That's okay.

Brandon Welch:

You don't need lip sync videos and things like that. You do need a phone, some decent lighting, and to be either close to the source or have a microphone that can sync to your Bluetooth audio on your on your camera setting. Uh you need 10 to 20 minutes per video and you need to be practicing this every day. Uh, you need a clear idea of what your customer needs to hear. So take the last like 20 questions you got when people called in and make sure you're making a video for each one of those. And the last thing you're gonna need is an app that lets you do it easily. Video leap and CapCut are our favorites, but just search in the App Store Short Form Video Editor or CapCut, and a bunch of those other things will come up. Start making these videos weekly, and you're going to draw an audience and you're probably gonna beat your competitors to this trend and start getting leads from those types of people who are searching for services in a local way.

Caleb Agee:

Two closing thoughts. Uh first, uh don't try to make it perfect. You need to be okay with it uh being authentic, being real, uh, and be okay with the fact that your first video will be much worse, hopefully, than your tenth video. You need to be okay with the progression, the natural uh growth that you personally will have making these videos. Second, uh attention is now the most precious thing. Uh and earning attention is the hardest thing to do. You can't uh you can pay for attention, it's very expensive. Uh uh, but this is a way that you can earn attention by being interesting, by being entertaining, by being exciting. And when you do that and you help your customers, you will see your business grow because you've got their attention.

Brandon Welch:

Yes, sir. So use short form video in 2026. Start awkward, have the courage to push through when you have crickets. Uh, you're gonna look back in a couple years and and you're gonna look back at the awkward moments you start this, and you're gonna go, I'm really glad we started that before everybody was doing it. And um, we are all about helping you get more for less with your marketing so that you can grow your business. Uh, we believe small businesses have the most amount of potential of any organization to change America, change culture, change families, change generations. And uh, that is why we're here. That is why we are so unreasonably excited about um small companies. And so we'll be back here every Monday bringing you a new marketing tactic, answering real life marketing questions, because marketers who can't teach you why are just a fancy lie. Go make some short form videos.