Maven Marketing with Brandon Welch

How to Build Your 2026 Marketing Plan

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2026 is shaping up to be the year things finally settle, but that doesn’t mean marketing gets easier.

In this Maven Monday episode, Brandon and Caleb break down what they’re seeing on the front lines of annual planning season and why the way you build your 2026 marketing plan matters more than ever.

Costs are higher, customers are more selective, and attention is harder to earn—but the businesses that plan correctly now will have a massive advantage.

This isn’t about chasing trends or reinventing everything. It’s about knowing what to keep, what to adjust, and where smart companies are quietly doubling down while others hesitate.

If you want a marketing plan that’s steady, realistic, and built to win in a more disciplined market, this episode sets the table.

We’ll be back every Monday answering real-life marketing questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie.

#SmallBusiness #Entrepreneur #MarketingTips #BusinessGrowth #MarketingStrategy #DigitalMarketing #BrandBuilding #BusinessAdvice #EntrepreneurLife #MarketingPodcast #Advertising #ContentMarketing #Leadership #2026Goals #GrowYourBusiness

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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:

If 2024 was the party, 2025 was the hangover, and 2026 is the Monday where we get back to work. From a consumer level, from a marketing level, from a shiny objects level, it's the year everything settles. Things are higher priced now, but they are less weird and different than they have been in the past. You can count on more consistency. And so we're going to talk about the plan to do that. Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I'm your host, Brandon Welch, and I'm here with Caleb. What are you doing for Christmas, A.G.?

Caleb Agee:

Hey, uh, Christmas, we do two Christmases. One with my family on Christmas Eve, and then uh with I say my family, the AGs, the extended family. Yeah. Brothers, sister, cousins, stuff like that. And then on Christmas Day, we have our own little one at home, and then we go to the in-laws' house. So beautiful. It's a good time.

Brandon Welch:

We are also a two Christmas household, 25th, 26th. And uh I'm looking forward to it this year. We've got some really we're we're doing smaller Christmas for the kids, but it truly is the most wonderful time of the year. It really is, yes. So speaking of Christmas, there is a gift in the coming year for you, and that is the gift of a little bit of normalcy. Um there are some things uh leveling out as we see them, uh, but there are some also some things that are staying sort of tough. And today we're going to talk about nuances in your 2026 marketing budget because this is the place where we answer real life marketing questions, stuff that's happening right on the front lines. We see it, we're playing with millions of dollars uh every single month in marketing, and we're bringing you the stuff like that's working and what's not working. Uh, we are just like ruthless eliminators of waste. So we're we're trying to help you maximize your marketing budget. If this is the first time you're here, uh we are not the shiny object guys. We are not the um, you know, the hype. We are not the always be changing everything. We are the eliminate stuff that is going to keep you from the big idea, which is growth and holistic business, which we call the big dream. Yeah, which is uh we want to see you, your family, your team, your team's family. We want to see you have that beautiful life harmony. I don't believe there's such a thing as a work-life balance. I think there's work-life harmony, and that's the big dream for us. It's helping you get more with less uh and all of the things business. And right now, that is marketing because that is what's staring us all in the face. That's right. We are at the end of a giant annual planning season. We have taken no less than a hundred pitches. Uh, we have negotiated millions and millions of dollars worth of media, so we have a fresh perspective about what's out there, what you might be seeing. And um, this is in addition to last year's episode, which was uh, or sorry, three episodes three-part strategy message in media, how to make your marketing plan. That is largely still in play. Like there's nothing in those episodes that you shouldn't be doing. Yeah. Uh but an interest of being additive, we're just gonna link to those. Uh Nate is gonna pop up the strategy message in media for building your marketing ping uh campaign, which you did last year, and we're gonna give a few nuances for 2026 and things you want to add on top of that.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, we're we're kind of marrying this with what 2026 is looking like. We're steadying the economy outlook and things that we're seeing. And so um that really affects, it should affect in some ways. You you are a steady marketer, and that's what Brandon was alluding to. We want to make sure we're steady, we're consistent, and um, the big things they don't change. But the nuances and how we we have to work with the market. This is how this is how the economy works. We have to have viable products that speak to viable consumers, and so uh consumers this next year, they're going to be buying, but they're going to be more value scrutinizing. They are gonna the prices have gone up and they're not gonna go down. That's the reality of it.

Brandon Welch:

And so but it's less inflation driven. It's it's just more this is the new This is just how it is now pricing floor, if you will.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, so they're adjusting their budgets to account for because all of 25, they were like, whoa, what's going on? Groceries and all these things are more expensive than I am used to them being. 26, all of that kind of levels out. It didn't go down, it just flattened and but your interest rates and your big purchases are less scary.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah. I think people know what they're gonna be. So there's a little bit more planning, um, and we'll just call it sobriety in the decision-making process.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, so we got to pay attention, consumers are gonna be value scrutinizing, more risk aware, um, and then they'll be less tolerant of friction and ambiguity. We're gonna talk about that a lot later.

Brandon Welch:

So there's four sections. Uh, one is how much should your business be spending on marketing? We're gonna give you some ranges uh for your industry and for uh your maturity cycle as businesses. Uh, the second is gonna be nuances and strategy, how you need to position yourself in 2026 versus years past. The third is gonna be nuances and messaging, things you need to be doing differently with your ads and your copy themselves, and then uh some slight nuances in media and how you might select to spend that money. Yeah. Uh by the end of that, you're going to pair that with last year's how to make a marketing plan, or maybe your very own copy of the Maven Marketer. You just build your marketing plan uh over Christmas break, reading your hundred and no, sorry, two hundred and forty-eight pages of marketing. Genius. It's really genius. Who wrote that? Who wrote that book? Um yeah. So um, hey, you know what? First person to make a comment about uh something you're changing your 2026 marketing uh is gonna get a copy of the Maven Marketer, thanks to Nate, the camera guy. I love it. He's going to personally deliver it to you and write up a note of it.

Caleb Agee:

We're gonna just ship a ship a Nate in a box and it'll just pop out and hint.

Brandon Welch:

Let's jump in. We've got four sections to cover. So, how much should your business be spent spending on marketing? Um, this is a loaded question, and every person who gets asked that in our industry goes, Well, it depends. And I don't want to be the well it depends guys, so we're just gonna answer it as asked. Um, the average business in America is spending seven to eight percent on marketing annually as a percentage of annual revenue. Now some of you just went, is that all? And some of you went, holy crap, what are you trying to do? Yeah, yeah. So we're gonna break that down here in a second. But uh, where did that come from, Gabriel?

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, so that was Gardner CMO spin survey said 7.7%. That's an average based on US marketing spin. And then um the SBA said seven to eight percent on any uh roundabouts or near five million pursuing growth is how they framed that.

Brandon Welch:

So this is gonna nuance by industry, not because the actual marketing spend probably should nuance like what it takes to make stuff happen, but because margins are different in every industry. And like when you're doing this as a reflection of top line revenue, uh, there's things that change when you're an HVAC company, for example, and a lot of your you know, your top line revenue is tied up in cost of goods sold versus maybe an attorney, a labor-based, a labor-based, which is just tied up in expertise and maybe people. So um we're gonna go line by line with that. But I want to I want to just reset if you are the the person or if you are working for a person, or if you have to report to the person who's going, yeah, but uh, if we spend 7.7% of our budget, how do we know it's working? We're going to get there. Okay. The big idea is that companies that um become well known, well-liked, and well-trusted before the sale, they win in the advertising and marketing game, and they win in the growth game. There was a very, very large study called The Long and the Short of It, done by Les Bennett and Peter Field. They are data scientists and the smartest dudes in advertising of our of our time. They took a scientific approach, studied billions of dollars worth of advertising over a long period of time, and they they came out with a grand conclusion that if you are well known, liked, and trusted from an emotional level, if people like you and believe in you before the sale, you will not see that return on investment this second. But shortly after, uh a year, two, three years, and then snowballing after that, everything gets easier for you. So that is big, big business stuff, but it also directly applies to your uh owner-operated business. And less in that uh in that study was famous for saying if brands are built over years, we all know it takes a while to build a brand. Like Nike didn't become Nike or Apple didn't become Apple or you know, any of these big brands we love. Um, if it takes years to do that, why are we managing them in quarters? And so we're we're suggesting with all of this, as we do all the time, and what we've proven over 15 years now, and we have we have guys and gals becoming multi-multi-millionaires on this system. So if you want that to be true for your business, that's that's the foundation.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. So we're gonna quickly go through just some benchmarks of marketing spend for different industries. And uh hopefully you fall into one of these. If not, you could probably find triangulate. Yeah, you could you could find some relatable uh industries, and we're just gonna go through these and then we're gonna talk about how this changes in your your given situation.

Brandon Welch:

Service Titan in the HVAC industry uh says five to ten percent of revenue. Uh HVAC benchmarks commonly cite seven percent of top line revenue. So uh professional services, think consulting, think agencies, think a lot of B2B, uh 10 to 12 because it's assumed that there's higher margin in the product itself. Yeah. Um and but also top line revenues tend to be lower in those industries. So it's gonna be a bigger percentage.

Caleb Agee:

That's right. Law firms, five to fifteen percent, similar to that agency setup, maybe. Uh, and then uh medical clinics, one to five percent. That that would be independent medical clinics.

Brandon Welch:

The medical group management association says one to five percent. Um, there's sometimes a lot of retail tied up in there, but there's also a lot of um there's a lot of overhead medical practices. So that's that's why you can sort of get away with that. And they tend to be on the more commoditized scale. People know what they need, so you're just trying to be the one on the list that people select. So that's right. Uh yeah. Go ahead. Dental offices.

Caleb Agee:

Dental offices, um, four to seven percent. That's from dental economics. Um, vision and optometry practices, again, one to five. That's uh similar to that medical clinic.

Brandon Welch:

We work with one of the most prominent leaders in that space, and they they commonly cite in their organization like two to three percent. So um auto repair shops are four to five percent, same thing. A lot of a lot of cost of goods, so a lot of overhead. Um, and then uh, you know, auto the automotive industry in general. Um, there's we just got a site or uh citation from NADA. The average dealership is spending like five to six hundred thousand annually, but there's a lot of nuances.

Caleb Agee:

That's a that's a rough guess there. Yeah. The big thing that you need to pay attention to, and this is why it's kind of like a depends answer. Like it depends, is all is usually everybody's answer here. It's because the reality of your marketing budget changes over the lifespan of your business as well. And so usually, usually, the larger you are, the more mature, hopefully, you've been planting seeds, you're following the Maven method, the more mature your marketing becomes, the more past customers you have. All of this attributes to as you grow larger, the percent of marketing usually goes down. So we see in a little bit. A little bit. In the one to three million range, you know, it might be eight to twelve, but it once you get to 10 or above, we might be in more of the four to eight percent range.

Brandon Welch:

So now that depending on this, the the biggest what or the biggest um depends part of that is how strong is your competition. Yeah, like if you are in a disruptible category, you do not want to be the one reacting to a low marketing spend. You don't want to see what you can get away with for a few years on a low spin because somebody is going to disrupt you, and it's way more expensive to get that market share back than it is to maintain and defend it. Also, if you are trying to disrupt somebody else, if you are trying to steal market share, you're gonna have to um outspend them in message quality and in probably marketing and ad budget.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, so that's that's that's the key is also how much do you want to grow? How aggressive are you being next year? And that would definitely change the answer that we would have. Um you could be you could easily be a 10 plus million company and need to spend 12%, no problem. If you're in a market and you want to grow big market, maybe big dollars because of what you're selling, no problem.

Brandon Welch:

Yep. So if you think of this of driving as driving a nail into a uh a board, um the amount of swings you take is your advertising budget, but the size of your hammer is the quality of your message. So if you've got a big hammer, you can get away with a smaller marketing budget, but it has to be more remarkable and it has to be true. And that's what we're gonna talk about in the messaging section. So uh last thing I want to say on budgeting. So there's what you should be spending as an overall percentage, and then there's how you allocate it. Um that uh study I cited a minute ago, the long and the short of it, by far the biggest study that's ever been done on advertising, they pulled out that the most reliably growing companies who are able to charge more, protect margin, uh, get a bigger percentage of the market over the long haul, and not be disruptible. The ones that are the strongest types of companies that we all want to be are spending at least 60% of their budget on emotional branding, making people like them, feel good about them, believe in them, trust them, align with them before the opportunity to buy from them comes around. So um if you are a if you are a home service company, it's gonna be five to ten years before the average person needs you. If you are a professional service company, it may be 10 to 20 years. Um, if you are in a category like roofing or really big, or you know, we say roofing or caskets, it could be 30 to 50 to 80 years before somebody needs you. And so it that's why at the finish line, those those um searches, those doing search into marketing and like lead generation is really expensive. But when people are coming to you without going through those other methods of advertising, you get them faster, they spend more. And so that's why we want you spending 60% of your budget uh and any good marketing plan at least is going to tomorrow marketing.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

Um add to that.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, just to make sure we're clear, if this is your first time hearing about the Maven method, this is probably one of the key uh facets of the Maven method that helps to help to clear up marketing for everybody who hears it because I think a lot of times we have lots of different marketing motivations. So a tomorrow customer is somebody who will need what you're selling, um, but they don't need it right now. Yeah. So we're going to build a relationship with them for the long haul. A today customer is somebody who actually woke up this this morning or this week and they said, I need that thing. I need that fridge.

Brandon Welch:

Warm, so I need a fridge. My tires popped, so I need a tire.

Caleb Agee:

Uh yesterday marketing is somebody who has bought from you in the past or connected with you in the past, and it is your job to um stay in connection with them so that they can become repeat business with you or a referral partner.

Brandon Welch:

Yes. So we're recommending uh for basically anybody we work with a 60 30 10 focus. 60 on tomorrow marketing that's emotional branding, making people like you, know your personality, know your brand, know what you stand for, entertainment, earning attention before the sale. Today marketing goes 30%, um, which is like, hey, we have an offer, you should buy today, it's a really good time to buy. Here's a package deal, here's a whatever like reason to buy that's activating all that goodwill you've built. And then we say as much as 10% on yesterday marketing because a company who has past customers is uh has has the biggest opportunity um and that and the most efficient marketing when they focus on yesterday marketing.

Caleb Agee:

Usually the lowest dollar cost of all the years.

Brandon Welch:

Biggest return for the least least amount of money. So if you're a brand new company, you're not gonna have probably enough to spend on yesterday marketing. But if you're established, we have some companies that have been around 50, 60 years, like spending a tremendous amount of time in the messaging and email marketing and text messaging and customer appreciation events, like that's way cheaper than advertising for new customers. So we we put um we put 10% of the budget there. So um long-term brand building is the key to firmer pricing. If you want to be able to charge more and be selected by the premium buyers, long-term branding is your friend.

Caleb Agee:

I'm gonna advocate that if you haven't increased your prices through all this mess of twenty-four and twenty-five and settling into twenty-six, you probably need to. And so this is the way you can do those kinds of adjustments with confidence. Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

You know people are willing to you cannot be the strongest brand in your category by being a low price provider.

Caleb Agee:

No.

Brandon Welch:

So uh that's section one. That's budgeting. It's gonna look like five to ten percent for most businesses, and you want a sixty percent of that overall spend in tomorrow marketing, thirty percent today, and then as much as ten percent on today marketing. So um section two.

Caleb Agee:

That ten percent was yesterday. Sorry, did I I misspoke? You you said today, I guess.

Brandon Welch:

All right, uh, we're gonna go on to 2026 nuances for um your strategy. Um, Caleb mentioned this a little bit early in the episode. Strategy really shouldn't change year to year, uh, like a whole bunch, unless you are just reinventing yourself or you've been disrupted. And we've said for a long time that um companies who position themselves on tomorrow-based strategy, being the long-term provider, the most trusted, the most liked, that has relationships, commitment, and quality to a future outcome for their population, those are the ones that win the best. Um, and we tend to focus on a lot of that with our campaigns. The nuance in 2026 is that even the high quality premium buyers are getting pinched in the purse a little bit. Yeah. So value hunting is going to become a thing. Yeah. I mean, not becoming a thing. It is a thing, and it's just a thing for more people than it used to be.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, we're gonna talk about that. I think how you define those values in the message section, but that will be a big piece because it's not a collapsed economy. It'll be more of a steady economy, but it's just a more expensive economy. So they will be value scrutinizing.

Brandon Welch:

So so even if you're a company that's just kind of like the the well-known go-to person, you need to be putting more clear pricing, like as low as or starting at. Yeah. Or this many of what you do for this price, or buy an HVAC unit for$29.95, or get a garage floor for$36.32, you know, just like some clear pricing because uh people aren't uh unable to spend money, they're just aware that it goes less far than they did before, than it did before. And so you just need to give them like clarity on what they're gonna be able to get and what category of their budget they can start assigning you to.

Caleb Agee:

And I think I think the bigger thing is um the things you don't understand or the things you you can't fully wrap your mind around are the things that are scarier. Yeah. That's how any horror film is made. It's by not showing all of the picture. And so you as the business owner have to show them the full picture. You have to uh not hide it in the shadows and say, well, the price will that'll show up when I come to your door and talk to you and give you a high pressure pitch. That's not the reality. When you take that out of the shadows, it becomes much less scary because they can see, oh, uh, okay, that's more than that's more than I have right now, but I I think I could save up for that.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah. You need to train your salespeople for the very first thing that comes out of their mouth when somebody says, How much is that going to set me back? to say starting at$5,200 or between five and eight grand. Yep. Not, well, you know, we got to get a custom quote. Let us come out so it depends. Yeah, you do not want that, especially in this economy. I I would argue that's been a bad idea or it's been a bad idea for a long time to hide your pricing. Uh, but in the age of AI, which is another nuance we should add, the customer is gonna know way more than they've ever known when you show up to their door.

Caleb Agee:

The if you don't have the answer, they actually already do, they're just checking to make sure your answer. Aligns with the one they already had in the back of their mind.

Brandon Welch:

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So uh value clarity, and it does not mean discounting. I do not want you to start thinking you have to be a discount provider. That is death. Uh, you have to hold margin, and you can't be overly sensitive to you know trying to get more quantity than quality. Like, don't shift that balance, but just message it a little clearer.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, so make the pricing so easy for them. That is the key in all of this. Instead of taking them on a journey and chasing, you know, discount percentages and things like that. I'm not saying those things are dead, but they it feels to the consumer who is gonna be a much more steady, level-headed consumer this next year, they don't want to play the games. They just want you to tell them like it is.

Brandon Welch:

I promise you, if you start putting this on your website, you will be the one that wins. Um, good, better, best packages with prices attached to them. Um, faster scheduling or priority service. Here's how long it's gonna take. You order today, you're gonna have it installed in 21 days. Uh, clear um financing options. Yeah.$32.95 or$40 a month. Yep. Um again, this can feel a little foreign to some of you that are just like good old-fashioned service, and I want you to stay there in attitude and heart. I just want you to not get kicked off the list because somebody's being more clear on pricing than you are. Yep. And value all altogether. So that was section two. That's a nuance in your strategy. Uh slightly um nuanced also should be your message, which is section three. Uh, we're gonna attach a little bit more clarity to our offers and our our pricing, just like we talked about with strategy. Um, but just just as uh in the same way that money is tight, attention is tight.

Caleb Agee:

Yes. More expensive than money, I think.

Brandon Welch:

It's a tick tock world. Uh, we have tick tock uh attention spans, and that's not like brand new in 2026, but it's costing you more and more to not be remarkable and entertaining and get straight to the point. Um, we've known for a long time that users decide within seconds um how they feel and if they're gonna stay on your ad. It's the recent stat I saw was 0.4 seconds is the average uh scroll time on a phone. Yeah so you're in or out within half a second.

Caleb Agee:

Less than half of a second. Less than half a second. Wow.

Brandon Welch:

So uh attention is not given, it is earned, and you have to earn it, and you have to earn it by um my favorite quote on on uh writing is how do you write bestsellers? It's easy, you just leave out the parts that people skip. Leave out the parts that people skip in your advertising, and you're gonna do that by dropping them off in the middle of the topic instead of saying, Today we're gonna talk about talk about yada yada yada and yada yada yada, and then I'm gonna lie line out how to do this, right? Yeah. Uh that's why we did a cold open today in our podcast. Yep. Like we jumped right into something. So um that is the number one shift in messaging, is just always shorter, entertaining. Find yourself a writer if you are not funny or if you are not, if you don't have a vision or a voice for your marketing, it is worth the money to pay somebody who does.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. And I think you have to use, we talk about using specifics. Um, you know, lead early with and like he said, drop them off right in the middle of everything.

Brandon Welch:

That makes good payoff or the problem.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, that makes good uh entertainment. When you have to you land here and you're like, what are they talking about? And your your brain actually is activated. That's what earns attention is actually when you engage, you give somebody that something that's not just you know numb for their brain, it's actually it causes their brain the synapses are firing because they're like, Oh, what is this guy talking about? Or what is this gal talking about? What are the what is what's going on? And you're solving this problem with them, and then they get to the solution, they're like, Oh, okay, that's great.

Brandon Welch:

Yes, tension. Tension is your friend. So uh on top of that, so just be faster, better, more entertaining. Uh, design your videos for sound off. Um devices just default to sound off, so you need to just to make them interesting and understandable uh with the sound off. With that, you want to put captions on virtually everything.

Caleb Agee:

Hey, can we talk about the fact that uh we have to tip the phones the other way now again? Do you feel like I feel like an old marketer now? Because we had to teach everybody like five or ten years ago. We're like, hey, uh don't hold your phone up and down, you know, for YouTube and all the others. We want to make sure you turn it horizontal so it looks like a movie, right? And now it's the opposite. We're saying make it vertical, make it short form. Um, this this TikTok style, reels, YouTube shorts, whatever. Um, we we actually talked about this a few weeks ago, but this should be a very real part of your marketing and media mix, media plan. I hate media mix, that's not the right word. No, uh yes, uh, but I said it. So it needs to be a part of your media plan next year. Um, that short form engagement, if you follow all these practical videos, the vertical, yeah, the vertical videos, um, those don't have to be that hard, but they can be a lot of fun. I I'd advocate that you can have fun while you make them and uh have a good day at work and uh also entertain some people. Yep. And then I just talked to somebody this week. Um, she has a travel agency and uh accidentally, you know, blew up on Instagram, wasn't planning on it. But that's it just it happens sometimes, and her her business is going to be impacted because that happened.

Brandon Welch:

Go watch our episode from a few episodes back on short form video. Uh, it is currently at the time of this episode being subsidized by YouTube and Facebook, meaning they are giving more attention on purpose, like by a lot, to short form real style videos because they're trying to steal market share back from TikTok. So you want to take advantage of that from a media perspective, but also messaging messaging and just your mentality of how you produce messages. You don't have to stop and give the details. You know, most of you are probably listening to this podcast on 1.5 speed. Make your stuff so tight that it doesn't have to be sped up to 1.5. Make your short form videos that tight, like to where I would get the idea in 10 seconds because you can do it shorter than you have been. So um take your traditional 30 to 60 second ads and turn them into six to ten second assets. Uh embrace the rough cut, uh, cut off your own words, jump from shot to shot, uh, do a hook within the first two seconds of a of a um of a video, uh, prove your process and give a very clear next step and link to the longer form. Say link below for more information or for you know the next step of what you're talking about. So that's messaging tighter, use short form video, um, and definitely clarify process and pricing while you're doing all of that. We've made it to section four.

Caleb Agee:

We made it.

Brandon Welch:

We made it. Here we are. Media. Okay. Um for as long as we've been doing this podcast and as long as we've had this agency, um, it's been still uh appropriate and accurate by every verifiable market researcher that broadcast is by far the most efficient way to deliver a message intrusively. If you want people to actually hear and see and feel your brand, as we're trying to do with that 60% of our tomorrow market, 60% of our budget that is in tomorrow marketing. So that 60% we spend, almost always if you're a local business, the best place to spend that has been broadcast, especially if your customer is older than 35, 40 years old. Yeah.

Caleb Agee:

Broadcast meaning broadcast television and radio.

Brandon Welch:

Yes. And and typically within that, there's nuances, but typically we're talking about local stations like local radio, local NBC, ABC Fox affiliates. Okay. And the way to do that has been to place yourself in the programs that those people watch over and over every day, because the average television program is tens of thousands of people. And unless you've served all 10,000 or 50,000 in most cases, or in our in the buy I just did this morning, it was 80,000 people per program. Like you're way better off to just keep dripping on them and wait for when they need you than you are to try to go spin up some of their new audience. That's just every advertising science and study and like my own personal experience after hundreds of millions of dollars doing this would confirm that. Okay. That is still true. Especially if your core audience or the person who is most likely to buy from you, uh, or the person that you otherwise want to be famous with is 40 years or older. Okay. I've said for a long time there will be a time when digital media gets as efficient, or will, or there will be a reasonable um time to split that budget out. We are not full-blown in there, and I'm not saying everybody should do this, but we are entering the time where um the millennial buyer actually is starting to get some significant spending power. Before, you know, and and we're still here, but the the the problem before has been that those are non-homeowners, non-family, you know, non-traditional family, and like strapped with student debt and just didn't have a whole lot of spending power, but we're in we're entering the shift where that's changing. And so Caleb and I now are replacing our HVACs and things like that, unfortunately, right? All the fun stuff. Unfortunately. And so if you were in this like grown-up category of service, which most of the people we serve are, you're gonna want to start thinking about this. In the last few years, we've been incorporating more YouTube. The thing that gets pitched in this like reach the other demo is a lot of the time is OTT and streaming. And everybody thinks, wow, I watch Hulu. I bet that's where all the customers are. And you know what? There's there's lots of people that watch Hulu, there's lots of people that watch Roku and Samsung TV, and I'm I'm saying those things because those are OTT products, not because I think those are the mainstream ones. And then you might even look up, oh, you know, the average person spends four hours a day watching Netflix or a streaming service now and they watch less on broadcast. There is some truth to that. Here's the here's the remaining issue. What does it cost to reach those people? This is not like uh a secret, but it is just remarkably expensive to insert your ads on those platforms. And I'm talking Hulu, Netflix. Well, Netflix is not ad supported, but um Hulu, Amazon, um any of those OTT streaming uh platforms, you're talking forty to sixty dollars per thousand people reached usually. Yeah. Okay, that's high.

Caleb Agee:

Give me comparison, TV worst.

Brandon Welch:

TV and radio still to this day are in the five to fifteen dollar range, and fifteen would be pretty dang high. Most of our campaigns, even in big markets, are like five to ten dollars CPM. Okay. Here's the other part of that. Those OTT platforms generally are skippable, and um you are not getting the same person over and over and over and over again. It's random in its delivery to that demo. So Caleb, yeah, he might watch The Office on Peacock tonight. Always duh. That's all I ever watch. Bears beats Battlestar collective. Uh so but because the the impression was so expensive, and because you were it just it's just random in its delivery, it might reach Nate tomorrow night and three weeks before Caleb sees it again. And the magic of tomorrow marketing is that you're there every day like a friend, just trusted and trusted, and snowballing into this like being their guy or their gal or their company or the one that they instantly prefer to do business with. Okay. So the the best solution today, the best combined like CPM plus reaching that lower audience is YouTube. Yeah. YouTube or Google Video, if you prefer, you do it through the Google Ads platform. Uh, but if you deliver on large screen and also on, you know, good old-fashioned everyday YouTube watching recipe videos and stuff, you will get seen by that demo. And the the CPMs are more like five to fifteen.

Caleb Agee:

Real quick, Nate's gonna throw up a link to our video on CPMs, the great equalizer. It's the gas mileage of your marketing, I believe. That one's going up the title of that episode.

Brandon Welch:

It and then also we did one on Nate will also link to this. Uh, he's got like five videos to link to today. Yes. Um has YouTube replaced TV. Um we just did that one not too long ago.

Caleb Agee:

So that's that's the key with YouTube. Um, YouTube does still have some of those facets that OTT has, which is skippable ads, um, some slight randomness or fragmentation in in who you're reaching, because you can't say only people that watch this show like we can on television, but uh you can monitor your frequency uh at some level. And and the other thing that OTT typically hangs their hat on is targeting. Yeah. And YouTube has the ability to, especially, I would say geographically, target specific areas, parts of town. Um, you know, if you're if you're trying to uh only, I don't know, if you're trying to expand to the south of where you are, YouTube might be a way of doing that. Um OTT will say, yeah, we can target only the neighborhoods you want to work in and things like that. Well, you are gonna pay 10 times at least to reach those people that you would on these other mediums.

Brandon Welch:

By definition, you are not trying to target the people who are just buying today because A, they're extremely hard to actually target unless you're on a search engine, and B, that doesn't do you any favors long term. It's too expensive to do it that way. You would way rather like the equity and the awareness inside a person's brain is way cheaper than buying the stupid click at the finish line. So, so what that means for you, um, if you are, let's just say you're a three to a five million dollar service business and you've been spending a hundred grand a year on TV and radio because you've listened to the Maven Marketer and that's working really well for you. And you're going, you know what, I grew 20% last year, I'm gonna add 20% to my budget. So you've got another 20 grand to spend. I would increase some frequency and fill out my programs. So uh just so you know, if you're on TV, we want you buying a minimum of three spots in a program per week before you add another. So we start with a lot of morning midday news type products, be there at least three times a week, probably go up to four or five times a week before you add another program. Let's say you're buying two solid news programs. Let's just say it's new news and six p.m. news, and you're like, I'm in those, what should I do with my next 20 grand in budget? Um, I might take off a couple of grand a month and throw it into a local YouTube campaign if I have millennials and if I have a good assumption that that part of my business is being underserved, and I would run them as um in-stream skippable ads, and I would make sure my creative has a very, very solid hook in the first two to three seconds. Yeah. And this is where things like jingles or really magnetic personalities work so well. Um, uh we have a client that I mean gets a gazillion kids singing his jingle in the backseat of the car, and like it's just it's translated into unreal business growth for him, like triple in the last few years. So um that little earworm, that thing that you that makes you memorable, less about your offer and like your long-form thing, it's like these are like blips, right? When you're doing on YouTube. That's the weakness of YouTube because it's seldom a full 30-second ad.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. And then I think you apply mostly with YouTube, our mentality is you apply some basic targeting. But the rule with any digital digital media is that the more targeting you add to it, the more expensive it will get. Our goal is not to reach uh the right people at the right time, it is to reach the largest audience we can afford, you know, uh daily. And so our goal is to stay in their lives as often as we can. So we keep the geography tight, but we don't typically put too many other parameters around our YouTube campaigns because we want everyone. And if if Brandon's not a buyer, that's okay. Nate might be. And if Brandon feels comfortable and he has a relationship with your company, he'll tell Nate about it.

Brandon Welch:

Yep. The thing I would say about YouTube is make your geographic window tighter at lower budgets. Yes. So that two to three grand range, we're keeping that in a 10 to 15 mile radius and a DMA that's got a million people in it. This is a little bit try and see, but you want that to level out to where you're getting four or five frequency per viewer per month. So you don't want to go too big with your audience there. You want to tighten it sort of on purpose. And just like TV, if you want to go wider, you're gonna have to add more money. Sorry, if you're if you want to add more audience, I should say you're gonna have to add more money.

Caleb Agee:

So that that's really big on your tomorrow, tomorrow marketing. We think you should 100% consider broadcast. And then you should consider uh YouTube. I would say also in the inverse, if maybe you haven't had the budget to swing at broadcast, YouTube can be a stair step on your way there as well. It's not as good yet. It's not it's not as good, um, but it could be a way of building a budget or a you know, a tomorrow marketing plan when you have a lower budget.

Brandon Welch:

So if you can afford it, probably TV, um, radio if you're in a tighter geographic area, like like just saying no budget constraints allowed. And you have an amazing ad writer. And yeah, and definitely get a copy of the Maven Marketer and look at our formulas for how we buy TV in every market. We don't have time to go over that today. Big idea is that you fill one up. Do not let a rep sell you multiple, multiple, multiple programs thinking you're everywhere. Or do a very boring schedule, one station at a time until you have enough, so you're buying 30 to 40 radio spots a week, or one TV program at a time, minimum three spots a week.

Caleb Agee:

And make sure you're actually buying TV programming.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, don't buy an ROS. Rotators, there's don't do that.

Caleb Agee:

Billboards, there's all kinds of things that will be on there. It needs to be. I bought the noon news.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

Caleb Agee:

Okay, so that's just our big PSA there. The quick things, let's cover real quick today marketing medias that that would be common.

Brandon Welch:

So, yeah, back up half step just real quick. You're spending 60% of your overall budget on bro on uh on tomorrow marketing. Probably 90% of that 60% is going on TV or radio for just about any campaign here, if you're a local business. Okay. That extra five to ten percent you might be putting on YouTube and a little bit of of uh Facebook meta in the same way you're doing YouTube, just that that video delivery for your 30 to 40 something audience. Okay. Um today marketing, we're spending 30% of our overall number on that. I would say 90% of that for us is going to search engines.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep.

Brandon Welch:

Um, especially if you're a service business. Um, retail, you would put a little bit more of that in a in meta, but let's just say I'm spending 30 to 40 grand a year on today marketing, like offers. I'm probably putting, you know, um thirty-five thousand of that into search. Okay, if my if my overall budget's a hundred grand.

Caleb Agee:

A couple of ways that uh just one, I want to make sure when he says search, we mean in Google, that would be Google search ads. So make sure you're not running random performance max campaigns or things like that. This is search. Search ads, which is the outcome you expect from running in in Google search.

Brandon Welch:

I'm just gonna say you cannot afford to keep up with that yourself. No. Like it's hard. There was a time where you could probably get away with doing a lot of your own search. It is so complex. Uh, even for our people who do it times gazillions of dollars every day, like there is always something changing. Just find you a nerd who will speak clearly to you about your cost per acquisition of a customer and then handle the search side of that. Uh, there's a video we have, it's actually the main video on our page now, how to hire a marketing nerd, or click here before you hire a marketing nerd. You should watch that so you know the good questions to ask. But when it comes to search engine marketing, probably just don't try to do it on your own.

Caleb Agee:

Something you could do on your own mostly would be Google guaranteed or local services ads. We have mixed results depending on your industry. Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

Um, and then that would be within that search engine budget.

Caleb Agee:

But we've also seen some success in social media ads uh specifically for lead generation. So remember, we're talking about today customers, we're talking uh targeting people who are buying today. Those people are maybe just a uh step before needing to buy today. But if you create a compelling ad and call to action, um, and then inside of Meta specifically, there's lead lead forms they could fill out, and then that gets emailed to you. Um, those can generate some opportunities for you as well.

Brandon Welch:

Yes. So you're spending that first 60% on tomorrow, which is basically TV or radio with some new with some YouTube added in. Spending the rest of your today marketing on uh that 30% on um search engine and some targeted meta like lead generation ads on Facebook, also find a nerd to help you with that. The last 10%, you're throwing a couple of really cool events. You are doing really cool birthday and anniversary gifts and paying your team extra money to call your past customers, and you're stoking the flames of your already existing tribe that already loves you and will come back and bring their friends and family. Uh, and then other than that, if you're following the principles of the Maven marketer and just being very um empathetic to who people are, what their needs, pains, hopes, and fears are, how you can solve that and what they should do about that, you are going to have uh the best year possible in 2026. Um the it didn't start going downhill, but the but the uphill, I think we're looking at just a little bit more predictability. Less bumps in the road. Yep. And you just you want to be clear, you want to be consistent, and you want to be the most easy uh to do business with company in your category, and that's how you're gonna win. We are here for you. We are in your corner. We wake up like just unreasonably excited about helping owner-operated companies, that is you. Uh we want to help you do more with less. We want you to have a beautiful year with your family and with your team, and uh and just to enjoy um your business for the way that uh you're allowed to enjoy it if you just choose to do so. Amen.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, amen. Amen. Hey, if you have a marketing question, you can email it to us at Maven Monday at Frankandmaven.com. Um, maybe if there's something we s we talked about today, you'd be curious of a little bit of a deeper answer. Uh we'll we'll respond to that, but all oftentimes we'll answer it in a podcast episode because if it's relevant to you, it might be relevant to more.

Brandon Welch:

So yeah, you might get might get lucky and we'll feature the question, but I'm gonna give I'm gonna give a little Christmas gift here. Okay, bring it on. Um, for the first three people that say they want this, Maven or sorry, yeah, Mondays at Frank and Maven.com, Maven Monday at Frankmaker. Maven Monday sorry, Maven Monday at Frankandmaven.com. Um, we do a mastermind, and it's a pretty dang cool group of people. Yes, it is. Um, this is where we go deeper. We work out these principles, and Caleb and I, and sometimes the rest of our team that are literally thousands and thousands of dollars every month to work with. If you were to do that directly, we get on and just help the mastermind group, the tribe, solve these problems live. Uh, we haven't talked about this a ton lately because we have some really good people in the group. Yeah. But I'm going to give three one-month, like first-month free scholarships to somebody. If you if you're going, I've got this annual marketing plan, I need some things to change in my business, let's workshop it together. We'll we'll let you on in the January uh installment. So that's two sessions with the Maven Marketing Mastermind. If you'll just email us and tell us you'd like to take advantage of that. And so um, but if if you aren't one of the three and you want to join, uh it's it's pretty simple to join. So you can go to um Maven Method Training.com and sign up for that. So that is our gift to you for three lucky. Merry Christmas. Yeah, and then we're given a book for the per first person who comments so uh yeah.

Caleb Agee:

It's the holiday season.

Brandon Welch:

It's the holiday season. We'll be back here every Monday answering your real life marketing questions because marketers who cannot teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.