Sales & Closing
The AI Gap in the Trades
Why 74% of contractors call AI essential, but only 25% use it, and what AI call coverage replaces on the phones (not your CSR).
Is your video actually working?
Video usage just hit an all-time high, but confidence in its ROI dropped. The difference between getting results and not comes down to one thing: strategy.
Matt Lesinski
Aug 11, 2026
Is your video actually working?
5:53
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- 91% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool, tied for the highest share Wyzowl's survey has recorded in twelve years.
- Confidence hasn't kept pace with usage: the share of marketers who say video delivers good ROI dropped to 82% this year, down from 93% the year before.
- That gap traces back to strategy. Video planned against real business goals is what drives the 83% sales lift and 85% lead lift below; video that skips that step usually drives neither.
- Short-form video is now the single format marketers name most often as their top ROI driver, cited 104% more often than in 2024.
- WholeHome Alliance builds strategy sessions and a full business-needs evaluation directly into its Signature Package tiers, not as a one-time add-on.
Is video use growing in 2026
Yes, and it’s not close. 91% of businesses report using video as a marketing tool this year, matching the highest level Wyzowl’s annual survey has recorded across twelve consecutive years of asking. Video has moved from “nice to have” to table stakes for a business trying to win a homeowner’s call.
Why is confidence dropping if usage is at an all-time high
Here’s the honest part of the data: the share of marketers who say video gives them a good return dropped to 82% this year, down from 93% the year before. Usage went up. Confidence went down.
We hear why on nearly every discovery call, and the pattern is almost always the same. A shoot gets booked before anyone maps out where it’ll run. Filming day turns into a scramble, and “let’s just try this” ends up deciding what gets captured instead of a plan. The footage comes back, and someone tries to reverse-engineer a use for it. It runs once, on one channel, and the rest sits on a hard drive until somebody rediscovers it a year later wondering if it’s still usable.
Most of that gap traces back to whether a real evaluation of the business happened before the camera showed up, or only after. Most businesses treat “we need a video” as the plan. Where it’s going to run, who it’s trying to move, what it needs to do for the business’s numbers this year: none of that gets answered before production starts. A video can look good and still do nothing for the business, and that’s the gap this year’s confidence numbers are picking up.
What separates the shops getting the most from video
Strategy that starts with the whole business, before anyone talks about the camera day. The shops still confident in their video spend start with a real evaluation: what the business needs this year across sales support, recruiting, retention, and seasonal capacity, and only then decide what gets produced and where it runs. Reuse across channels is the result of that planning. The planning itself is the actual differentiator, not the reuse it produces.
It’s the same logic as a truck wrap. That wrap earns its cost every day it’s on the road for years because someone decided where it needed to work before the truck ever left the lot. A video shot without that same decision is a truck that never left the lot: full cost, no miles. Most video skips that same planning, and the confidence numbers show it.
A single day on-site, planned against real business goals, turns into a website hero video, short social cuts, a recruiting piece, a service explainer, and an email attachment. That’s a year of material, and it only happens when the strategy gets built before the footage does. It’s the same plan we build with every client before a single frame gets shot.
Why partner with a production team
Mapping a shoot to what the business needs before a single frame gets shot takes real time and a wide-angle view of the business, on top of running trucks, techs, and calls. A good production partner does more than make a video. They start with a full evaluation of the business, then turn one production into everything it can become across every channel, so your team stays focused on the parts of the business only they can run.
How do you get this built in
This is the exact system WholeHome Alliance builds into its Signature Package tiers: a real strategy conversation first, built around the whole business, then one production engagement working across every channel, all year. Growth and Pro tiers have ongoing strategy meetings for exactly this reason: a business’s needs shift throughout the year, and a one-time evaluation goes stale fast if nobody revisits it.
There’s a second benefit that’s easy to miss if the only lens is video output: how the investment lands on the books.
A video production trip typically shows up as one large invoice, due all at once. Signature Package clients get the same engine, strategy included, running continuously for a flat monthly investment instead, spread across the year it’s working. We built it that way because we run our own business the same way: a predictable monthly line is easier to plan around than one large capital hit.
Does video help a business outside of marketing, too
Yes, and it’s easy to overlook if the only lens is ad ROI. On the recruiting side, candidates who watch an engaging recruitment video apply roughly 2.1x more often than those who only see a text posting, and job postings that include video draw 34% more applications than ones that don’t. Candidates also say they trust a current employee’s voice roughly 3x more than corporate messaging when sizing up an employer, which is the case for technician-led recruiting clips over polished corporate reels. For a trades business fighting the same labor shortage as every competitor, that’s a second, separate return from the same camera day, and it’s exactly the kind of need a full business evaluation is built to catch before a single video gets planned.
Is this worth it for a smaller trades shop
The strategy work matters more for a smaller shop, not less. A single production day is a fixed cost whether the business has 3 techs or 30, and a smaller shop has the least room to spend that day on the wrong thing. The businesses that evaluate the full year’s needs first, then spread that fixed cost across a website, a season’s worth of social cuts, a recruiting piece, and an email nurture sequence, get a lower cost per finished asset than the ones that shoot once, post once, and call it done. A partner running that evaluation means it happens without adding a second job to anyone’s plate.
Is video still worth it for a trades business in 2026?
Yes. 91% of businesses use it, an all-time-high share, and 83% report it’s directly increased sales. What separates results is whether there was a real strategy behind the shoot.
Why is ROI confidence dropping if more businesses are using video than ever?
Usage measures how many businesses are making video. It says nothing about whether that video had a plan behind it. More businesses are making video, but confidence dropped to 82% this year, down from 93%, largely because most of that video gets produced without a real evaluation of what the business needs it to do first.
What does “strategy first” mean before a shoot?
A full look at the business: sales support, recruiting needs, seasonal capacity, and retention, and what each of those needs on camera this year. That evaluation decides what gets produced and where it runs, before any of it gets planned.
What’s the single highest-ROI video format right now?
Short-form video, cited 104% more often as a top ROI driver in 2026 than in 2024. It’s also the cheapest thing to produce from footage a business already has sitting unused.
Does video help with anything besides marketing ROI?
Recruiting is the clearest second case: candidates apply roughly 2.1x more often after watching an engaging recruitment video, and postings with video draw 34% more applications. For trades businesses fighting the labor shortage, that’s return from the same footage, on a different line of the business.
Why partner with a production team instead of handling video in-house?
Turning one shoot into a full year of channel-ready content, backed by a real evaluation of the business first, is a full-time job on its own. A production partner handles that so a shop’s team can stay focused on running trucks, techs, and calls instead of managing an editing queue.
How does a Signature Package handle the cost of a production engagement?
As a flat monthly investment instead of one large invoice due all at once. See current Signature Package tiers for the specifics, or book a discovery call to find the right fit.
Does video help with anything besides marketing ROI?
Recruiting is the clearest second case: candidates apply roughly 2.1x more often after watching an engaging recruitment video, and postings with video draw 34% more applications. For trades businesses fighting the labor shortage, that’s return from the same footage, on a different line of the business.
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