LocaliQ surveyed more than 300 small business owners for its 2026 marketing trends report, 87% of them in the US or Canada. Twenty-six percent use video marketing and advertising, one of the lowest adoption rates of any tactic measured. Video also ranked as the tactic those owners were most satisfied with.
The gap between satisfaction and adoption
Usually it runs the other way, with the crowded tactic drawing the mediocre reviews. Video sits in the opposite corner: rarely used, best liked. The same report found 53% of small businesses increasing their budgets plan to put more into video.
Hold that lightly. LocaliQ asked owners how they felt, not what they earned. The claim it supports is a modest one: people who try video rarely regret it.
Why one survey says 26% and another says 91%
You have probably seen a much larger number. Wyzowl published the twelfth edition of its annual video marketing report in December 2025 and found 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, with 93% of video marketers calling it an important part of their strategy.
Twenty-six and ninety-one describe two different rooms. Wyzowl surveyed 266 people and sorted them with a screening question into marketing professionals and online consumers. Our reading of the gap: a screening question that sorts for marketing professionals selects for organizations big enough to employ one. LocaliQ went to owners, who do the marketing between everything else. Ask people who market for a living whether they use video and 91% say yes. Ask people who run a business and 26% say yes.
That is worth remembering beyond video. When a statistic sounds nothing like the business you run, check who was in the sample before deciding you are behind.
The four reasons businesses skip video
Wyzowl asked its non-users what stops them. Two answers tied at 24%, that video is too expensive and that they do not feel it is needed. Lack of time came next at 19%. Two more landed at 10% each, unclear on the return and no idea where to start. Sixty-seven percent of them plan to start in 2026 anyway.
Expense is the objection with a number attached, so it gets a section of its own below.
The second objection is a claim about customers rather than about money, and the same Wyzowl survey tested it. Asked how they would most like to learn about a product or service, 63% of consumers chose a short video and 12% chose a text article. If two thirds of the people weighing your service would rather watch two minutes than read two pages, the video exists for their convenience rather than yours. In our experience “not needed” usually means the owner does not want to be on camera, a fair feeling and a different problem.
Time, at 19%, is the honest objection. Video made in loose hours across a year tends not to get made, because the free hour is rarely the hour a job worth filming is running. That argues for one day rather than fragments, and it makes the last two objections a matter of having a list.
What people prefer to watch
Wyzowl’s consumer question produced a clear ranking: 63% would most like to learn about a product or service through a short video, 12% through a text article, 7% an infographic, 5% a sales call, 4% an ebook, and 4% a webinar.
Stated preference is not behavior, and the consumer half of 266 respondents is a modest sample, so trust the order rather than the gaps. Behavior points the same way. Quid, formerly Rival IQ, sampled 150 companies from each of 18 industries for its 2026 benchmark report and put median engagement against follower count at 2.01% on TikTok, 0.30% on Instagram, 0.21% on YouTube and 0.15% on Facebook. The video-first platform leads by roughly seven times per follower.
What companies spend
Wistia’s 2026 State of Video Report surveyed more than 900 professionals across industries and analyzed more than 13 million videos on its platform. Almost 40% of companies spent under $5,000 on video production in the past year. Just over 30% spent more than $5,000. The rest had no separate video budget.
That is annual spend across companies of every size, not a quote for a shoot, and no arithmetic turns it into one. Most companies making video work in four figures a year, a smaller world than owners picture.
We will not invent a price for you, but here is what moves it:
- How long the shoot runs. A half day and a full day are different line items.
- How many setups. Every camera position and light arrangement costs time.
- How much editing. One video is one price; that video plus vertical cuts, captions and a thirty second version is another.
- Whether there is a script. Someone writes and approves copy before the day, and bills for it.
- Whether there is more than one location. Travel between sites eats a day.
Ask a videographer what the day rate includes and what is billed on top, how many finished videos you get and by when, how many revisions are included, what the usage rights cover, and whether you get the raw files. Then ask to see everything delivered to a recent client, not the highlight reel, so you know what an ordinary day with this person produces.
Why quality matters more than quantity
Wyzowl found 89% of consumers say video quality impacts their trust in a brand, down from 91% in the previous year’s report and up from 87% in the 2024 edition. At 266 respondents the movement is noise, and the level is the finding.
Quality is not about expensive equipment. Bad audio, a dark room and a shaky frame register in the first two seconds. Good light, clean sound and someone who knows the subject cover the rest.
iStock, part of Getty Images, reported in December 2025 that 64% of consumers prefer real images in advertising and six in ten distrust the advertising they see because they believe it is “AI-generated, manipulated, or inauthentic.” Those come from Getty’s VisualGPS program, and the release publishes no sample size, which limits them. Still, people arrive suspicious. Three careful videos of your own shop beat thirty that could have come from anywhere.
The first three videos worth making
Each one answers a question customers already have, none require you to be interesting on camera, and all three fit in a single day.
The answer to the question everybody asks before buying
Sixty to ninety seconds. You know the question, because you answer it on the phone four times a week. How much does it cost. Do you come out to my county. For this to work you have to answer it plainly, including the part you would rather keep vague, since a video ending in “call us to find out” teaches the viewer you are cagey. Put it on the matching service page and in the email reply you send when that question comes in.
A look at how the work gets done
Sixty to ninety seconds, mostly the job itself with a few sentences over the top. This answers the objection nobody says out loud, whether you know what you are doing. It needs a real job rather than a staged one, and written permission from the customer whose property you are on. Film the parts that look like care: the prep, the cleanup, the check at the end.
An introduction to whoever the customer will deal with
Thirty to sixty seconds. Name, role, one sentence on what they handle. It works only if it is the person who answers the phone or knocks on the door, since a polished video of an owner the customer never meets does the opposite of what you wanted. It belongs on the About page, in your email signature and on your Google Business Profile.
What one shoot day covers
Nothing cited above measures how far one shoot day stretches, so this part is our reasoning and experience rather than a finding.
A camera on site for a day produces more than three videos. The same hours give you vertical cuts of each one, short clips of the work itself, stills pulled from the video, and spare footage that gets reused for a year. Setup, travel and coordination are the expensive parts. Once those are paid for, one more setup costs minutes.
One day of shooting moves every channel at once: the answer video on the service page and in your email replies, the vertical cuts on social, the introduction on the About page and the Google Business Profile. Planned backward from where each piece lands, one day covers a quarter of content. Planned forward, it produces a folder of nice video and no plan for it.
When we run video production, the shot list starts from the questions a client’s customers already ask, so what someone sees before calling matches what they find when they arrive. Showing the work as it is, without dressing it up, is most of the job.
So write down the question your customers ask most often before they buy, in their words rather than yours. Then answer it on your phone, in ninety seconds, before the end of the week. If the recording is watchable, you have your first video. If it is not, you now know exactly what a shoot day is buying.