Focusing on the Home Buyer Experience - Hilary Gibney

Greg Bray: And we are excited today to have joining us, Hilary Gibney. Hilary is the Marketing Director at Brock Built Homes. Welcome, Hilary. Thanks for joining us.

Hilary Gibney: Thanks for having me today, guys. Happy to be here.

Greg Bray: Well, let's start off by just getting to know a little bit about you. Give us that quick overview and background about yourself.

Hilary Gibney: Great. So, I'm Hilary, like you said. I'm the Marketing Director for Brock Built here in Atlanta. I lead our [00:01:00] marketing strategy, brand storytelling, and all of our digital efforts across Atlanta, Alabama, and Florida. I've been in the home building industry for about 10 years and then also worked in some other areas of marketing as well. Love this industry and don't see myself going anywhere else but staying in this lane. So, happy to be here.

Kevin Weitzel: Before we discuss the sweet, sweet love we're going to make to the home building industry and for the home building industry, could you please give us one factoid about yourself that has nothing to do with work, family, or the home building industry?

Hilary Gibney: Yeah. My fact is, I mean, it's not as impressive as the amount of places you lived, Kevin, but I did live in six states by the time I was 18 and then four more up into my thirties. So, I've lived in 10 of them.

Kevin Weitzel: Ten states, but how many have you traveled to or been in?

Hilary Gibney: Oh. I wouldn't say all of them, but 30 to 40 range.

Greg Bray: Of the places you've lived, if you could go back to one, which one would be top of the list?

Hilary Gibney: San Diego was top [00:02:00] tier, and I was in like my mid twenties, so no complaints there. That was awesome. So yeah, I'd probably go back there.

Greg Bray: So, you mentioned, Hilary, that you were in some other places before home building. What got you interested in home building and kind of led you in this direction?

Hilary Gibney: Yeah, so it's kind of a funny story. My first job out of college was like a social media digital marketing coordinator-esque type person for a casino, nonetheless. It was called Horseshoe, but it's a branch off of Caesar's. I was working for them and worked for them for about a year. And the goal was to always move to California, but I needed to save some money to get there. So, by the time I had that money saved, I was moving to California, and that company was like, Hey, why don't you continue working remote with us until you get yourself grounded a little bit in California and then go searching for a job. So, I did just that. They were awesome. Let me do that.

A recruiter reached out to me and was like, Hey, would you be interested in a marketing [00:03:00] coordinator position for Lennar, their solar panel arm, Sun Street. And I was like, I don't really think I'd be interested in the home building industry. And she was like, Why don't you just talk to the marketing director and see if it's a fit, and if not, we'll go find somewhere else. She was amazing. I loved everything about her and her kind of vision for where that company was headed and all of the technology that they wanted to introduce into the homes at the time. So, I said yes to the job, and never in a million years when I took it did I think I would still be here 10 years later. So, it surprised me, but I love it all.

Greg Bray: As they say, the rest is history, right?

Hilary Gibney: Yeah. Truly, truly is. I was telling, over this past weekend, one of my friend's moms was asking me about my job, and she goes, You're still in that home building industry? I was like, yes, still am. Ten years later, here I am. So, it's great.

Greg Bray: Well, tell us a little bit [00:04:00] more about Brock Built. You mentioned some of the states where you guys are building, but who are kinda the buyers you target and the product that you're putting out?

Hilary Gibney: Yeah, so Brock Built, we build across metro Atlanta. They started over 40 years ago. Steve Brock started the company. He was one of the first builders to actually build on the west side of Atlanta. So, it really set Brock apart just in the beginning of the company, just to kind of be one of the builders pushing through on that forefront. Here we are, almost 40 years later. We have a community in Opelika, Alabama, and then we have four communities on the panhandle of Florida, with more to come. So, we're in that Inlet Beach area, and then we're in Santa Rosa Beach as well.

We have all different types of communities. Each one of our communities are very specific to the locations that we build in, really trying to target and personalize the lifestyle for the buyers who are looking in that area. So, we have some communities for first-time buyers. We have communities [00:05:00] for growing families. We have empty nesters, 55-plus active adult communities. So, we really try and focus on being thoughtful with each community that we want to make come to life, and the products that we're building within those communities, so that we can continue to really make life better for our homeowners and customize that experience. Because it is so emotional for them that we really want to sell them more than just a home. We want to sell them a lifestyle.

Kevin Weitzel: Hilary, I'm going to preface this with, crazy things enter my mind when people speak. You said that you're building an Opelika, but what I have to know is what was wrong with the west side of Atlanta that nobody was building over there? That seems crazy to me that nobody was building on the west side.

Hilary Gibney: I don't know if necessarily anything was wrong with it. I think it's just a part of the city that there wasn't a lot of new builds, right? So, being the first one to be in an [00:06:00] area anywhere is going to require a lot of change and cooperation with the city. There's a lot of steps that are involved with kind of being the first initiators in there and being a part of that first group. Here we are 30 years later, and West Highlands was that community on Perry Boulevard, and we're still building and doing new phases in that community.

So, it's really cool to kind of see that was one of Brock's first, real footprints in the city of Atlanta, per se, and the growth that that community has had. I mean, if you've ever been there, it's a very cool master planned community, lots of different homes and different sections and areas. And you'll see that we have two more phases that we're going to start building and just growing that community and just being a part of that whole change and shift in the city of Atlanta to allow people to have houses in the city so they can work in the city and they can afford homes in the city. And just growing and building that community there, I think, is really [00:07:00] special.

Greg Bray: You mentioned the phrase afford homes in the city. That's an issue in a lot of places. What does that mean to you guys when you are trying to deliver on a promise like that?

Hilary Gibney: It's really important to us, and it's being really thoughtful in the homes that we are producing to build within that community. Right. I think something that's really cool that Brock does is we build products within each of our communities in all different areas across Atlanta, Alabama, and Florida, that are very specific to the demographic that we're targeting, which is different from me in some of my other builder backgrounds. Right? There's a handful of plans that we build all across the state of Georgia, and they work, and they're affordable, and they have X amount of bedrooms, and it covers a big generic slate of people that can live and buy those homes.

But really, what Brock does, I think, is something special, where [00:08:00] we look at, okay, who is the demographic we're targeting here? Is it growing families? Is it maybe younger families, young professionals? Or if it's that 55-plus community, what does that home need to look like? What does that lifestyle need to look like? So, what we're building in West Highlands is for those growing families in the city. We range from three to five bedroom homes in there. They even did a mix of townhomes prior to me joining on with the company, and we're going to see some more townhomes that we're building in 2026 as well.

So, really focusing in on what people need in that area compared to five miles down the road. We have our West Town community. Those are a lot higher end, you know, 800 plus single-family homes, detached. They're more accustomed to that young professional. They sit it right on the belt line. So, it's that lifestyle, that walkability, that West Midtown, walking to restaurants, and really making sure that that product that we're [00:09:00] building in that location is so targeted towards the types of families, people who are looking for that lifestyle. And I think that is what I admire the most about Brock, how it's very thoughtful.

And back to your affordability question, right? It's like, okay, we want to build these five-bedroom homes for families in the city of Atlanta. How do we do that? Well, we need to start looking at our homes and making sure the cost of the home, we're thinking about that way before the build, so that we're bringing those costs down, and we can actually make it affordable and make it attainable for our customers.

Kevin Weitzel: Like five by five bedrooms. Five-foot by five-foot bedrooms. Is that an easy way to bring down the pricing? Because I promise you it will. You are describing the kind of place that I'd want to live. So, are you concentrating on the descriptives and just getting that story out there on the socials? Or are you exercising other digital strategies like, you know, SEO and AI [00:10:00] searchability? What's in your toolbox right now?

Hilary Gibney: Well, I mean, I think the generic answer, the overall, we're doing all of it, right? But what is it that really sets us apart to make sure that each of those resources and ways that we drive traffic to our website or just drive people to our brand is really focusing in on our differences. So, yes, we're doing SEO, there's paid search involved, all of those elements are taking place. But really, when it comes to a community for Brock, there's a story we're telling. It's not just, Hey, we have 60 new lots. The five floor plans that you've seen us build all across Atlanta is now going to be opened in X, Y, Z location.

It's, hey, here's the name of the community. I've branded the community with a logo in its own story. And there's a whole reasoning and lifestyle that I'm trying to sell to the buyers as well. Yes, we're building this beautiful product of a home in this price range for you, but along with this [00:11:00] home, you're going to get this to these restaurants or school district, or you're going to be involved in this community, and we have walking paths, or community garden, or pool, pickleball. We have green space areas for community gathering.

Whatever that may be that makes sense, that is the push we're trying to sell. Because we all know that home buying is probably one of the most biggest purchases you're going to make in your life. But it's the most emotional purchase you're also going to make. So, I'm selling you more than just the home. I'm selling you that whole community, that neighborhood, your neighbors, and the lifestyle that surrounds it.

Greg Bray: In an area like Atlanta, are you guys finding that you're competing with other builders, or are you competing with the resales and remodels and things like that more? Because how you tell that story would change kind of as to who you see your competitors. What's kind of your thought there?

Hilary Gibney: Yeah, I mean, we're competing with both. We [00:12:00] have a lot more builders in the city now than they did 30 years ago. So, it's a combination of both, but it is a different market when we are in the city because it is a lot of resale that we are competing against. And just making sure that we're talking to buyers as they're coming in. What's interesting you? How did you get here? Who else are you looking at? Just really getting to know those buyers on a personal level and making sure that we're staying in front of all those opportunities and objections. Making sure that we consistently stay ahead of that and do the research beforehand. Just making sure we're in line with any competitors. And then, as we all know, any resale is a different type of competition than a new build. There's a different direction that we can go when talking about a new home versus a resale home.

Greg Bray: I apologize, we're supposed to call them used homes, not resales.

Kevin Weitzel: An easy, uh, strategy you can use is, what is their guarantee on the number of toenail clippings that are in the carpet, or what's the percentage of dust [00:13:00] that's still in the air filtration system or if it even has one that is just nothing but the dead skin of the former people that live there?

Hilary Gibney: Do you want a sales in the city? Are you ready?.

Greg Bray: Kevin's more of the guy on the corner with the sign waving.

Kevin Weitzel: The gorilla in a suit swinging the sign.

Hilary Gibney: Little sign flipper. Yeah. That would be fun.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh, absolutely.

Hilary Gibney: Uhhuh. Yeah.

Greg Bray: A sign flipper in an Elvis outfit. That's what you want.

Kevin Weitzel: Boom. Done

Hilary Gibney: Ooh. Yeah. He's already got the sideburns. Got them.

Greg Bray: Well, Hilary, as you are trying to manage all these different communities, these different product lines, different focuses, how do you staff your team? In-house folks? Do you have partners and agencies? Where's kind of the line of what do you want to have, like down the hall versus working with from a partner standpoint?

Hilary Gibney: Absolutely. The way I look at it, I like to keep anything strategy, branding, buyer, and customer experience and engagement in-house, because that's where our expertise should [00:14:00] be in Brock. It's the Brock product, it's the Brock customer, it's the Brock lifestyle. That is what should be our bread and butter. But I want to lean on partners outside of my direct company that specialize in everything from paid media, SEO, some CRM support, right? Those CRM platforms are always changing and gaining more stuff, that it's almost hard to keep track of everything. So, just having anyone who can support with the ever-changing technology, I want to take advantage of those people and their expertise and lean on them so that we can continue to enhance all of the assets I have in the Brock's sphere and get those out to the public.

Kevin Weitzel: Does sales drive the marketing effort, or does marketing effort drive the traffic solely to sales, and that's where they're getting all their stuff from? Or is it a marriage, a little dance, a tango, if you will?

Hilary Gibney: It is a tango, it's a dance, it's a marriage, and it's fun. Marketing [00:15:00] is driving the leads and traffic to our online sales team and then our onsite sales team. But our onsite sales team they have their own network and their own people, their own realtor connections, buyers that they've worked with in the past, right? So, it's a combination of both, where we need to work together and bring as many leads in as possible, and bring as many quality leads in. So, we work together.

Greg Bray: Hilary, when you hit your desk first thing on Monday morning and you're like, okay, I got to check on things. What are the reports that are most important to you, the kinds of metrics that you look at first and use to kind of help you understand, take the temperature, if you will, of the marketing situation?

Hilary Gibney: Yeah. So, it's a dashboard that's created with me and my sales director. We're looking at everything from lead volume, cost per lead, website traffic, and then conversion rates. I think the most important conversion rates are my appointments [00:16:00] and my sales. So, that's really what we're looking at first Monday morning. My sales director is also awesome, and he sends a recap from the week/weekend prior, basically a color report of everything that's going on. Every hot lead that we have, any contracts that maybe are out waiting for signature or we have someone right on the edge of lot, you know, X, Y, and Z and they just want 1, 2, 3 things and our sales guy is going to get in this, all of that color coming together with the analytics and the report from him.

And then really just taking that all in, reporting that to ops, and what's going on. And obviously, what's happening in the world, what's happening in the market, what has changed? We're just looking and tracking all of that on a weekly basis. Because as long as we're consistent, we're going to see trends. And if we follow the trends, we're going to have more success and better quality leads and hopefully more sales for our team.

Kevin Weitzel: How about a little [00:17:00] sprinkling some of your secret sauce onto this conversation. Let's say you go through, you have that sit-down meeting with a team, you know, with a management brass, if you will. You realize that there's a couple of bullet points on there that really need to be addressed. Who decides where that focus is going to be spent, you know, what that pivot is going to be? And what do you change to make those pivots happen?

Hilary Gibney: It's really me and the sales director at the end of the day making those calls. And that's what I love about Brock, all of the family working there together is they trust me and the sales director to make those calls and give us the autonomy to do so. It's really me and him at the end of the day, and we're presenting that to the team, saying, Hey, this didn't work, so we're going to try this. Or, Hey, our competition is doing this amount of incentives, let's one-up it in this little element, whatever that may be. Right. But it's me and him at the end of the day, just working together in unison, and as long as we're aligned, we can get [00:18:00] anything through and make it work.

I think the biggest thing is we can't be afraid to be wrong. So, if we try something and it doesn't work, we're looking at this so closely on a weekly basis. If we're wrong, we're going to know pretty quickly. As long as we're tracking that and being consistent, and it's just about being like, Hey, that didn't work. Let's go back to this. And follow whatever it be through, right? I don't have a specific example right off the bat, but we're not afraid to be wrong, and we're also not afraid to think outside the box and try something new.

Kevin Weitzel: Now, I've known two people that do this, but let me ask you this. When you take that and you have the results to all the different analytics and the CRM data and the leads traffic and yada, yada, yada, do you ever incorporate AI, punch all that information in to see what it suggests that you do? Do you have that third person on your team? Is AI part of your team?

Hilary Gibney: Absolutely. There's so much I love about AI, and there's so much I don't know about AI. Content creation, love it. Any type of testing, I absolutely [00:19:00] love it. And then I love it for just like analysis, right? There's so many numbers that are going on, and I'm seeing this from paid search and this from paid media. I have this much traffic, but then here's my sales and my appointments, like, where am I missing it? Sometimes it's really nice to just shove that all into AI, and they can help me analyze it. They can help me maybe see a trend that I didn't necessarily see right away that they're picking up on, right? Because the more I talk to A, the more it's getting to know me and the company and all the things that we're doing.

So, yes, AI is something that I love using. I want to use it more. Brock, as a company, I'm shifting us this year to really hone in and enhance our digital footprint and presence within our market. So, we are making a brand new website this year. We are going to focus on a more custom interactive kiosk for the sales [00:20:00] team to use when talking to buyers and making that experience really emotional and customized, and personalized to whatever buyer we are talking to at the moment. And I know that there's so much more that AI's going to be able to help us with, even within that realm, that I'll let you know how that goes when I get there.

Greg Bray: No, this whole idea of personalizing and getting more connected to the individual is huge. And it's something that good salespeople have kind of instinctively done on their own when they're talking to somebody. But now the idea is how do we use the technology to layer that in and make it even better and faster, and to be able to scale it out to larger groups earlier in the process, even before they're meeting with that salesperson one-on-one. So, I applaud you for going in that direction. I'll be excited to see how that progresses.

Hilary Gibney: Something to consider, too, is during the COVID time, everything went digital, and we had to go digital real fast. But I think what has come out of COVID is a [00:21:00] lot of people like to do and see a lot of the elements of the home and the neighborhood on their own. They like to watch the videos, walk through that digital tour. They like to do the self-guided tours. They like to book the appointment automatically online and not really have to set up the appointment by talking to someone on the phone. There's all these elements, right?

But I think if we give them so much access to all of these interactive elements that can help them, take the next step and get through the door. I need to have that next experience with the buyer be so custom and personalized that they walk out of that sales office being like, wow, I'm so happy I walked in here because there's so much information I received, and the experience I received was so memorable and enjoyable that I want to come back, I want to a buy a home. So, it's just taking it that next step to really enhance that experience.

Greg Bray: Yeah. It sounds to me like [00:22:00] you're saying the experience is just as important as the home itself. That's what I'm hearing you say. Is that fair?

Hilary Gibney: Yeah. Absolutely. And just think about, it doesn't even have to do with home building. Just think about any experience. You have a favorite restaurant, you have a favorite store. There's a reason why, and it's not because there's crappy customer service. It's because the product and the people that you have to work with or interact with are making that experience so enjoyable for you.

Like I mentioned earlier, buying a home is such an emotional experience. We have to remember that. Whether they're buying their third home or their first home, it's still emotional. And so, being able to hone in on those emotions and making people really feel like we care and we thought of every step so that they feel super informed and they can make that decision really easily is the path that we're trying to go down.

Greg Bray: Well, Hilary, we appreciate the time you've spent with us. Just a few more questions before we wrap up. When you look back at when [00:23:00] you first got started in home building a few years ago and compare it to now, what's that one thing that you understand now that you're like, if I had only known this when I first got started, it would've been so helpful to understand?

Hilary Gibney: Yeah, I think the biggest learning lesson and success I've had over the years is the importance of aligning my sales department with my marketing department. It makes everything much more effective and efficient just right off of the bat. Every builder, no matter where you are, kind of sets up their marketing and sales department a little bit differently. I don't think anything is better than the other or who runs it.

Regardless of any of those things, I think the relationship of those two leaders being aligned and focusing on the same goals and walking down the same path is where we're going to get so much more success in the company because we're not playing tug of war on priorities. [00:24:00] We both are shooting for the same priorities. We both have the same goals, and we are working hand in hand, side by side, to get there. We need to bounce off of one another. And I think that was something that I needed to know earlier, and jump in on that a lot earlier.

Greg Bray: That's a great lesson, for sure. Well, any last thoughts or words of advice that you'd like to leave with our audience today before we finish up?

Hilary Gibney: One of the best pieces of advice that I got for focusing on marketing and marketing within the home building industry specifically was focusing on the customer journey and making that the most important. So, if you make it easy, we make it enjoyable, and we make it memorable, the results will follow. That is something that we can get lost in when we look at the numbers and we look at the data and we look at the budget, and all of this stuff, which are very, very important. But at the end of the [00:25:00] day, it is about that customer journey. It's about those referrals, and it's about the customers who want to buy a home from your company. That's the most important thing.

Greg Bray: Well, if somebody wants to connect with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Hilary Gibney: Probably LinkedIn. You can just search for Hilary Gibney. It'll say Brock Built Homes, and I'm there.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you again, Hilary, so much for spending time with us and sharing with us today. And thank you, everybody, for listening to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you. [00:26:00]