2026 Builder Marketing Summit Recap - Greg Bray and Kevin Weitzel

Greg Bray: We are excited today, folks, really excited, Kevin, because we are just back from the 2026 Builder Marketing Summit, that was in Dallas, and we just want to a share some of the exciting things that happened. Kevin, what are your reactions? How'd you feel about the [00:01:00] event and some of the things that were going on there?

Kevin Weitzel: I had a blast. This is one of my favorite summits that we've had to date. We intentionally have an intimate setting, but man, our load of speakers that was there, the topics that were covered.

Greg Bray: We just keep getting better. I mean, obviously, I'm a little biased, but I feel like we keep putting the work in and keep getting more and more of the right people in the room that just makes it all happen. And so just really excited about what we put together and excited to share a few of the takeaways that we got from it.

Kevin Weitzel: Kicking off the whole thing with your interview with Don and Angela from Bloomfield, that was amazing. I would listen to that entire session tip to tail.

Greg Bray: Well, and not to give anything away, Kevin, but I think we might find a way to release that one on the podcast here in a few weeks, because that was some great insights. You know, Don is the founder of Bloomfield Homes, and he's now the chairman and president. Their insights into marketing that they shared were just great.

They have this thing they [00:02:00] call the one house rule, the idea is that if they think they can sell one more home with a given marketing experiment, then they're going to try it, and they use that internally to help them make decisions about what they want to try that's new. And of course, Bloomfield's grown from just a small, little builder to now doing a couple thousand homes a year, and so obviously something's working for them.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah, I mean, honestly, that's my biggest takeaway is that they've put into position, even sometimes on very limited budget, actions, activities, processes, and assets, digital assets out there that allowed them to grow from, I think he said their first year they did, like, 18, 20 homes, somewhere around there. And now this last year they did 1,800 homes. So, that is a huge, huge gain, and it's been very well planned out growth. So, kudos to them because they're not a national or even a regional company. They are hyper local to the DFW market.

Greg Bray: And, you know, interestingly enough, Angela, their marketing director there, she shared [00:03:00] some great insights too on how to bring ideas to your executive leadership that I thought were really insightful for those who may not have someone quite as open as Don is to trying new things.

Because I feel like a lot of our marketers out there sometimes have to kind of fight for attention and fight for budget, to get their marketing ideas out there. And so some of those insights that she shared I thought were great. Even the idea that sometimes they get a no, and then they circle back and they try it again, you know, trying to fill in the gaps and, you know, strengthening up the presentation along with it.

Kevin Weitzel: I loved Angela. Here's what I took away from Angela, that she says even in her mind when she knows that she's going to get a no, she comes to the plate with the artillery of here's why you need to say yes, or here's some arguments toward yes, and then I'll still accept a no, but I want a viable answer as to why we're getting a no. I love that concept.

Greg Bray: Yeah. And just to pile on there, Kevin, one of the other things that Don said that really struck me was this idea of getting to a quick [00:04:00] no. He really believes that you can waste a lot of time overanalyzing some of these things and going round and around and around for multiple quotes and approvals and everything else. Try to get to the no as fast as possible to move on and try the next thing instead, if it's really something that's not going to work. I just thought that was a pretty interesting takeaway as well.

Kevin Weitzel: My subordinates all know that they come to me with a tray of lasagna and bribe me into a yes. I don't think that works with Don.

Greg Bray: It's lasagna, huh? That's the thing to bring you?

Kevin Weitzel: Man, I'll tell you what, lasagna gets a yes every single time.

Greg Bray: Well, and of course, we had our breakouts this year, just like we did the last few years, where we had a marketing track, an OSC track, and a leadership track. Our leadership track was led by Kimberly Mackey with New Home Solutions, and Kimberly has a lot of great insights there. Now, I didn't have a chance to sit in on those sessions, but I know from what I heard, the attendees that I had a chance to talk to really felt like she gave them some practical [00:05:00] tips on how to guide their teams and be able to really motivate and help people move forward and get the tasks accomplished that they needed to.

Kevin Weitzel: I actually asked one of the people that were in one of her rooms. I said, "Hey, uh, so how are things going in there?" And they said, "You know what's really cool is it's not rah-rah, it's solution based." So, that was actually pretty cool feedback, so I like that.

Greg Bray: It's true. Sometimes these motivational things get a little too rah-rah, like you were saying. Kind of, "Go get 'em, team," instead of giving you some of the tools that you need to really get the job done.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah. And then on top of that, we had Leah Fellows of Blue Gypsy knocking out the OSC track. That was very well received with its nice stacked room.

Greg Bray: And I think what's great about having the OSCs at this event is there's this great overlap between marketing and OSCs when it comes to lead generation and lead management. And so being able to have them, you know, in the room together, and then also in their different breakouts, but to learn [00:06:00] from each other is really one of the things that I think is great about what we're trying to put together with this event.

Kevin Weitzel: What was really differentiating is just the thought process of, "Hey, let's get our OSCs to these training sessions," because they're not the redhead stepchildren of the company. They're an integral part of both the sales and the marketing team.

Greg Bray: And sometimes they're kind of lost in the middle.

Kevin Weitzel: Fact.

Greg Bray: Well, and then on our marketing track, we had a great panel that was put together by our friends at Lumen.ai. Tom Ngo, from Lumen led that panel, and he had Chelsea Penzone from Authority Brands and Spencer Perkins from BNI join him. What was really interesting, Kevin, is these are not builders.

We brought in some people that are from different industries who have been working with some of these lead follow-up processes and integrating AI into that to learn some of the things that they're doing with them and to get some of those tips about what they've already kind of experienced, for the builders who aren't quite there [00:07:00] yet.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah, that was very well received too, because they're bringing in a different perspective that a lot of times some of the vendors and some of the speakers and sponsors and stuff that only work exclusive with home builders, that the nuance of not in your backyard, really did bring a new perspective that was very welcome to a lot of people.

Greg Bray: I was really impressed by the fact that the things that Chelsea and Spencer shared, if you kind of left out a couple of words, it would apply totally to home building. When somebody's about generating leads on a long sales cycle product, which they both had as well, it's really a lot of the same efforts. And so I think sometimes we think home building's so special, but there are a lot of things we can learn from other industries, and we don't necessarily have to just look to other builders for these ideas, and this was a great reminder of that for me.

Kevin Weitzel: Absolutely.

Greg Bray: Then in our marketing track, Kevin, we had Cory Dotson from Blue Tangerine, somebody that I've been working with now for 20 years, Cory's been with our company, and he shared [00:08:00] five different features that top home builder websites do differently. I just heard some amazing things from the audience after this one, where it just really got them changing their view of their website.

Kevin Weitzel: Is it appropriate to have a man crush on somebody in the industry? 'Cause Cory's my dude. I learn something from him every time I hear him speak.

Greg Bray: We'll just give you one little tidbit on one of those five, and that was this idea that your website needs to support your data structure in a way that makes it easy for everything to be kept up to date. I'm sorry, I gotta share another one too. I gotta share. It was too good. The other one that really struck me that he shared was his idea that having your website be a support for your sales team, not just about marketing lead generation.

But how you can create these little mini applications within your website that can print, like, up-to-date brochures using the data from the website and help support the sales [00:09:00] conversation so you can email that customized PDF back to that prospective buyer who just toured, and things like that, which I think really got some people thinking about some different opportunities that don't always come up in those typical website planning conversations.

Kevin Weitzel: You know, that's funny. That was my exact note I was going to bring up about Cory's session. It was the fact that the website needs to be a tool for your sales team, not just a marketing platform.

Greg Bray: And then kind of rounding out our first day in the morning, we had Carol Morgan from Denim Marketing. Her title of her presentation was Will AI Recommend Your Community?

Kevin Weitzel: And will it?

Greg Bray: Well, that's the big question, right? Carol gave us some great insight. She focused a lot on the messaging and things that you can be doing within your social media and your PR program and the other areas outside of your specific website of the idea that you need to get your message out there consistently in such a way that AI will be able to understand your company better. She really [00:10:00] kind of went hard at the people that just post these social media posts that are all about a particular holiday or.

Kevin Weitzel: Happy Donut Day. Yeah. She definitely hammered on that.

Greg Bray: Because that really doesn't tell AI what your communities are offering when you're posting about Happy Donut Day with a picture of your team all eating donuts. And so she got into making sure that you're talking about the actual features of your community, making sure you're answering those questions that buyers have, especially buyers that don't buy homes on a regular basis. There's a lot that they don't know and don't understand. Those insights were great, and I completely support everything that she was saying as a way to help improve that AI visibility.

Kevin Weitzel: She didn't mention sideburns once, so how could you 100% agree with what she said?

Greg Bray: Well, that's only for certain communities, Kevin, that cater to those with sideburns. That's really a special community. How many homes do you think are in that community, Kevin?

Kevin Weitzel: I think there's just one.

Greg Bray: Just one?

Kevin Weitzel: I think it's one in Gilbert, Arizona. Who knows? All right. So, our second half of the day started off with a panel with Emily, right? And of course her companion dog, [00:11:00] Mack. That was a fantastic panel.

Greg Bray: We had Janie Rehfuss from Cambridge Homes and Shelly McCurdy from CB JENI Homes. Those ladies are both directors of marketing at different size builders, and so they brought kind of an interesting compare and contrast conversation. And they were really talking about how to connect with the buyers and be in the right place at the right time to have those conversations with them.

Kevin Weitzel: I loved that they were talking about the difference between still being effective when your entire company's operating budget is the size of the marketing budget of another builder in your same area. How to still be effective.

Greg Bray: It is a common theme that some of these builders feel so much smaller and have a different resource constraint, but yet there's still a lot you can do. And you don't have to just give up and say, "We can't compete." It just doesn't have to be that way.

Kevin Weitzel: True.

Greg Bray: And then after that great panel, we had a presentation from our friend, Justin Croxton from Propellant [00:12:00] Media. And some of you have probably heard Justin's been on our podcast before and shared some ideas around geofencing and programmatic advertising. He really got into some specifics on how to structure some of these campaigns, which I thought was really practical, right? About things that people could do right now when they get back to the office about taking advantage of this different channel that a lot of builders I don't think have really tapped into well.

Kevin Weitzel: Fact.

Greg Bray: Kevin, we rounded out the day with an amazing panel that was led by you, and we had Mel McLaughlin from Pacesetter Homes, Jordan Brown from Graham Hart, and Meredith Chapman from K. Hovnanian. Tell us a little more about what you were talking about with that great panel.

Kevin Weitzel: Absolute fireworks. This closing panel was freakishly fantastic. Basically, in a nutshell, it was how you have your, I call them three departments, because you have your sales team, you have your marketing team, and then you have your sales and marketing team. From small to big builder, how they have to circumnavigate the world of being a connector, [00:13:00] a connector of leads to your OSCs, a connector of OSCs to your sales team.

Who drives the ship? Is it sales? Is it marketing? Is it a little bit of both? Is it collaborative? It was an amazing all eyes snapped to the front of the stage the entire session. And not because of me. I wish they were all looking at me, but they really weren't. They were all looking at the whole panel and listening to all the knowledge they were slinging.

Greg Bray: But Kevin, I do have to say, this was the only presentation that had people singing in it. That made it, that made it special as well.

Kevin Weitzel: That is a fact.

Greg Bray: And Kevin, you know what? We completely missed the fact that we also had our round table conversations. Describe for folks those round table discussions.

Kevin Weitzel: So, in a nutshell, you have an expert in a topic, but it's not an expert that's talking to you. It's an expert that is providing you with a topic, and then all of the people collaboratively share their experience, their knowledge, their problems, their solutions. It was amazing. You know, we did ours [00:14:00] on when is good enough good enough, and when is it not? And when it's not, what do you do to make it better? Who, how, what, where, and why? It was amazing.

Greg Bray: I love walking around the room while those round tables are going on, and kind of eavesdropping on those conversations and seeing how engaged everyone is. The notebooks are out. People are not on their phones. They are fully engaged in those conversations, and it consistently is our highest rated part of the event where people feel like they get to engage with each other and learn from each other and go home not only with ideas, but potentially with a new friend.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh, yeah. Year after year after year, it's why we keep them in the presentation and program, is that the round tables get such positive review and feedback. That first night a fantastic close. So, we went for the mixer. That was a fantastic little social environment that we went to. You know, and it was nice to kinda unwind a little bit 'cause there was lots of brain activity going on.

But then the next day, we fire off the next morning [00:15:00] with my friend, my co-host, founder of the Builder Marketing Podcast, my co-host and founder of the Builder Marketing Summit, Greg Bray came to the table. What was your topic, Greg?

Greg Bray: Well, we were talking about AI visibility, and making sure that you show up on that list, and really tried to get a little behind the scenes. I admit, Kevin, that I got a little technical. I got a little techy. You know, sometimes that can be hard to do.

But people seemed to appreciate it, 'cause we were talking about how the AI tools actually go out and look at the information available, what they're looking for on your website to help them understand you, some of the risks if you aren't paying attention to what's out there, and the things that you can change quickly or review quickly, and some of the things that might take a little bit longer to work on as far as updating your site.

I'll drop a little tidbit here, Kevin, 'cause I really think that this is the one that people need to pay attention to, and that's about our pricing. So often in home building, we put numbers on [00:16:00] communities that are simply a starting point. We'll say, "This community is from the high 400s," or, "From the mid-600s," or whatever that number is, and AI doesn't necessarily understand that there are other homes that are dramatically different in price based on options and lot premiums and all the different features that are possible to pick on a new home.

So, when someone's looking for a particular price range in their search, they will put in that range, and AI won't necessarily be able to match your community to that range if we haven't told it the full range of what's available in your community. So, that was one of the things that I hammered on for a few minutes, because I feel it's something that we need to pay more attention to so that folks that are using these AI tools to start researching their homes are making sure that they can find you, the builder, and your community when it's a good match.

Kevin Weitzel: I love people watching, Greg. And when you nerd out up there, no offense, I love my nerds. When you nerd out up there and all eyeballs are popped to you and popped to the screen, [00:17:00] and I see cell phones out taking pictures of your slides, I know that what you are saying is gold. Yes, it was gold.

Loved it.

Greg Bray: I hope so. We want to bring something that's valuable and useful to folks. We did our breakouts again. Again, we had our OSC and our leadership teams in their different rooms. And then in our marketing room we had another panel, and that was led by Jake Share at Audience Town, and he had Cassius Adkison from Bloomfield Homes and Tina Boch from Olivia Clarke Homes.

Kevin, I think I said this at the event too. The willingness of these builders to share on stage their experiences and their insights and what's working for them and what maybe hasn't worked for them is just phenomenal. There's no fear of giving away the secret or telling a competitor, because a lot of these people were all from Texas and building in similar areas. It's just fantastic. Cassius and Tina continued that by sharing a lot of the ways that they use data to make their marketing decisions.

Kevin Weitzel: Fact. Absolutely [00:18:00] good.

Greg Bray: And after them, we had a presentation from Josh Ranum, and Josh is the director of paid media at Blue Tangerine. We recently had Josh on the podcast as well talking about this topic. So, if people are more interested, I'd encourage you to go listen to that recent episode as well. He got in deep into paid social ads. And Kevin, I know you're a Facebooker, right? Those ads, they're everywhere. You gotta work to get people's attention when you do that. You can't just throw it out there and hope that somebody clicks on it.

That's what Josh was getting into was this idea of making sure that people in different stages of buying are seeing the right kind of ad. He broke it up into this idea of you've got dreamers and kind of the researchers and then getting into the ready to tour stage. And so, having different types of ads and different types of calls to action for those different stages can make a big difference in how effective your social media advertising program will be.

Kevin Weitzel: Now Greg, our next speaker, every time I hear him speak, I [00:19:00] have nothing but listening ears on, because when Barrett Davis breaks out with his full-fledged nerdness, this time he did, like, live, real prompts and how to utilize AI, how to connect it to your various platforms. He even gave away a cheat code for our attendees that they could scan and actually get four separate AI agents to get different various parts of your business activated. It was incredible.

Greg, I'm go on my comment here, because not only was it freakishly fantastic, but I like to keep track of who gets the most questions, who runs over the longest because of questions. In his case, it wasn't the question side. When he put up stuff on the screen, every phone in the room was snapping pictures. Every single one of them. I don't think there was anybody that had their phone in their pocket or on the desk. It was up in the air. It was crazy.

Greg Bray: Barrett, he's with NterNow, and he wasn't even talking about the great stuff that NterNow does.

Kevin Weitzel: No.

Greg Bray: He was just there, how do we use Claude [00:20:00] Cowork to just get into some real standard get the work done type of tools. And I agree with you, Kevin. I think he really opened people's eyes to some of the things that are possible with these tools, and they're just getting better. I mean, he had the tool in real time, which again, from a presenter standpoint, that's always risky. It's like, what's going to go wrong? Will the internet die? All the things that go wrong in conferences.

But he went live, and he just had Claude do a whole social media post on LinkedIn for him while we were there without him having to do anything. He just told it, "Go make me a post about this summit. Tag some people." It went out there, it logged into his account, it found some related posts to reference, and it put it out there, and I looked at that post after it was live. It looked like a totally normal standard post.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, not only that, but something that's super practical was that one of the attendees asked about, you know, "Well, hey, I'm a little bit longer in the tooth, been around a little longer, not quite comfortable with how this tech all connects. I don't know how I would connect my [00:21:00] Claude or any of these AI bots to my CRM." He, on the spot, told Claude how to connect, why to connect, where to connect, and to stop before it finishes, right to his HubSpot account, and it did it. I think was less than what? Less than a minute, I think, and everything happened, and it gave him the appraisal afterwards and the steps, et cetera. It was super cool.

Greg Bray: Yep, he knows his stuff. If you're not using these tools, it's time to get serious about it, because there are a lot of things you can do to help you, by taking advantage of these tools. All right. Well, Kevin, we had some more round tables on day two. So, people had a chance to pick four different topics, and so they did two of them on the first day, and they did two of them on the second day. So, I know you got to meet with some different people on day two.

And then we kinda entered the afternoon. We brought everybody back together, and we had an opportunity to hear from Leah Fellows at Blue Gypsy, and she talked to us about the whole kind of buyer experience and trying to help move people through that [00:22:00] buying channel after they become a website visitor and then become a lead. And then how do we make sure that our online sales team is pulling them through and getting them into the CRM and the sales process?

Kevin Weitzel: Then immediately following was Kimberly Mackey with New Home Solutions. She did a pretty interesting one and there was some touching spots in there too about being a leader without necessarily losing yourself or without becoming a robot, if you will, to process. That was a very, very good one as well.

Greg Bray: Yeah, I love the analogy she had of her daughter leading the horse, right? Where you can't push the horse or pull the horse, you have to walk next to it. That's a really good analogy for how great leaders take their teams, is they don't push them and pull them, they walk with them. That was one of my big takeaways from that.

Kevin Weitzel: It wasn't that sales teams are 2,000 pounds and stubborn?

Greg Bray: That was not, I think, the point she was trying to make, no.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh. You know, I completely missed that one, I bet. Apparently I missed that one. Well, you know what, Greg? Every year we have a [00:23:00] strong opener. This year we had a ridiculously strong closer. A superhero, if you will.

Greg Bray: I was so excited when Mr. Cory Charles said that he was willing to come and be with us. I had some high expectations that he would help people, but I was thrilled. He exceeded the expectations tenfold. Anybody who's met Cory, and of course he's been on our podcast before for those of you who have had a chance to listen. He is so full of energy, so full of enthusiasm. But his whole goal was to get people to take all the things they learned, go home, and make something happen.

Kevin Weitzel: Greg, I put my action item on my calendar as he directed, October 7th, and I have my accountability partner. And in this case, I went with Tabitha, who works at TW Creative, because she cracks the whip and actually gets me to do things, which is very difficult in this world, as you know, being a friend of mine for 10 years.

Greg Bray: I did love the way Cory got everybody in the room, take [00:24:00] out their phones, put in an accountability partner a goal that they had for the next few weeks, and tell somebody about it, right? And of course, his big takeaway was send it. Everybody sent it at the same time. I can't wait to see how many people accomplish those goals and the difference it makes to just take one idea that you learned at this event, go home, and get it done.

Kevin Weitzel: Because as he pointed out, when you send it, it will be worth it.

Greg Bray: Absolutely. Well, Kevin, of course, it's not just about education. We try to have some fun, too. I think we did that while we were there.

Kevin Weitzel: We did. We did have some fun. I mean, we had a little golden ticket contest. We had a little bingo game that was pretty fun. And of course, we had the Kahoot where our sponsors donated so many ridiculously fantastic prizes, that were just divvied up on the winners. Speaking of sponsors.

Greg Bray: Yeah, Kevin, this doesn't happen without sponsors. We had [00:25:00] over 20 sponsors this year, which is our most ever. And these folks bring not only just some financial support, but they bring energy to the room. They help organize some of the presentations. They donate the prizes for our games and drawings. Of course, they also bring great products and services to help builders be successful.

These are not people that are here just, you know, to sell and disappear, but rather they really believe in helping these builders be successful and fulfilling those needs around generating more sales and helping nurture those leads into that sales process. Our top diamond sponsor, Kevin, again, they were back with us again, Homes.com. We also had New Homes Directory, Verse AI, and AudienceTown that were with us.

Kevin Weitzel: Yep. We had NewHome Source, Lumen.ai, ECI, their Lasso division, as well as Home Builder Ops.

Greg Bray: And then we had the Davies Imaging Group. We had RezVR, [00:26:00] BuilderChat AI, and Denim Marketing as well.

Kevin Weitzel: I can't say enough about Davies Imaging Group. They were actually our photographer on site, too, and did a fantastic job. Could barely tell they were there, and that's what you want out of a photographer, is that they're never in the way. In addition to our sponsors, we had Foundation, Realtor.com, NterNow, and NoviHome.

Greg Bray: And then we had OcuSell, VS-Explorer, and Joseph Chris Partners. And then of course our charity partner for the event again this year was Homes For Hope, an organization that we love to be supportive of and encourage everybody to learn more about, too.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you to all these sponsors. They are so supportive. Many of them have been with us for multiple years. Many of them already said they're planning for next year, which is great. We really appreciate that support. So please, if you're not familiar with what these folks have to offer, take a minute, learn more about them. You can find that list on buildermarketingsummit.com site if you didn't catch all of them [00:27:00] as we talked about them.

Well, Kevin, I also need to do a quick shout-out to Mila and Tabitha on our teams for all their hard work putting everything together. And a big thank you to you as well, my friend, for your support and being up on stage so much and helping herd the cats, so to speak, get people in the right places and keep it fun and light while we're doing it.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, it's an honor being a co-host of the event. We've been here since day one. Kudos to you and your Blue Tangerine team for being the founders of the summit, the Builder Marketing Summit. It wouldn't happen without your vision, Greg.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you, Kevin. And hey, everybody, we're going to do it again in 2027. Keep your eyes open for those dates and location once we get all that put together, but it'll be next September in 2027. So, plan for it on your budget, your training budget. We'd love to have you with us. So, thank you everybody for listening today to the Builder Marketing Podcast.I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHhouse. Thank [00:28:00] you.