Here’s something I’ve been turning over in my head as we grind our way into Spring Selling 2026 — one that feels especially relevant for homebuilders and every functional leader who’s trying to steer a business through a tougher, noisier, more skeptical market:
If your marketing only works when everything goes right, it’s not a strategy.
It’s luck.
For a long time, we’ve treated marketing like a sequence of moments. A campaign launches, a message goes live, a new partnership rolls out, a creative concept spikes attention for a few days, and everyone breathes out—until the next cycle begins. We measure what pops, we troubleshoot what doesn’t, and we keep chasing the next “big thing,” like our last effort didn’t drain the life out of half the people who made it happen.
But over the past couple of years — especially in the kind of market we’re in now — I’ve become convinced that the leaders who are actually building lasting trust and durable growth aren’t obsessing over moments.
They’re building systems. They’re designing the machinery that keeps trust compounding even when buyers are hesitant, when stakeholders are impatient, when the market is sideways, and when your teams are working harder than ever just to protect margins and hold pace.
Campaigns can be loud. Systems are quieter. But systems are relentless.
And relentless – i.e. persistent, striving patience – wins.
Campaigns get attention. Systems earn trust.
If you want a clear view of why this matters, you don’t have to look at marketing theory — you just have to look at how buyers behave in real life. Because the modern buyer doesn’t move neatly through a funnel. They don’t progress from “awareness” to “consideration” to “conversion” like they’re following instructions.
They bounce, they pause, they disappear, they resurface. They screenshot your website instead of filling out a lead form. They tour a model home, then go quiet for months. They compare floorplans across six open tabs while texting their spouse, then show up later ready to buy as if the last three months of silence never happened.
That isn’t dysfunction. That’s the way in-real-life life works now.
So the question for homebuilders can’t be, “How do we reach buyers at the right moment?” because the truth is, you don’t get to decide when that moment is. Buyers decide. Markets decide. Life decides. What you can decide is whether you’re building the kind of brand ecosystem that is there — consistently, credibly, and usefully — whenever they resurface.
That only happens when marketing, brand, digital experience, measurement, and operations stop operating like separate departments and start operating like a single system. A system designed around human behavior, not around internal org charts.
The experience is the product now
One of my favorite examples comes from outside homebuilding. I fly a lot, and I’ve used just about every airline app out there. But the United Airlines app stands out to me for a reason that has nothing to do with aesthetics or even features. It stands out because it anticipates my needs before I do. When a flight is delayed, it doesn’t just notify me and wish me luck. It offers options before I have time to spiral. It removes friction at the exact points where anxiety tends to show up.
Flying is largely a commodity. Same airports. Same planes. Same pretzels.
But United has made the experience of flying feel meaningfully different, and they did it by designing the system around the customer’s stress — not around the airline’s convenience.
Homebuilding has a version of that same problem, and the stakes are even higher. A home is one of the biggest, most emotional, highest-consideration purchases a person will ever make. The product matters, of course.
But increasingly, what differentiates builders isn’t just what you sell — it’s how people feel as they navigate the uncertainty around it. How easy you make it to find answers. How transparent your pricing is. How seamless it feels to go from discovery to decisions to purchase steps without getting bumped into dead ends, delays, or awkward “call this number” handoffs.
Every touchpoint becomes a moment of truth. And if you leave those moments to chance, you don’t just lose a lead — you lose trust.
Systems don’t let that happen.
Saying “no” is part of the system
Now, let me say something that makes some people uncomfortable: one of the biggest marketing investments I can make isn’t always spending money. Sometimes it’s choosing not to spend money — specifically, choosing to kill ideas that are “good enough.”
Bad ideas are easy to spot. The dangerous ones are the ones that test well, benchmark well, and keep everyone feeling safe. Those ideas can quietly turn your brand into wallpaper — especially in homebuilding, where we all know the category playbook is remarkably consistent. Happy families. Perfect kitchens. The American Dream. The same emotional notes, over and over.
I understand why it happens. It performs. It feels familiar. It makes stakeholders comfortable.
But comfort is a terrible brand strategy in a market where attention is scarce and skepticism is high. If you don’t have a system for saying no — if you don’t create space for real distinctiveness — your brand doesn’t fail loudly.
It fades quietly.
Discipline creates clarity. Clarity creates distinctiveness. Distinctiveness not only stands out, but it also stands for [your customer]. It creates trust.
The funnel isn’t the advantage anymore — the ecosystem is
This is also why last-click attribution drives me crazy. It’s not just flawed—it can be actively destructive. It rewards the doorknob and ignores the house. It overcredits the final touch and undervalues the months of brand building, experience building, and trust building that made the final touch matter in the first place.
Because buyers aren’t living in funnels. They’re living in ecosystems.
They’re picking up signals over time—content they encounter when they’re curious, experiences they remember when they’re anxious, and brand impressions that either build confidence or plant doubt. When they finally decide, they’re not choosing based on one click. They’re choosing based on the accumulated feeling of whether you seem credible, consistent, and worth the risk.
Systems create that feeling.
Culture is the most underestimated system you own
There’s one more layer here that matters just as much as creative or digital. And it’s the part many companies still underestimate: the employee experience is the customer experience.
You can map journeys and track NPS all day long, but if your team members are drained, unsupported, or disconnected from the brand promise they’re expected to deliver, customers will feel it instantly. We’ve all had that experience as consumers—the interaction where you can tell someone is just going through the motions. It’s not their fault, necessarily. But the impact is real.
On the flip side, when people feel energized, trusted to stretch, and connected to a shared purpose, that energy shows up everywhere. It shows up in how confidently someone answers a buyer’s question. It shows up in how problems get resolved. It shows up in whether the customer feels cared for or processed.
Culture isn’t an HR initiative. Culture is a brand strategy. And culture, like everything else, works best when it’s built as a system—not a slogan.
So here’s the spring selling season question
If you’re leading in marketing, sales, operations, finance, or any seat where you’re responsible for building performance in tough conditions, I want to offer a reframe:
Stop starting with, “What campaign should we run next?” Start with, “What system are we building?”
A system that reduces friction instead of adding noise.
A system that respects how humans actually buy.
A system that compels trust even when no one is “in market.”
A system that compounds quietly, steadily, over time.
Moments fade. Systems endure.
And in a market like this, endurance is a competitive advantage.
That’s what’s in the Trust Vault as we step into 2026’s spring selling moment of truth.