Home Builders
Buying a new home can take months, so your follow-up has to last just as long. The Buttered System keeps every prospective buyer warm, from the first floor-plan download to the day they get the keys.
Quick answer
Buttered Business helps home builders attract buyers searching for new homes, capture them with floor-plan downloads and tour booking, and follow up for the full buying cycle with automated texts, emails, consented AI voice calls and personalized video. We also build community websites and handle local SEO, AI search visibility, EDDM mail and signage.
Owners and presidents of production, semi-custom and custom builders, plus the VP or director of sales and marketing at larger builders. Day to day, your online sales counselor, new-home consultants and marketing coordinator live with the results. You measure marketing in tours, contracts and closings, not clicks, and you’re tired of web leads going cold while the team handles walk-ins.
Made for: Home builders
A buyer downloads a floor plan in March, tours in May and signs in September, if someone is still following up.
Your sales team shines in the model home. They don’t have time to personally chase every web lead, every week, for months.
Lots, specs and incentives change constantly, and your website is always a step behind.
Buyers, agents, lenders and your own team all need different messages at different times.
The costly part isn’t getting leads. It’s losing them.
Every unsold spec carries interest, taxes and upkeep. The longer it sits, the louder the pressure to discount it.
Online inquiries wait while the team works the model home. By the time someone calls back, the buyer has toured another community.
When follow-up is thin, price becomes the only lever left. Steady nurture protects margin before you reach for another incentive.
An interest list built months ahead turns release day into a sale to warm buyers instead of a cold start.
Co-op agents favor builders who make their job easy: clear commission terms, current quick-move-in lists and fast answers.
A long decision isn’t a lost buyer. It becomes one when the follow-up stops after two emails.
Good news: every one of these leaks has a fix.
See what we build for Home BuildersOne team for the pages, ads, follow-up, video and print that move buyers from browsing to touring.
Every community, floor plan and quick-move-in home gets a fast, mobile-first page with photos, the price ranges you approve and a tour button on every screen.
Website Wizardry Explore our service: Web Design
Local SEO for “new homes in [city]” searches, a Google Business Profile for each sales center and structured data that helps Google and AI assistants describe your communities correctly.
Google and Meta campaigns set up within each platform’s housing-ad policies and measured by cost per appointment and cost per sale, not clicks.
An instant text and email when a buyer inquires, then a 12-month nurture sequence segmented by community, price range and move-in timeline that stops the moment they reply or book.
Answers when the team is with a buyer or the model is closed, answers the community questions you approve, books tours and hands hot buyers to a person.
Short AI videos that greet a buyer by name and show the floor plan or quick-move-in home they asked about, always labeled as AI-generated.
Every Door Direct Mail to nearby neighborhoods plus yard, directional and model-home signs, each with a QR code that feeds The Buttered System.
Every-Door Spread Explore our service: EDDM Mailers
Take one slice or the whole loaf. Every service works on its own.
See every serviceFive steps from first click to closing day, tuned for a sales cycle measured in months.
Step 1
Get found by buyers searching for new homes in your area: community and floor-plan pages built for local search, AI search visibility, Google Business Profiles for your sales centers, paid search and social ads, video walkthroughs, EDDM to nearby neighborhoods and signs that point to tracked pages.
Step 2
Capture serious buyers, not just page views: floor-plan and brochure downloads, online tour booking, an AI chat assistant that answers community questions at 10 p.m. and an AI voice agent on your sales line so calls stop going to voicemail.
Step 3
Follow up for months, not days: an instant text and email when a buyer inquires, personalized AI videos about the plan they viewed and a 12-month nurture sequence with construction updates, new phases, current incentives and design-center previews.
Step 4
Make tours and contracts easy to say yes to: self-scheduled tours, automatic reminders, same-day after-tour follow-up, introductions to your preferred lender if you work with one, and incentive reminders tied to real deadlines.
Step 5
Turn homeowners into your best sales team: move-in follow-ups, warranty check-in reminders, review requests at the right moments, a homeowner referral program and printed anniversary cards.
Clicks and likes don’t pay the bills. Once you’re a client, reports focus on calls, leads, appointments and sales, and these are the KPIs your scoreboard is built around.
Illustrative layout. Your scoreboard shows your own numbers, never anyone else’s.
Every number links to its source.
42%
of builders in a 2025 mystery shop of 50 builders never made a single phone call to an online lead
Source: ECI/Lasso 6th Annual Mystery Shop Report, 2025 (opens in a new tab)
$393,700
U.S. median new-home sales price in August 2026
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, New Residential Sales, August 2026 (opens in a new tab)
11.0%
average builder profit margin in NAHB’s 2024 Cost of Constructing a Home study
Source: NAHB Eye on Housing, 2025 (2024 data) (opens in a new tab)
Independent industry research, not Buttered Business client results. Tap a source to read it.
See what one buyer is worth to you and what slow follow-up costs. Your result shows up right away, no email required.
Tell us what a customer buys and how long they stay. You'll see what every lead is worth in gross profit. No email needed.
Your customers
Each lead is worth
—
in lifetime gross profit at your — margin, out of about — in lifetime revenue per lead.
in lifetime revenue (margin is set to 100%). The first sale alone brings in about — per lead.
Each golden pat is a slice of a customer's lifetime value: where the money comes from over the years they stay.
Each lead is worth—
Your free Butter Report adds your maximum cost per lead and cost per customer, plus a checklist for comparing every channel you pay for against those limits.
Your full breakdown opens right here. No spam, and we never sell your information. We ask for your mobile so we can follow up about your report. We’ll only text you if you check the text-message box.
—in lifetime gross profit from 12 months of leads
At your max cost per lead, you could invest up to — a month to win them.
That benchmark is under your max cost per lead, so paid search can pay for itself if your close rate holds.
That benchmark is above your max cost per lead. Tighten targeting and raise your close rate before you scale paid search.
Fill your pipeline at a price that pays
We build lead generation around your numbers (cost per lead, close rate and lifetime value), then follow up on every lead automatically.
How we calculated this: see the formula, a worked example and every source
Estimates for planning only; based on cited industry benchmarks. This is an estimate based on the numbers you entered. It's not a guarantee of results.
The Cold Butter Calculator
Get your response-time grade, the value of each lead and the customers you may be leaving between follow-up attempts 2 and 6.
The Bread & Butter Budget Planner
Work backward from the customers you want to the leads, clicks and monthly Google Ads budget you need, using industry benchmarks.
Housing ads have rules. We write with them in mind from the first draft.
Fair Housing Act
Housing ads can’t indicate a preference, limitation or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status or national origin (42 U.S.C. § 3604(c)). We write ads, pages and audiences with that in mind and add the Equal Housing Opportunity logo or statement wherever you use it.
Platform housing-ad policies
Meta runs U.S. housing ads in its Special Ad Category, and Google’s personalized-advertising policy covers housing ads. Both restrict targeting by age, gender and ZIP code, and campaigns are built inside each platform’s current policy.
Contractor license display
Many states require your license number in advertising. California’s CSLB requires it in all advertising, including websites; Florida requires it in each advertisement; Arizona expects it on the homepage when a URL stands in for the number. Confirm your state board’s rules.
Pricing, incentives and financing
Advertising specific rates, payments or down payments can trigger Truth in Lending Act (Regulation Z) disclosures. Have your lender approve financing copy, and keep incentive claims current, true and tied to real deadlines.
Texts and calls
Automated texts and calls, including AI-generated voices (FCC declaratory ruling, February 2024), need the buyer’s consent. Forms use separate, unchecked, optional consent boxes, and opt-outs made by any reasonable means are honored.
This is general information, not legal advice. Your team and your advisors make the final call on every ad.
Home builder marketing is the work of getting new-home buyers to find your communities, raise their hand and stay engaged until they sign a contract. For most builders, the hard part isn’t the first click. It’s the months between a floor-plan download and a model-home visit, when buyers are still comparing builders, lenders and neighborhoods.
Buttered Business handles both sides. We build the community pages, search visibility, ads and signage that bring buyers in. Then The Buttered System follows up with every inquiry by text, email, consented AI voice calls and personalized video until the buyer tours, buys or tells you no thanks.
| What it is | Marketing, AI follow-up and print for builders who sell new homes |
|---|---|
| Built for | Production, semi-custom and custom builders with web leads and long sales cycles |
| What’s included | Community and quick-move-in pages, SEO, ads, AI voice and video, nurture sequences, signage and EDDM |
| Follow-up | The Buttered System: an instant text and email, then nurture until the buyer tours, buys or opts out |
| Pricing | A custom quote in writing after your free audit |
| First step | A free audit of your website and community pages |
Most builders don’t have a lead problem. They have a follow-up problem. In a 2025 mystery shop of 50 builders (ECI/Lasso), 42% never made a single phone call to an online lead.
That gap is expensive because a new home is a big, slow decision. A buyer can download a floor plan in March, tour in May and sign in September, but only if someone is still in touch. When sales is busy with walk-ins, web leads get one or two emails and go quiet. Months later, they close with the builder who kept showing up.
The U.S. median new-home sales price was $393,700 in August 2026 (U.S. Census Bureau), and NAHB’s 2024 cost study put the average builder profit margin at 11.0% (NAHB). Multiply the two and one extra sale is worth roughly $43,300 in builder profit.
That figure is an illustration, not a promise. Your price points and margins will differ, and our free Lead Value Calculator runs your real numbers. Seen that way, a lead that goes cold isn’t a small loss. It’s a share of a five-figure profit driving to the community down the road.
The Buttered System is our five-step growth engine: attract, capture, follow up, convert and retain. For builders, each step is tuned to a sales cycle measured in months, not minutes.
Build demand early. A community landing page with a site plan, renderings and the price-range teasers you approve starts an interest list months before release. The list gets construction updates and first notice of new phases, so release day sells to warm buyers instead of starting cold.
Specs carry interest, taxes and upkeep every month they sit. Each quick-move-in home gets its own page, a personalized video walkthrough for interested buyers and fast follow-up, so you can move inventory before you reach for a deeper discount.
Custom buyers can take many months to decide. A long-cycle nurture sequence keeps you in touch with lot updates, design-center stories and build-progress videos, segmented by price range and move-in timeline. It stops the moment a buyer replies, books or opts out.
Agents bring buyers to builders who make their job easy. We build a broker page with your commission terms, current quick-move-in lists and registration rules, then keep agents updated, so your communities stay on their short list.
An AI voice agent answers the sales line when your team is with a buyer or the model is closed. It answers the community questions you approve, books tours and hands hot buyers to a person. Outbound calls go only to buyers who have given consent.
Under the Fair Housing Act, housing ads can’t indicate a preference or limitation based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status or national origin. We write ads, pages and audiences with that in mind, and we follow Google’s and Meta’s housing-ad policies, which restrict targeting by age, gender and ZIP code.
Many states also require a contractor or builder license number in advertising (California’s CSLB requires it everywhere, including websites), and financing claims such as rates or payments can trigger federal disclosure rules. We flag those items so your team and advisors can confirm them. This is general information, not legal advice.
It’s a strong fit if you sell from a model home or sales center, get web inquiries you can’t personally chase for months, or need to pre-sell a phase before it opens. It isn’t for builders who want shortcuts around fair-housing rules or a pile of cheap leads nobody follows up with.
Start with the step where you lose the most buyers. Your free website audit scores your site on SEO, speed, mobile experience, lead capture and AI search readiness, then gives you a prioritized fix list. Next, use the Follow-Up Calculator to see what slow responses cost and the Ad Budget Calculator to plan spend backward from the homes you need to sell. Use the results with us or without us.
Keep reading: Home Builder Marketing: How to Fill Your Pipeline Before You Break Ground, on our Marketing Wisdom blog.
Every statistic and rule on this page links to where it came from.
Business owners from different industries describe working with Ken Henderson, in their own words.
For all your marketing needs, Sublime Digital Marketing and Ken Henderson to the rescue!
Everyone quoted here worked with founder Ken Henderson when his agency was called Sublime Digital Marketing Group. Same founder, new name. Quotes are excerpts, exactly as given. Results vary by business.
Running totals from founder Ken Henderson’s client work, as reported by Ken.
6.5K+
Leads generated
Source: Owner-reported
99+
Businesses served
Source: Owner-reported
$5.5M+
Revenue generated for clients
Source: Owner-reported
Owner-reported totals, not independent research. Your results will depend on your market, your offer and how fast you follow up.
Still chewing on something?
Ask a real person. You’ll get a straight answer about your situation, with no pressure.
Within minutes, while the buyer is still thinking about your community. In a 2025 mystery shop of 50 builders, 42% never made a single phone call to an online lead. Fast, personal follow-up is one of the least expensive advantages in new-home sales, and The Buttered System sends a text and email the moment an inquiry arrives.
There’s no reliable industry-wide benchmark for builders. As a proxy, WordStream by LocaliQ’s 2026 search benchmarks put real estate at about $103 per lead. Track cost per appointment and cost per sale by source instead, because a cheap lead that never tours costs more than it saves.
Make each home easier to find and the follow-up harder to ignore. Quick-move-in landing pages, personalized video walkthroughs, fast responses and incentives tied to real deadlines move inventory while protecting margin. Our Lead Value Calculator shows what one extra sale is worth to you.
Yes. Start an interest list early with a landing page, site plan, renderings and price-range teasers you approve, then nurture it with construction updates. The first release sells to warm buyers instead of strangers. That’s building demand before you break ground.
Yes. Pages for each community, floor plan and quick-move-in home answer exactly what buyers search, such as “new homes in [city].” Structured data, fresh photos, genuine reviews and consistent business information also help you appear in Google’s map results and AI answers.
Yes. Each community can have its own pages, ads, follow-up sequences and reporting, so you can see which communities need more traffic and which need better follow-up.
No. It handles the follow-up your team doesn’t have time for, so your sales counselors spend more time with buyers who are ready to tour and sign. Hot buyers are handed to a person, not kept in an automated loop.
It depends on the number of communities and which steps of The Buttered System you need. You’ll get exact pricing in writing after your free audit, before you commit to anything.
Same system, different rules and numbers. See how it adapts.
The Butter Wrench
Answer every call, follow up on every estimate and earn more reviews, with local SEO, AI call answering and neighbor print for home service pros.
Answer every inquiry, follow up with prospects who reached out and get found in search and AI answers, built with attorney advertising rules in mind.
Keep more first-time donors with mobile-friendly giving, Google Ad Grants help, automated thank-yous and print that does more with less staff time.
Reach voters with campaign websites, digital ads, consent-based texting, yard signs and EDDM mailers, with disclaimer boxes built into every piece.
The Honor-Roll Roll
Turn more inquiries into enrolled families with school websites, local SEO, admissions ads and automated follow-up from inquiry to tour to application.
Request your free builder marketing audit. You’ll see how buyers find you today, where your site loses them and the first fixes to make.
Free. No obligation. You keep the report.
P.S. The buyer who toured last spring and went quiet may still be shopping. Once The Buttered System is live, it can reconnect with past leads who opted in to hear from you, starting the week it launches.
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