How data and authentic relationships help Bild Media’s clients compete with housing giants

In 2020, just a year after striking out on his own, David Finney thought he’d found stability. Bild Media, the scrappy agency he’d built from scratch, had landed a multi-location manufactured housing retailer that accounted for nearly a fifth of its revenue. 

For a bootstrapped shop with fewer than two dozen clients, it was the kind of win that signaled legitimacy. Then came the call that changed everything.

“The client called me up and said, ‘Hey, you know, it makes more sense for us to hire an internal marketing team. We’re scaling back all of our agency spend by 80 percent,’” David recalls. “When you’re small and only have 20 clients, that was a big hit. That was significant.”

For many founders, that kind of sudden revenue loss would have been a breaking point. 

Instead of folding, David retooled. The setback sharpened his approach, cementing the values that still drive Bild Media today: relationships, agility, and a relentless focus on helping small businesses compete with giants.

David Finney’s path to agency leadership

David Finney didn’t set out to work in the manufactured housing industry or run a marketing agency, for that matter. He grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and was more interested in cycling and the great outdoors than boardrooms and business plans. 

At Virginia Tech, he entered as an engineering student, only to pivot into marketing and business communication after realizing his passion for storytelling outweighed his knack for equations.

After college, David and his wife bounced between outdoor adventures and early jobs. He worked in sales at a local gym, where he got his first taste of small-business marketing. When the gym’s agency failed to deliver results, David rolled up his sleeves and figured out campaigns himself.

David spent nearly a decade at 21st Mortgage, a subsidiary of Clayton Homes, the nation’s largest homebuilder. The role gave him broad exposure to the manufactured housing market, from servicing to marketing to business development, and laid the groundwork for his future agency. 

Over time, he realized he craved a more agile, hands-on environment where changes could be made quickly. That desire led him to leave the corporate world and launch Bild Media while maintaining strong relationships with former colleagues.

If you're a company of 15,000 people, as the market changes, it's going to take you longer to change. If we're going to do something, we're going to do it. We'll try it, and if it doesn't work, we'll try something else.

David Finney, CEO, Bild Media

The RV year that shaped Bild Media

David left 21st Mortgage and started freelancing. The timing seemed promising. He had industry knowledge, a growing network, and a vision for helping smaller retailers punch above their weight. 

Bild Media began with the intent to help the underdogs of the factory-built housing industry—the independent retailers and mom-and-pop operations that didn’t have the budget or bandwidth to match corporate competitors.

By 2020, David and his wife had also opened a gym of their own. When the pandemic hit and service-based businesses shut down, they decided to close it, sell their house, and take their family on the road in an RV. They thought they were selling at the top of the housing market—“which turned out not to be true,” David says with a laugh—but the move gave them freedom. 

For the next 18 months, David worked from the passenger seat and campground picnic tables across the country, building his agency while his wife homeschooled their kids.

During the RV period, every client counted, and David was intent on doing whatever he could to keep them coming back for more. Unfortunately, clients often make surprising decisions that are outside our control. That massive multi-location housing brand that accounted for a fifth of Bild’s revenue? This is when they left.

“It was tough to lose that much business all at once,” David recalls. 

However, the story didn’t end there. 

A few months later, the client returned—and they’re still with Bild today. That experience underscored his belief that when you build on trust, honesty, and transparency, clients often come back after testing other options.

On the road, David met with clients face-to-face throughout the country, tested strategies across markets, and proved that small agencies could operate with the flexibility and speed their corporate competitors lacked. 

After 18 months in the RV, the agency had reached a scale that demanded more stability. Client work had multiplied, the first hires were coming on board, and it was clear that managing a growing business required a permanent base. 

That’s when the Finneys chose Grand Junction, Colorado. This location offered both community for their family and room for Bild Media to establish its first office and expand into a true agency operation.

How Bild Media levels the playing field for manufactured housing

The manufactured housing industry is shaped by three giants: Clayton Homes, Champion, and CFCO. Together, they dominate national market share, leaving independent retailers to compete in a field where resources are far from evenly distributed. 

Backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Clayton alone controls roughly half of the US manufactured housing market. Champion and CFCO divide another 30 to 40 percent between them, meaning three corporations control as much as 90 percent of the industry.

This concentration creates a steep climb for independent manufactured housing retailers. Most are family-owned operations with lean staff and limited budgets. They rarely have in-house marketing expertise, and even fewer can compete with the massive advertising spends of the big three. 

This is where Bild Media found its opportunity: Equipping smaller manufactured housing players with the data, strategy, and digital tools that allow them to thrive in markets where corporate competitors once felt untouchable.

David took everything he learned while working at Clayton for nearly a decade and translated it into big wins for small businesses.

We can leverage all this knowledge we have about photos and ad copy and targeting and placement and cadence—we'll turn on some ads for you and it will work because it's worked a hundred times over for everyone else across the country. 

David Finney, Owner, Bild Media

With millions in ad spend tested across dozens of markets, Bild Media delivers big-league insights to mom-and-pop manufactured housing shops. But data alone isn’t the differentiator. The agency’s model goes beyond lead generation, helping their clients’ sales teams convert those leads into closed deals. 

You can do the best advertising in the world, but if the sales team isn’t receiving that business in an efficient way, your advertising isn’t really doing them much at all. 

David Finney, Owner, Bild Media

David isn’t interested in one-size-fits-all “dealer packages” or rigid playbooks. Every client gets a tailored approach—even if that makes scaling harder. 

“There is no one solution that’s going to work for everyone,” David says. “So we come up with different solutions for every single one of our clients.”

Those solutions cover the full digital spectrum—websites that function as storefronts, social media campaigns that keep brands visible in their local communities, Google Ads that capture high-intent buyers, and SEO strategies grounded in transparency and trust. 

But what keeps manufactured housing clients sticking around is the relationship. Month-to-month contracts, flexible pricing, and a money-back guarantee make the partnerships feel safe and fair.

David’s expertise also extends beyond client work. He’s a regular speaker at industry events, including the Florida Manufactured Housing Association convention, where he leads workshops on social selling and improving the customer experience. Through these appearances and his ongoing Postcards & Pro Tips YouTube video series, David reinforces Bild Media’s reputation as both a partner to retailers and a thought leader in the manufactured housing industry.

For small businesses, that combination—data-backed results, consultative guidance, and a human approach—delivers big-brand expertise without the big-brand price tag. Clients gain access to insights and strategies tested at scale, tailored to their own markets in ways they can actually afford.

How authentic relationships power client acquisition and retention

David treats work culture as the foundation for success. For him, that means creating an environment where people trust each other, have balance outside the office, and learn together through real shared experiences. 

Bild operates on a four-day workweek, with hours from 9 to 4. Every employee enjoys consistent three-day weekends, which David sees as essential for focus and energy during the week. 

The agency’s location reinforces this mindset. Headquartered on Main Street in downtown Grand Junction, the team works within walking distance of restaurants, local shops, and a vibrant community. An additional office at the nearby ski resort adds a distinctive benefit: Employees can ski during the day and continue work with fresh energy.

“You can leave the office and be in a nice, positive environment,” David says. “I'm not walking out into some apartment or in some parking complex or whatever. The outside environment is just as important as the one inside.”

That mindset also shapes Bild Media’s service to clients and flows directly into how Bild builds client relationships.

All partnerships are structured on a month-to-month retainer, and David will refund fees when a project doesn’t align. These policies create a sense of safety for clients and establish trust from the outset.

We've been two or three months in a relationship, and it's just not working out. And I'll send every dime they ever paid us back. If it's work we did for a website, I’ll say, ‘We'll keep this website up till you find a better one. We won't charge you. We're not going to be doing updates and all that, but we're not going to take something down.’ 

Oftentimes, they don't find anything better, and they come back and start paying again.

David Finney, Owner, Bild Media

Today, churn remains extremely low (one to two clients per year), and new business often comes from word of mouth.

For agency owners, the lessons are actionable:

• Design culture and client service around the same value: When trust, transparency, and honesty run through both, employees and clients experience consistency.

• Build safety into agreements: Flexible contracts and refund guarantees reduce hesitation and increase trust at the start of relationships.

• Rely on reputation as a growth channel: A strong reputation naturally attracts referrals, which compound into long-term acquisition.

Clients recognize the results. Heather Collins, Sales Manager at S and M Home Sales, shared on Bild Media’s website: “We’ve never been this busy. We’ve sold more homes than we ever have, and it’s hard to keep up with all the traffic we’re getting.”

Building a scalable agency team and tool stack worth every penny

One of the biggest turning points for Bild Media came when David realized he couldn’t keep doing everything himself. Like most founders, he wore every hat at first: ads, reporting, client calls, and technical integrations. It worked with a handful of accounts, but as clients multiplied, he needed a different approach.

Instead of hiring generalist account managers, David built a team of specialists. Each role came with a clear focus:

• Web analyst: Oversees data analysis, tracking performance, and spotting campaign patterns. By dedicating one person to the numbers, Bild delivers sharper insights and keeps analytics at the core of every decision.

• Social media manager: Owns content creation, community engagement, and paid campaigns. Clients benefit from someone fully immersed in their brand conversations.

• Automations specialist: Manages Zapier integrations and backend workflows, ensuring leads flow seamlessly into CRMs and client systems without bottlenecks.

“We're all very specialized in what we do, like an assembly line,” David says. “It gives us a lot of credibility because when someone's talking about something, they're an expert at it.”

That said, expertise comes with a price tag. David isn’t afraid to loosen the purse strings for the right hire. And he’s found that an incremental difference in pay often produces exponential returns in performance.

Alongside this hiring strategy, David applied the same philosophy to tools. “If you want a tool, look at the most expensive option. It’s usually worth it,” he says. 

That belief drives Bild Media’s investment in its tech stack:

• Monday.com for CRM and project management

• Zapier for automation

• Aircall for phone calls

• FreshBooks for accounting

• Gusto for payroll and HR 

• Calendly for scheduling

• Mailchimp for email marketing

On the reporting side, Bild Media runs AgencyAnalytics, which David adopted about two years ago. Moving away from static PDFs, Bild Media began delivering live dashboards that clients could explore anytime. 

The shift immediately differentiated sales conversations and became a reliable retention tool. Clients consistently praised the transparency and interactivity, while white labeled branding reinforced Bild Media’s credibility.

This combination of expert people, premium tools, and transparent reporting allowed Bild to stay lean while serving 70 to 90 clients at a time. 

As David puts it, “We spend a lot of money on software so we can stay small and nimble.”

The lesson for agency owners is clear: Build depth with specialists, equip them with the best tools, and use transparent reporting to retain clients and win new ones.

Show clients the full picture in one dashboard—transparent reporting that proves your value and keeps them coming back. Try AgencyAnalytics free for 14 days.

Consulting, expansion, and growth: The path ahead for Bild Media

David thinks about growth in terms of opportunity, not scale for its own sake. Bild Media’s path forward centers on extending its problem-solving approach into adjacent markets where independent businesses face the same uphill battles as housing retailers.

The first expansion is already underway. Bild is investing heavily in Monday.com consulting, aiming to become a premier partner that helps clients design customized business systems. This adds another layer to the agency’s value: driving leads and building the operational backbone that helps clients manage growth.

Other possibilities reflect David’s own experiences. Having lived the RV lifestyle with his family, he sees clear opportunities in RV dealerships, campgrounds, and local tourism businesses. Many of these operations thrive on location and service but lack a digital presence. David envisions “Bild Local” or “Bild Resorts” as natural extensions of the brand, offering the same marketing and consulting support that has worked so well in manufactured housing.

Through all of this, David admits he doesn’t write rigid five-year plans; he follows the opportunities that align with the agency’s strengths and culture. Each expansion is guided by client needs, team expertise, and the same commitment to problem-solving that fueled Bild’s early years.

Key takeaways from Bild Media’s story

David Finney built Bild Media without outside capital, fixed contracts, or a one-size-fits-all playbook. What carried the agency from a freelancer’s hustle to a 100-plus-client operation was far simpler.

Transparency, trust, and a genuine dedication to solving people’s pain points have shaped the culture, giving the team a sense of belonging and shared purpose. It guides client relationships, creating bonds that turn into low churn and steady referrals.

David says that genuine relationships will continue to win in the age of AI, speed, and cost-cutting.

I could turn the camera around, talk into it, do a home tour, and put it on my social channels. Or, I could go to VO3 and have some ridiculous orangutan do it. And the orangutan is a thousand times easier, right? It's 100 bucks a month for that subscription. You put in a prompt, and it does it. 

Typically, the harder things are the better things to do. So, I think all businesses, small, medium, and large, are going to have to do everything they can to retain authenticity or they're going to start losing people.

David Finney, Owner, Bild Media

For other agency owners, David’s journey offers several clear takeaways:

• Authenticity scales: Build it into your culture and client model, and it becomes a powerful engine for growth.

• Specialization beats generalization: Create roles where each person can excel, and let clients experience that depth directly.

• Invest where it matters: The right tools, the right people, and the right environment elevate performance far beyond their cost.

• Growth follows truth: Expansion comes most naturally when it aligns with lived experience and client demand.

Bild Media’s story shows that small agencies don’t have to mimic corporate giants. They succeed by doubling down on their own strengths, building lasting trust, and creating the kind of resilience that turns setbacks into fuel for the next stage of growth.