Lately, I’ve been hooked on reruns of Undercover Boss.

If you’re not familiar with the show, each episode follows a CEO or senior executive who goes undercover to work alongside frontline employees, learning how the business actually operates from the inside out. Not from dashboards. Not from boardrooms. From the floor.

Personally, I think every medium- to large-sized business should do this at least once. It’s one of the few ways leadership is forced to confront reality without filters, PowerPoint decks, or internal politics.

One episode that caught my attention recently featured a Budget Blinds franchise. In the episode, a field technician completed a window treatment installation and then did something most companies would applaud: he canvassed the surrounding neighborhood and hung door knockers, letting nearby homeowners know the service was available.

From a traditional sales perspective, this was smart. Door knockers convert some calls. Visibility matters. Local awareness matters.

But it also perfectly illustrates how limited most marketing thinking still is.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth:

A door knocker might generate a few leads.

A customer-centric experience could generate an entire neighborhood.

Imagine this instead...

You’ve just completed a window treatment installation. The homeowner is thrilled. Their space looks better. Feels better. They’re proud of the investment they made in their home. Emotionally, they are at peak satisfaction.

Now imagine the business doesn’t stop at “job complete.”

Instead, the company helps the homeowner host a simple reveal gathering. Friends, neighbors, family members drop by to see the transformation. The homeowner tells the story themselves — why they chose the brand, how the experience was, what changed.

That single customer, in that moment, is more powerful than a stack of door knockers will ever be.

And that is where marketing should live.

Unfortunately, marketing has slowly devolved into a desk job. Dashboards. Attribution models. CRMs. Click-through rates. Endless debates about whether Google Ads or Salesforce dashboards are “working.”

What gets lost is something far more fundamental:

Your highest-converting marketing channel is not a platform.

It’s your existing customer.

The problem is that customers don’t automatically market for you.

They have to be invited. Enabled. Given a reason and a system that makes sharing natural, rewarding, and socially meaningful.

This is where most companies fail — and where the phrase Customer-centric Marketing gets completely misunderstood.

If you follow me for even a few minutes, you’ll hear me repeat those words often. And I can tell you with confidence that 99.999% of CMOs and marketers will tell you Customer-centric Marketing means customer service.

It DOES NOT.

Customer-centric Marketing is not about being nice to customers. It’s not about faster response times or better support scripts. It’s not about post-sale surveys or loyalty programs that no one remembers.

Customer-centric Marketing is the strategy that social media itself is built on.

You’re reading this article because of it.

Facebook didn’t hire me to post.

LinkedIn didn’t ask permission.

They didn’t pay me.

They didn’t brief me.

They gave me a platform — and I used it to self-promote.

In doing so, they turned me, their customer, into their marketer.

THAT’S Customer-centric Marketing.

It’s not about controlling the message. It’s about creating an environment where customers want to share their story — because it reflects positively on them.

That’s also why hanging flyers is fundamentally flawed. No one cares about flyers. There’s no identity attached to them. No social proof. No trust transfer.

But when a homeowner proudly shows off their newly designed space, the brand doesn’t have to sell anything. The trust is already embedded in the relationship between the customer and their network. The brand simply rides along.

This is why localized, customer-driven marketing consistently outperforms centralized, corporate messaging.

When someone invests in their home — whether it’s windows, design, furniture, landscaping, or renovation — they are emotionally invested. They are proud. They want validation. They want to share.

And yet, nearly every business ignores this moment of peak engagement.

Instead, they default to outdated tactics: flyers, ads, cold outreach, generic campaigns — even though Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and every modern platform have already proven, beyond debate, that turning customers into marketers is the most effective growth strategy ever created.

Customer-centric Marketing isn’t louder.

It isn’t cheaper.

It isn’t trend-driven.

It’s structural.

It’s about designing your business so customers naturally become the distribution channel — not because you asked them to “refer a friend,” but because sharing their story benefits them.

If you own any business — service-based, local, regional, or global — this applies to you.

And if you’re still relying on door knockers, ads, or dashboards to tell you what’s working, you’re leaving your most powerful growth lever untouched.

If you want to change that, let’s talk.

I build Customer-centric Marketing strategies that don’t just generate leads — they create momentum.