The 5 myths of marketing leverage

Marketing exists to create movement — from disinterest to curiosity, from curiosity to confidence, and from confidence to action, then hopefully, evangelism. Leverage is the ability to create that movement.

I first started thinking about leverage through a graduate school negotiation case study taught by Prof. Ned Wellman. In the case study, a man named Bill hears that his city plans to spend $450,000 demolishing a beautiful 125-year-old building downtown.

Bill asks a simple question: “What if we could save the building for less than that?” He convinces the city not to demolish the building, secures incentives, and lines up a commercial buyer. At the end of the deal, he saves the building and pockets six figures.

The story proves it doesn’t “take money to make money.” It takes leverage. For marketers, leverage changes everything. No amount of ad spend, content production, brand awareness, or funny one-liners can compensate for a lack of leverage. Believe me. I’ve tried.

Unfortunately, most marketing teams don’t realize they lack leverage until it’s too late and too expensive to change. They’ve confused things that look like leverage with the real thing.

5 false signals of marketing leverage

Here are some things I’ve seen marketing teams confuse with leverage.

False leverage 1: Complexity masquerading as clarity

Some teams have convinced themselves they’re explaining things simply when they’re not. At that moment, it’s easy to see the customer as the problem. The real problem is that marketing is too familiar with the product for clarity and assumes customers are just as familiar.

I once worked with a company in generative AI. In their minds, their product was the simplest thing in the world. It took me three calls with the founder to understand what they actually did. Their prospects were giving up long before call three.

False leverage 2: Data masquerading as understanding

Marketers live in a fast-paced, data-driven world. But the more available data becomes, the easier it is to mistake observation for understanding. That’s like thinking you understand relationships because you attended a speed-dating event.

False leverage 3: Experience masquerading as market understanding

If you were in sales in the ’80s and ’90s, you used ACT! contact management software. Then Salesforce and HubSpot arrived and left them in the dust.

Success convinced ACT! they understood what customers would always want when they only understood what customers wanted then.

False leverage 4: Brand awareness masquerading as trust

I’ve watched campaigns go viral for years, and I’ve learned the hard way that being noticed isn’t the same as being trusted. Awareness can get a brand attention — even make it memorable. But attention and movement are two different things. People move when they trust you understand their world.

False leverage 5: Cleverness masquerading as persuasion

If there’s one thing marketers love, it’s a good line. But I’ve noticed there are a lot of funny ads that don’t boost sales. The problem is when cleverness becomes the goal.

Clever ads get attention, but attention isn’t movement. Marketing that moves people tends to say something true, sharp, or resonant enough that customers feel seen, perhaps a little exposed. That builds trust.

How to build the raw materials of leverage

The tricky part about leverage is that it’s wildly context-dependent. Marketers who can consistently move customers tend to obsess over understanding them — what they want, what they’re afraid of, and the tradeoffs they’re weighing. 

They’re not trying to know the audience. They’re studying customers the way a coach studies game film. They gather that understanding from a handful of places because no single system captures the full picture.

Talk to customers

The best marketers I know spend a surprising amount of time talking to their customers. Those conversations often have a structure, like jobs-to-be-done, voice of customer, or CX mapping. The goal is to spot patterns in motivations and ideal outcomes that shape decisions, but are otherwise easy to miss. I’m always amazed at what people reveal to someone who’s curious enough to ask and patient enough to listen.

That’s more than surveys or personas. It’s sitting in front of them, in person, and talking with them one-on-one. I’ve seen major insights come from fewer than 15 customer interviews. One thing that’s slipped me up is forgetting that frameworks are like GPS. They’re helpful, but they’re not always accurate. Best to keep your eyes on the road.

Watch what people actually do

I used to think customer interviews were the “end-all, be-all.” I’ve softened on that because I realized the picture they give is incomplete without seeing what customers actually do. The words are great, but behavior shows intent.

People mean what they say, but there’s usually a reason actions and words don’t line up. That’s why the marketers I’ve seen develop unusually deep customer understanding don’t stop at interviews.

They pair them with close observation of what customers choose to do. They use tools like analytics, heat maps, product usage, and customer reviews to uncover what people struggle to articulate.

Borrow other people’s lives

Marketers who seem “lucky” often have proximity to their customers. Their world overlaps with the customer’s world enough to create intuition about what matters.

Plumbers can understand HVAC technicians because their lives are similar. That kind of intuition gets harder when marketers have little firsthand exposure to the customer’s world.

I’ve also learned that the same closeness that helps marketers understand customers can lull them into overconfidence. “I am the customer” sounds clever, but it can create insular thinking. One person is a data point, not the market.

Listen to the people already talking to customers

I’ve always found it a little ironic how much big companies spend on understanding their customers while overlooking the people already talking with customers every day. Each department spends its days getting feedback from different parts of the customer experience, like the blind men and the elephant. Everyone experiences something true, but rarely sees the whole thing.

Great ideas have come from a janitor, a frustrated sales rep, or a customer success manager who notices a pattern. The challenge usually isn’t effort. It’s stitching all those partial truths into a coherent picture of the customer.

Stay curious

ACT! Software got comfortable being right. After all, they were right for 20 years. Why should Salesforce know the market better than them? They didn’t realize their customer understanding has a short shelf life.

That’s why the marketers most able to create leverage treat customer understanding as temporary. They’re always listening, testing assumptions, and staying curious after everyone else thinks they’ve got it figured out.

Making people move

Now, if you’re still with me, the thing I’m worried you’ve taken from all of this is that understanding customers = leverage. It isn’t.

It doesn’t become leverage until it’s demonstrated, and customers recognize themselves in what is communicated. That’s when trust forms, and people open up to moving. That’s how Bill did it.

Good marketing works the same way. It says, “We see you. We understand your pain. We can help.” That’s leverage — demonstrating understanding and building trust so another human being chooses to move.

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