5 Ways to Supercharge Your Brand Awareness

Patrick McFadden • November 6, 2016

I recently looked at data from a survey conducted in December 2015 of more than 1,000 small businesses across the U.S. regarding their use of digital marketing. Respondents were asked to list their top digital marketing goals, and priorities, which also reveals some challenges. The results clearly showed me what small business owners hope to achieve with their marketing in 2016; first sales but after that growing brand awareness or conveying information.

The ultimate goal of any business is to gain more trust with current clients and achieve better brand awareness among the target audience.

Mapping The Customer Awareness Journey

One of the hardest things for many small business owners to do is to put themselves in the shoes of prospective customers long before that customer is aware that you have the answer.

We often want to convince and persuade people we can solve problems they don’t even know they have.

In order to effectively increase brand awareness you must fully understand the questions your prospects are asking themselves before they are aware that you or your solutions exist.

For example, if you sell websites, you must start to increase  brand awareness through your marketing to prospects, not by explaining how great your websites are, but by addressing ways that businesses can build a stronger case for industry expertise, attract more customers and make it easier for customers to find the information they need — all great uses of websites by the way.

5 Ways Small Businesses Can Supercharge Brand Awareness

#1. Website

At the awareness stage, your prospective leads aren’t doing research with the intention of purchasing anything from you. Instead, they’re simply looking for answers, entertainment, or information! Approximately 96% of visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy.

And that’s exactly why, at the early stages of the customer’s journey, you create content that is educational and useful.

Examples of educational content:

  • 7 Things to Check BEFORE Calling For Appliance Service
  • Top 5 Website Problems and Solutions
  • How to Guarantee You Never Suffer By Hiring the Wrong Handyman
  • Free Ebook: How to Master Small Business Marketing in 10 Days
  • What Every Senior Must Know About Obama’s Health Care Changes
  • 13 Things Your Pediatrician Won’t Tell You
  • How to Eat Anything and Lose Weight
  • 101 More Things You Can Eat to Slim Down
  • The 3-Step Process to Selling Your Home Faster
  • How to Win the Home Bidding War
  • 7 Things That Cost You When Buying a Home
  • The Ultimate Tip Sheet for Tipping Your Movers?

You lure them in, with the hopes that when they are ready to buy, they’ll think of your business.

To get this content in front of eyeballs, advertising, SEO (search engine optimization) and social media marketing play a huge part.

#2. Advertising

Your ads may be the first way someone is introduced to your business. Advertising is looked at by most small business owners as a tool to sell, instead of create awareness. This awareness approach can in fact benefit a small business, if the advertising message is right, and if the awareness that is created, spells out a key benefit.

The point is that the most effective form of advertising for the small business does sell — not a product a service, but an action. A call to pick up the phone, fill out a form, request for more information, visit your website, leave a business card, or send an email to get something of value. To begin a relationship with the advertiser.

The good news about this approach to advertising is that you don’t need fancy copy, hired models or big budgets. You only need a very strong offer targeted at the right audience. Sell permission to educate your prospect and you will find that advertising does indeed increase brand awareness quite well.

#3. Marketing materials

Don’t forget marketing materials that can be downloaded online to help tell your story and increase brand awareness in more tactile ways.

Do you know why most marketing materials fail? Because first they are sales materials. . .written to convince someone to buy. Guess what, nobody wants to be sold anything.

Really effective small marketing materials educate the prospects by:

  • showing them solutions,
  • allowing them to see themselves building a relationship with your firm,
  • demonstrating knowledge and expertise,
  • showing past successes and the like.

Awareness and trust are it for business owners and unless you’ve got millions laying around to buy ads on a million channels, you better get down in the trenches and map out how to educate first, sell later.

#4. Social Networking

Simply put social networking on sites such as LinkedIn or Quora are excellent ways to increase brand awareness . It will allow you and/or your team to answer questions and meet prospects in the industry. Instead of going to these sites with the sole intention of selling your products, try to educate and connect with these people on a personal level.

#5. Social Media

Social media is incredibly helpful in first introducing your customers to your business or product. Being active on social media, especially LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ can help your SEO ranks. Often, social media channels will show up high on any local search. Frequently use keywords for which you want to show up in searches, and you can improve your search engine rankings in those keywords.

In addition, social media advertising has become more effective over the years. You can target potential customers based on interest, who they follow or like, even location getting your brand/product or service in front of more of your ideal clients.

Conclusion

The overall theme of this post is to question whether or not y ou are driving value that goes beyond the products and services you sell. That is the essence of a increasing brand awareness today, and I hope you’re applying it to your brand awareness efforts.

The Missing Layer in AI: Why Judgment, Not Just Data, Will Define the Next Era of Intelligence

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
Everyone is scaling outputs. Almost no one is scaling judgment.

Everyone Talks About AI Judgment. We Built It.

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
Ask anyone in tech where AI is headed, and they’ll tell you: “The next leap is reasoning.” “AI needs judgment.” “We need assistants that think, not just answer.” They’re right. But while everyone’s talking about it, almost no one is actually shipping it. So we did. We built Thinking OS™ —a system that doesn’t just help AI answer questions… It helps AI think like a strategist. It helps AI decide like an operator. It helps teams and platforms scale judgment, n ot just generate output. The Theory Isn’t New. The Implementation Is. The idea of layering strategic thinking and judgment into AI isn’t new in theory. The problem is, no one’s been able to implement it effectively at scale. Let’s look at the current landscape. 1. Big Tech Has the Muscle—But Not the Mind OpenAI / ChatGPT ✅ Strength: Best-in-class language generation ❌ Limitation: No built-in judgment or reasoning. You must provide the structure. Otherwise, it follows instructions, not strategy. Google DeepMind / Gemini ✅ Known for advanced decision-making (e.g., AlphaGo) ❌ But only in structured environments like games—not messy, real-world business scenarios. Anthropic (Claude), Meta (LLaMA), Microsoft Copilot ✅ Great at answering questions and following commands ❌ But they’re assistants, not advisors. They won’t reprioritize. They won’t challenge your assumptions. They don’t ask: “Is this the right move?” These tools are powerful—but they don’t think for outcomes the way a strategist or operator would. 2. Who’s Actually Building the Thinking Layer™? This is where it gets interesting—and thin. Startups and Indie Builders Some small teams are quietly: Creating custom GPTs that mimic how experts reason Layering in business context, priorities, and tradeoffs Embedding decision logic so AI can guide, not just execute But these efforts are: Highly manual Difficult to scale Fragmented and experimental Enterprise Experiments A few companies (Salesforce, HubSpot, and others) are exploring more “judgment-aware” AI copilots. These systems can: Flag inconsistencies Recommend next actions Occasionally surface priorities based on internal logic But most of it is still: In early R&D Custom-coded Unproven beyond narrow use cases That’s Why Thinking OS™ Is Different Instead of waiting for a lab to crack it, we built a modular thinking system that installs like infrastructure. Thinking OS™: Captures how real experts reason Embeds judgment into layers AI can use Deploys into tools like ChatGPT or enterprise systems Helps teams think together, consistently, at scale It’s not another assistant. It’s the missing layer that turns outputs into outcomes. So… Is This a New Innovation? Yes—in practice. Everyone says AI needs judgment. But judgment isn’t an idea. It’s a system. It requires: Persistent memory Contextual awareness Tradeoff evaluation Value-based decisions Strategy that evolves with goals Thinking OS™ delivers that. And unlike the R&D experiments in Big Tech, it’s built for: Operators Consultants Platform founders Growth-stage teams that need to scale decision quality, not just content creation If Someone Told You They’ve Built a Thinking + Judgment Layer™… They’ve built something only a handful of people in the world are even attempting. Because this isn’t just AI that speaks fluently. It’s AI that reasons, reflects , and chooses. And in a world that’s drowning in tools, judgment becomes the differentiator. That’s the OS We Built Thinking OS™ is not a prompt pack. It’s not a dashboard. It’s not a glorified chatbot. It’s a decision architecture you can license, embed, or deploy— To help your team, your platform, or your clients think better at scale. We’ve moved past content. We’re building cognition. Let’s talk.

We Found the Missing Layer AI Has Been Waiting For

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
In every era of innovation, there’s a silent bottleneck—something obvious in hindsight, but elusive until the moment it clicks. In today’s AI-driven world, that bottleneck is clear: AI has speed. It has scale. But it doesn’t have judgment . It doesn’t really think . What’s Actually Missing From AI? When experts talk about the “thinking and judgment layer” as the next leap for AI, they’re calling out a hard truth: Modern AI systems are powerful pattern machines. But they’re missing the human layer—the one that reasons, weighs tradeoffs, and makes strategic decisions in context. Let’s break that down: 1. The Thinking Layer = Reasoning with Purpose This layer doesn’t just process inputs— it structures logic. It’s the ability to: Ask the right questions before acting Break down complexity into solvable parts Adjust direction mid-course when reality changes Think beyond “what was asked” to uncover “what really matters” Today’s AI responds. But it rarely reflects. Unless told exactly what to do, it won’t work through problems the way a strategist or operator would. 2. The Judgment Layer = Decision-Making in the Gray Judgment is the ability to: Prioritize what matters most Choose between imperfect options Make decisions when there’s no clear answer Apply values, experience, and vision—not just data It’s why a founder might not pursue a lucrative deal. Why a marketer might ignore the click-through rate. Why a strategist knows when the timing isn’t right. AI doesn’t do this well. Not yet. Because judgment requires more than data—it requires discernment . Why This Is the Bottleneck Holding Back AI AI can write. It can summarize. It can automate. But it still can’t: Diagnose the real problem behind the question Evaluate tradeoffs like a founder or operator would Recommend a path based on context, constraints, and conviction AI today is still reactive. It follows instructions. But it doesn’t lead. It doesn’t guide. It doesn’t own the outcome. And for those building serious systems—whether you’re running a company, launching a platform, or leading a team—this is the wall you eventually hit. That’s Why We Built Thinking OS™ We stopped waiting for AI to learn judgment on its own. Instead, we created a system that embeds it—by design. Thinking OS™ is an installable decision layer that captures how top founders, strategists, and operators think… …and makes that thinking repeatable , scalable , and usable inside teams, tools, and platforms. It’s not a framework. It’s not a chatbot. It’s not another playbook. It’s the layer that knows how to: Think through complex decisions Apply judgment when rules don’t help Guide others —human or AI—toward strategic outcomes This Is the Missing Infrastructure Thinking OS™ isn’t just about better answers. It’s about better thinking—made operational. And that’s what’s been missing in AI, consulting, leadership development, and platform design. If you’re trying to scale expertise, install judgment, or move from tactical to strategic… You don’t need a faster AI. You need a thinking layer that knows what to do—and why. We built it. Let’s talk.
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