Marketing Strategy - January Roundup

Patrick McFadden • January 24, 2022

Our theme for the month of January at Indispensable Marketing was “Small Business Marketing Strategy.”


Goodness knows there’s a lot of ground to cover when it comes to "what is a good marketing strategy?" or how to create a marketing strategy for a small business. And when you’re a small business owner, your primary marketing role is to create and advance the marketing strategy for your company! That means you need to have a clear understanding of what marketing strategy is based on the fact that a diagnosis must happen before you even think about the prescriptions. It’s a lot to handle, but we’ve got you covered.


These posts aim to help you, your team, and your marketing service providers better understand everything that goes into creating a comprehensive marketing strategy—one that makes your marketing effective.


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Diagnosis Before Prescription Post


Diagnosis Before Prescription — Marketing

One of my core points of view for business owners and CEOs of small businesses is “Diagnosis Before Prescription.” In other words, you must take the time to develop a solid strategy for your marketing before you ever consider the what and how of the tactical side — website, email, events, social media, marketing materials, advertising, etc.


Prescription Without Diagnosis is Malpractice

Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice - it's a phrase I've uttered many times to business owners who want to understand effective marketing.


Marketing Success: Diagnosis Before Prescription

Too many CEOs and owners of small businesses say “I need to be on LinkedIn” or “I should start producing videos” or “I should be creating articles” but they don’t see any results because they haven’t thought about WHY. Why are these prescriptions the ones you must take?


The Mistake I Most Commonly See Small Businesses Make When It Comes to Marketing

Starting with a prescription before a diagnosis. Thinking you just need a website, content creation, Facebook ads, or first page ranking on Google to make your marketing effective. These are elements of marketing but don’t really help you address who to market to, what should you be communicating, and where should you be placing your message — the effective part.


#1 Thing That Needs to Be in Place to Make Marketing Work

Recently I was asked, "what do owners and CEOs of small companies need to have in place in order to make their marketing work?" For some of you, this answer may not be surprising but for others, this will be an indispensable insight. The absolute #1 thing that needs to be in place to make marketing work is "diagnosis before prescription."


Eliminate Competitor Comparisons With Diagnosis Before Prescription

The marketing process we use takes the approach of diagnosis before prescription. What that means for our clients is we help them identify their ideal client within their target market and then create messaging to solve a specific problem in a very specific way.


8 Questions a Diagnosis Before Prescription Must Answer

The most common mistake we see business owners make is they hire a digital agency or marketing firm and then direct them on how to market their business. The business owner starts by saying, "they need a website that does this or a Facebook ad campaign that does that", maybe they do but maybe they don’t.


What Does a Marketing Foundation Based on Diagnosis Before Prescription Look Like?

If you follow me or have worked with the Indispensable Marketing team, we will often talk about having a marketing foundation based on diagnosis before prescription. So the question has come up: how do you map your marketing foundation? What does that look like?


Successfully Buying Marketing Services

I 110% believe that without developing a solid marketing strategy for your business, you can't buy marketing services such as seo, web design, social media, ppc, email marketing, tv advertising, radio advertising, billboards, or sponsorships in the right way.⠀


Marketing Strategy Post


9/10 Times Marketing Strategy Means Narrowing Who You’ve Been Trying to Market and Sell To

If you Google “marketing strategy” you’ll be welcomed by any number of articles that reveal a list of marketing tactics — websites, content, promotions, social media, etc. But that’s not how I see effective marketing developed and installed in the real world of a small business. Diagnosis (strategy) before prescription (tactics) is how you do effective marketing.


Marketing Strategy is The Part You Have to Figure Out First

Marketing strategy is one of my favorite topics, and it’s been something I've heavily focused on over the years because so many CEOs and Business Owners want to talk about tactics, you know -- email, websites, Linkedin, networking events, videos, SEO, and promotions.


4 Tactics You Must Use to Develop Your Marketing Strategy

There are (probably) 27,000 templates for marketing plans. One is sure to be perfect for your small business, and you'll probably find the right one about 6 months past when you needed it. But it's really not a template you need. It's a process approach to understanding where you've been, where you are, where you're going (or should be), and what resources are required to get there. Easy. Really.


Why Thinking Strategy Before Tactics is the Key to Your Marketing

A lot of business owners who think marketing, start with tactics: email campaigns, website design, LinkedIn and promotions. Truth be told, most well-known marketers do the same thing. But today, I want to affirm that marketing doesn’t start with tactics, it begins with strategy.


Strategy is a Small Business Owners Primary Role in Your Marketing

Recently I was speaking with a group of owners and CEOs of small businesses that wanted to know about what their primary role in marketing should be. As an owner or CEO of a small business, your primary marketing role is to create and advance the marketing strategy.


What Does Your Marketing Strategy Say About Your Business?

Is your marketing strategy preventing you from attracting more clients? Learn how to complete your marketing strategy in a way that facilitates sales. You use marketing strategy about your ideal clients so that you can build stronger relationships. In the same way, potential clients engage your marketing strategy to collect information and gauge interactions to see if you qualify as a potential provider.


5 Steps to Get Clear on Marketing Strategy For Small Business

Most small businesses hear marketing strategy and immediately think website, email newsletter, copy, LinkedIn and promotions — you know, tactics. Heck, most well-known marketers do the same thing. Today, I’m here to affirm that none of your tactics matter until you are crystal clear on a marketing strategy development process.


5 Steps to Fix Your Failing Marketing Strategy

Fix The Well, Not The Sink: Most business owners want to fix the tactical issue when it’s a strategy issue that is causing the problems. Please read this article carefully. There’s a lot of change happening in the small business marketing world, and it’s not going to slow down. Ever.


How Marketing Strategy Can Solve Your Sales Challenges

The way small business owners think about marketing strategy is broken. Email marketing, sale presentations, websites, advertising, search engine optimization, social media, you know tactics seem to dominate their marketing strategy thoughts. Truth is, for any set of tactics to work they must appeal to someone, which inevitably comes back to strategy.


10 Questions to Ask Before You Create a Marketing Strategy

So you’re ready to take a more process approach in your marketing efforts, but you’re not sure where to start… You’ve come to the right place. Marketing strategy must come before tactics and these 10 questions will help guide you through the process. From overall characteristics about ideal clients to logistics about measurement and offers, these questions walk you through the steps you should take prior to hitting “go.”


Business Marketing Strategy Examples

Home Service Contractor Example on How to make price a non-sticking point


Kitchen Remodeler Example on figuring out who our ideal customer is


Local Commercial Cleaning Example on understanding what you do that is both wanted and valued


Contact Your Marketing Consultant at Indispensable Marketing

If you’re a small service based business that needs help with developing a clear marketing strategy for your business or your business’s online presence on Google and other search engines, at Indispensable Marketing we can help. We offer marketing strategy consulting, marketing audits, monthly marketing packages, consultations, exploratory calls or monthly local SEO servicesContact us for more information.


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