Blueprint for Future Marketing: 5 Behaviors You Must Embrace Right Now
Patrick McFadden • July 5, 2017
While it’s impossible to see the future, it is possible to prepare for it.
Customer experience, Big data, Content marketing, Digital media, Inbound marketing, Inbound selling, these are just some of the elements that are involved in the future of marketing.
So how can marketers use all of this to better engage with customers? In a way that generates long-term loyalty? And builds business results?
By acknowledging that the future of marketing is about organizing behavior. To understand how to use or improve any marketing initiative, you first have to understand how your current customers behave.
In my opinion this is the formula for evaluating any new technology or platform. When you take into consideration what you’re already doing that works and ask how you can use new technology or platforms to do more of that, you’ll rarely get caught up in the shiny object syndrome.
- To create a better customer experience you need to address the behavior that customers want to have at every touchpoint.
- To effectively use big data you need to address visitors based on their actual behavior.
- To employ content marketing successfully you need to match different kinds of content with the behaviors of customers in the life cycle.
Today, marketing is about guiding buyers on a journey they want to take and identifying the core behaviors they desperately want to experience on their way to becoming loyal customers. Organizations that understand this and create and organize opportunities for people to experience these behaviors at any point along the customer lifecycle will win.
5 Behaviors You Must Embrace Right Now
Below are five behaviors you can no longer ignore as they’ve become universal across industries and demographics in the way buyers want to behave:
- Permission – Customers seek to give permission to companies they want to engage with, anticipating personalized and relevant messages. Marketers must view this as the privilege of connecting with receptive audiences who actively seek their offerings.
- Educate – They want to learn more about the companies that might be addressing their needs. Shopping is inherently an educational activity for buyers, who seek information to make informed decisions. Marketers must recognize the role of educating customers, providing valuable insights and resources to facilitate decision-making processes.
- Trust – They want to see others they relate to have come to trust certain organizations. Seth Godin famously said, “What would change the mind of many people resistant to evidence is a series of eager testimonials.” Customers value testimonials and endorsements from peers, underscoring the importance of trust in purchasing decisions. Marketers should prioritize building trust through consistent delivery of exceptional experiences and garnering enthusiastic endorsements from satisfied customers.
- Sample – They want to be able to sample your expertise, product or service so they don’t look foolish. Continuing to build trust is such an essential element of long term loyalty. Offering opportunities for customers to sample expertise, products, or services instills confidence and reduces apprehension. Marketers should provide avenues for customers to experience offerings firsthand, reinforcing trust and loyalty.
- Refer – They want to share with the world how smart they are. They want an experience that surprises them, excites them or so clearly exceeds their expectation in ways that make them turn to social channels to share their story. Customers seek experiences that surpass expectations, compelling them to share their stories with others. Marketers can capitalize on this by delivering memorable experiences that inspire customers to become brand advocates, amplifying reach through word-of-mouth referrals.
To address these key behaviors effectively, every facet of marketing, sales, and service initiatives must be meticulously designed to organize the behaviors customers crave. By aligning strategies with customer preferences and desires, organizations can forge meaningful connections, drive loyalty, and ultimately achieve sustained success in the dynamic realm of modern marketing.
Everyone is scaling outputs. Almost no one is scaling judgment.
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.
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.
