What Is The Best Marketing for Small Business?

Patrick McFadden

You really don’t understand a concept until you know what it’s made of. The normal framework of small business b2b marketing (filled with a ton tactics) is dismal at best. The tactics are so numerous, expensive and sometimes emotional that we easily focus on the shiny and urgent instead of the important. Perhaps we could try a different approach:

Here’s my take – the real problem in B2B marketing lies in the fact that you don’t simply generate a customer today, you date it.

Today I would like to outline what the best marketing (dating) framework might actually look like from a tactical standpoint for a typical service business.

Know Phase

This phase is about creating awareness so while it normally starts with a referral from a strategic partner, it’s often the act of putting content or marketing communication out there that gets the attention of your prospect.

If you’re a service business, high-quality content and referrals are your most effective form of awareness.

You may be creating awareness to attract more clients to your service business. You may be creating awareness for your product. You may be creating awareness for your methodology or process.

Know Tactics

  • Podcasting/online radio, or Adwords ad promoting free content that is related to your business or service offering but doesn’t sell directly
  • blog posts answering common client challenges amplified on social media platforms
  • LinkedIn promoted post for access to free content
  • LinkedIn groups discussions geared towards blog posts and free content

Like Phase

Imagine two people with an identical product and an identical price.
One person comes across as boring and impersonal. The other is charming, interesting, and makes you feel good. Which one would you rather continue talking to and do business with?

In this step you must move towards gaining permission to continue a conversation. The key here is your email capture activities.

Like Tactics

  • Create landing pages for specific content and social networks
  • Create landing pages with a month long autoresponder that delivers even more information
  • Offer a weekly newsletter to every person who downloads your content

Trust Phase

While you’re developing “the Know” through content, advertising, networking and referrals, “the Like”  through your website, landing pages, reception, and drip emails, you’re still not directly selling. But you are paving the road to eventually selling your product or service that’s related to your marketing down the line.

When it comes to selling your products or services, know and like alone are rarely enough — you need to become  trusted .

Trust is the most important element and can’t be simply manufactured through one or two tactics – it’s comes from integrating many activities.

Trust Tactics

  • Consistently deliver your newsletter
  • Educate at every stage – don’t promote
  • Get backlinks from reputable and authoritative websites
  • Participate on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter by sharing great content and helping others find what they want,
  • Consistently write educational and insightful blog content,
  • Stimulate reviews on sites like Google+, LinkedIn and Yelp,
  • Submit press releases to online distribution sites such as PRWeb
  • Locate industry or local publications that accept contributed guest content

Some questions you must ask: Does this interaction lead to know, like or trust? Do our services, processes and products support our framework? Is the framework pulling in numbers that demonstrate that it’s working?

In that light, what are you working on? If it’s not one of these three, you’re not going to seriously change the dynamic of your marketing, why exactly are you bothering?

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.
By Patrick McFadden April 27, 2025
“Most companies can scale process. Very few can scale how they think.”
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