marketingskills/skills/plan/references/methodology.md

Methodology — How a Marketing Plan Gets Made

The three-phase workflow that produces a comprehensive marketing plan. SKILL.md is the orchestration layer; this is the operational detail.

Phase 1 — INIT (research + intake)

Goal: Walk into Phase 2 with enough context to draft every section without guessing.

Step 1.1 — Set up the plan folder

~/marketing-plans/{client-slug}/
├── materials/        # Client-provided files go here
├── research.md       # Written by this phase
└── progress.md       # Phase markers, updated as REVIEW progresses

If ~/marketing-plans/{client-slug}/research.md already exists, this is a resumed plan — skip to Phase 2.

Step 1.2 — Read existing materials

If materials/ has files, read all of them. Common drops:

• Pitch deck / investor deck
• Positioning doc / brand voice doc
• Customer research / ICP doc
• App Store metrics / analytics snapshot
• Lifecycle email inventory
• Prior audit output (audit_final_output.md from /audit-marketing)
• SEO research (seo/plan.md, seo/keyword-shortlist.md)
• Kickoff call transcript
• Founder Slack / async notes

Read everything. Capture key facts to research.md as you go.

Step 1.3 — Pull live data where wired

If MCPs/APIs are wired for this client, pull:

• Ahrefs → domain rating, organic keywords, backlinks, top pages, ref domains (per /seo-audit skill)
• GA4 MCP → traffic by channel, conversion events, retention curves
• Stripe MCP → MRR, ARR, churn, plan mix, blended LTV by cohort
• App Store Connect (manual or dev-browser) → install → trial → paid funnel; cohort retention
• Customer.io MCP → flow inventory, send / open / click / unsubscribe rates
• Shopify → product page conversion, AOV, repeat rate
• GitHub MCP → repos inventory, last commit dates, what's stale
• Notion → internal knowledge directory if exposed

Don't ask the user to copy/paste data that can be pulled directly.

Step 1.4 — Conduct structured intake

For every gap in the materials, ask the user. The minimum intake covers ten topics:

Intake 1 — Client overview

• What does the company do, in one sentence (founder's words)?
• What's the primary product?
• What other products / SKUs / tiers exist?
• Is the product live, beta, or pre-launch?
• If beta: throttling? GA timeline?

Intake 2 — ICP

• Who are you for, in one sentence?
• What do they say they want?
• What do they actually want?
• What's their stated problem? Their real problem?
• Demographics / firmographics: who fits the ICP exactly?

Intake 3 — Funnel state today

• What are the current funnel numbers? (signups, activations, paid, retention)
• What's the funnel shape — is it bottle-necked at top, middle, or bottom?
• What's the biggest leak?

Intake 4 — Funding state

• Current round (pre-seed / seed / Series A / etc.)?
• Total raised to date?
• Current burn / runway?
• Active raise? Closing when?
• Investors of note?
• Permission to mention fCMO engagement in pitches?

Intake 5 — Team

• Founders and what each owns (product, marketing, sales, etc.)?
• Other roles on the team and their marketing surface area?
• Advisors who touch marketing?
• Agencies / contractors / fractionals?
• Where are the obvious gaps?

Intake 6 — Budget

• Current monthly marketing spend, broken down: paid acquisition, tools, retainers, headcount?
• Budget tier this maps to (see funding-stage-unlocks.md)?
• What budget unlocks when the next round closes?

Intake 7 — Channels currently active

• Acquisition: organic SEO, paid search, paid social, content, social, partnerships, events, PR, ambassadors, etc. — for each, status (live / paused / never tried)
• Activation: onboarding state, signup flow, paywall, first-session experience, app store listing
• Retention: lifecycle email state, in-app upsells, churn cohort
• Referral: program existence, attribution, inbound interest
• Revenue: pricing structure, plan mix, recent experiments

Intake 8 — Already done

What past work should this plan acknowledge?

• Major launches and dates
• PR moments and who covered
• Content pillars / hubs / cornerstone pieces
• Partnerships
• Awards / certifications
• Notable customers / users (if consumer-named users)
• Past advisors / fractionals

Intake 9 — In-flight and stuck

• What's drafted but not shipped? Why?
• What's been "almost ready" for months?
• What's blocking each?
• What's broken or actively harmful?

Intake 10 — Strategic posture

• The most important thing to fix this quarter (founder's read)
• The most important thing to ignore this quarter (founder's read)
• What investors / board are asking about most
• Any constraints not visible elsewhere (legal, partnership-related, brand-related)

Step 1.5 — Optionally run audit-marketing

If no audit has been run on this client AND the user wants a formal scored current-state, offer:

"Want me to run /audit-marketing {client-domain} before we draft the plan? It produces a 17-section scored audit that becomes the foundation of Section 3 (Current State). Takes ~30–60 min of walking through sections together."

If user agrees, run that skill. Resume here when done.

If user declines (common when fCMO already has rich context), use the rubric as a current-state lens against existing materials — faster, less rigorous, captured in references/current-state-rubric.md.

Step 1.6 — Write research.md

Compile everything into research.md with this structure:

# {Client} — Marketing Plan Research Record

**Date:** YYYY-MM-DD
**Author:** (fCMO / planner name)

## Company snapshot
- One-sentence description
- Stage (pre-seed / seed / Series A / etc.)
- Product status (beta / GA)

## ICP
- Primary ICP
- Stated vs. actual problem
- Demographics / firmographics

## Funnel state today
- Current numbers
- Funnel shape
- Biggest leak

## Funding
- Total raised
- Current round status
- Runway

## Team
- Founders and ownership
- Marketing surface area by person
- Gaps

## Current marketing budget
- $/mo total
- Breakdown
- Tier mapping

## Channels currently active
[By AARRR stage]

## Already done (acknowledge in plan)
[List]

## In-flight and stuck
[List with blockers]

## Strategic posture
- Founder's top priority
- Founder's top de-prioritization
- Investor pressure points
- Constraints

## Audit-marketing scores
[If run, paste section scores. If not run, mark "lens used, not formal audit."]

## Materials read
[List of files in materials/ + when read]

Save. Move to Phase 2.

---

Phase 2 — REVIEW (section-by-section drafting)

Goal: Walk through all 13 sections of the plan template (references/plan-template.md), drafting each, getting user confirmation, saving as you go.

Step 2.1 — Initialize progress.md

# {Client} — Marketing Plan Progress

## Sections completed
- [ ] 1. Executive summary
- [ ] 2. Strategic frame
- [ ] 3. Current state
- [ ] 4. Acquisition
- [ ] 5. Activation
- [ ] 6. Retention
- [ ] 7. Referral
- [ ] 8. Revenue
- [ ] 9. 90-day roadmap
- [ ] 10. 12-month outlook
- [ ] 11. Marketing operations stack
- [ ] 12. Tactical idea bank
- [ ] 13. Measurement, RACI, open decisions, appendix

Step 2.2 — Walk each section in order

For each section, use the template at references/plan-template.md to draft. Then in chat:

1. Present the draft (or key bullets — short sections inline, long sections as bullet outline first)
2. Ask: "Approve, adjust, or expand?"
3. Iterate until user confirms
4. Save the confirmed text to a per-section file (section-1.md, section-2.md, etc.) or to a single growing draft_plan.md
5. Check the box in progress.md
6. Move to next section

Step 2.3 — Section-specific guidance

Section 1 (Executive summary) is typically drafted last in actual writing time — easier after all the other sections exist. But present it first in the output document.

Section 3 (Current state) is where audit-marketing output gets integrated. If a formal audit was run, paste the scored rubric. If not, use the rubric as a lens (see references/current-state-rubric.md).

Sections 4–8 (AARRR) each follow the same internal structure: current state, the plan (numbered moves), 90-day moves, 12-month outlook, skills + tools. Don't skip the skills + tools sub-section — it's what makes the plan operationally honest.

Section 11 (Marketing operations stack) is auto-generatable from references/ops-stack-mapping.md plus the specific moves named in Sections 4–8.

Section 12 (Idea bank) is auto-generatable from references/idea-cross-reference.md plus client-specific filters (skip ideas that conflict with brand voice; status moves based on funding-stage timing).

Section 13 lives at the end. Open decisions should be ranked by impact. Appendix should reference only files the team can access (warn about machine-local paths).

Step 2.4 — Brand voice consistency

If the client has documented brand voice rules (captured in research.md / Section 2), every section must respect them. Common voice constraints:

• Vocabulary rules (YES / NO lists)
• CTA rules (e.g., "never pressure")
• Initiatory vs. explanatory framing
• Tone (e.g., authoritative-yet-accessible, intimate-yet-professional)

If a section's draft violates the brand voice, redo it before showing it to the user.

---

Phase 3 — FINALIZE (compile + verify + publish)

Goal: Produce final_plan.md and optionally publish to a shared repo.

Step 3.1 — Compile

Concatenate all 13 sections into final_plan.md. Add:

• Title header with date and "v1" version marker
• "Prepared by / For / Date / Status" frontmatter
• Section anchors that work in Notion paste

Step 3.2 — Verification pass

Before printing:

• Cross-reference check — every marketing-ideas number (e.g., "idea #17") matches the actual idea in references/idea-cross-reference.md. Every related-skill mention exists in the marketingskills repo.
• MCP/API check — every tool mentioned in Section 11 actually exists in the user's stack (per research.md intake) OR is flagged as "future / not yet wired."
• Path check — no machine-specific paths (/Users/..., /home/...) in the output. Replace with descriptive references.
• Voice check — final read against brand voice rules. Flag and fix violations.
• Open-decisions check — every "TBD" or unanswered question from intake is listed in Section 13's open decisions, not hidden in the body.
• Acknowledge check — every item from "already done" in research.md is acknowledged somewhere in the plan.

Step 3.3 — Print

Output final_plan.md to the plan folder. Print a summary to chat:

"Marketing Plan v1 saved to ~/marketing-plans/{client-slug}/final_plan.md. ~X,XXX words across 13 sections. Ready to paste into Notion or share with the team."

Step 3.4 — Publish (optional)

Ask the user:

"Want me to publish this to a shared GitHub repo so the team can access it? If yes, what's the target repo and path (e.g., {client-org}/{client-context}/marketing/plan.md)?"

If yes:

• Clone (or assume cloned) target repo
• Check out a feature branch or push direct to main per user's preference
• Copy final_plan.md to the target path
• Adjust the appendix to use repo-relative paths (not machine paths)
• Commit + push
• Confirm with commit URL

If no: leave it local. Done.

---

Resuming a plan

If progress.md shows incomplete sections, resume from the next unfinished. Skip Phase 1 entirely. Open research.md to refresh context, then dive into the next section.

If the user says "start over" or "redo Section X," respect that — reset that section's progress marker and re-draft.

Failure modes to watch for

• Skipping intake. A plan written without proper intake is generic and won't survive contact with the founder. Always do the full ten-topic intake unless the user explicitly waives it.
• Pretending data exists. If you can't confirm a number (current MRR, retention rate, etc.), don't guess. Mark it [TBD — to confirm with team] in the plan and add to open decisions.
• Ignoring the brand voice. If the client has a strong voice (most do), every section must respect it. Read the voice rules before drafting any copy-adjacent text.
• Padding the idea bank. Section 12 is comprehensive only if it includes the skip list with reasons. Don't pad with ideas that clearly don't fit just to hit the 139.
• Glossing over uncomfortable metrics. If churn is high or activation is low, name it in Current State. Founders read past sugar-coating.
• Forgetting funding-stage logic. If the client is mid-raise, the plan must explain what changes when the round closes. Skipping this turns a plan into a wish-list.