melgarafael/growthos/marketing-strategy

Marketing Strategy Skill

Trigger Conditions

Use this skill when the user asks to:

• Create or refine a marketing strategy
• Plan a campaign or launch
• Define marketing OKRs or KPIs
• Analyze market position or competitive landscape
• Build content pillars or editorial calendars
• Prioritize marketing initiatives
• Conduct TAM/SAM/SOM analysis
• Design a growth model or funnel

Brand Voice Integration

MANDATORY: Before generating ANY strategy content, load the brand voice configuration.

from growthOS_shared.config import load_brand_voice
brand = load_brand_voice()

All strategy outputs must align with brand.tone, respect brand.avoid terms, and pass anti_slop validation. Strategy documents that ignore brand voice are invalid.

Growth Frameworks

AARRR — Pirate Metrics Framework

The AARRR framework (Dave McClure, 500 Startups) maps the full customer lifecycle into 5 measurable stages. Use this as the primary diagnostic framework when a user needs to understand where their growth is leaking.

How to apply AARRR:

1. Diagnose first — Ask: "Which stage is the biggest bottleneck?" Use data if available, or hypothesize based on product maturity.
2. One stage at a time — Focus resources on the weakest stage. Improving Retention before scaling Acquisition prevents burning budget on users who churn.
3. Set stage-specific OKRs — Each stage gets its own Objective and 2-3 Key Results.
4. Measure cohorts, not aggregates — Weekly or monthly cohorts reveal trends that aggregate numbers hide.

Stage-specific playbooks:

• Acquisition bottleneck: Audit channel mix, test 3 new channels with small budget, measure CAC per channel. Consider content marketing (low CAC, slow) vs paid (high CAC, fast).
• Activation bottleneck: Map the first 5 minutes of user experience. Identify the "aha moment" (the action that correlates with retention). Reduce steps to reach it.
• Retention bottleneck: Build cohort analysis. Identify the "habit loop" — what makes users return? Add engagement hooks (notifications, digests, streaks). Segment by behavior.
• Revenue bottleneck: Test pricing tiers. Add annual plans (reduce churn). Identify expansion revenue opportunities (upsell, cross-sell). Optimize trial-to-paid flow.
• Referral bottleneck: Add referral program with bilateral incentives. Measure k-factor. Make sharing frictionless and contextual (share after a success moment, not randomly).

ICE Scoring — Quick Prioritization

ICE (Sean Ellis) is a lightweight scoring model for rapid prioritization of growth experiments.

ICE Score = (Impact + Confidence + Ease) / 3

When to use ICE: For backlogs of 10-30 ideas that need quick ranking. Not suitable for strategic decisions requiring deeper analysis.

Pitfalls to avoid:

• Confidence inflation — teams overestimate confidence on their own ideas. Require evidence links.
• Ease bias — easy tasks get prioritized over high-impact hard tasks. Weight Impact 2x if needed.
• Score anchoring — first scorer sets the range. Use blind scoring then average.

RICE Prioritization — Data-Driven Ranking

RICE (Intercom) adds Reach to create a more rigorous prioritization model.

RICE Score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) / Effort

When to use RICE: For roadmap prioritization with 5+ competing initiatives. Best when you have data on Reach.

Confidence calibration:

• 100% = have data proving it works
• 80% = strong qualitative signal (user interviews, competitor proof)
• 50% = intuition only — acceptable but flag it

Positioning Frameworks

Category Design

Category design (Play Bigger methodology) means defining and owning a new market category rather than competing in an existing one.

Steps:

1. Identify the problem the market doesn't know it has — Frame a "before" and "after" that shifts perception.
2. Name the category — The name should be intuitive, memorable, and googlable. Test with 5 people outside your industry.
3. Lightning strike — Coordinate a launch event that educates the market on the category and your position as the leader.
4. Category POV document — Write a 2-3 page manifesto explaining why the old way is broken and what the new category enables.

When NOT to use: If you're entering an established category with a better/cheaper product, compete on positioning within that category instead.

Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)

JTBD (Clayton Christensen, Tony Ulwick) reframes positioning around the job the customer is hiring your product to do.

Job statement formula:

When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [expected outcome].

Example:

When I'm planning next quarter's content, I want to quickly generate
platform-specific posts, so I can maintain consistent presence without
spending 20 hours per week on content.

Applying JTBD to positioning:

1. Interview 10-15 customers about their last purchase decision
2. Extract the functional, emotional, and social jobs
3. Identify over-served jobs (competitors do this well) and under-served jobs (gap)
4. Position your product around the under-served jobs
5. Write messaging that directly addresses the job, not your features

Positioning Canvas

Use this structured canvas to define positioning:

positioning:
  target_customer: "[Specific persona with problem]"
  category: "[Market category you compete in or create]"
  key_differentiator: "[The one thing you do uniquely well]"
  proof_points:
    - "[Data point or case study 1]"
    - "[Data point or case study 2]"
    - "[Data point or case study 3]"
  competitive_alternative: "[What customers use today instead]"
  unique_value: "[The transformation you enable]"

Content Pillar Methodology

Content pillars are 3-5 core themes that all content maps back to. They ensure consistency, reduce content planning overhead, and build topical authority.

Building Content Pillars

Step 1: Audit your expertise zones List everything your team/product knows deeply. Group into 5-8 clusters.

Step 2: Map to audience jobs For each cluster, answer: "Does my audience actively seek information about this?" Eliminate clusters with no audience demand.

Step 3: Narrow to 3-5 pillars Criteria for a strong pillar:

• You have genuine expertise (not generic takes)
• Your audience has proven demand (search volume, community questions)
• Competitors underserve this topic
• It connects to your product's value proposition

Step 4: Define sub-topics per pillar Each pillar should have 10-20 sub-topics. These become individual content pieces.

Step 5: Map pillars to funnel stages

Pillar A → TOFU (awareness) + MOFU (consideration)
Pillar B → MOFU (consideration) + BOFU (decision)
Pillar C → TOFU (awareness)

Content Pillar Template

pillar:
  name: "[Pillar Name]"
  description: "[1-2 sentence description]"
  target_persona: "[Primary persona]"
  funnel_stages: [awareness, consideration, decision]
  sub_topics:
    - name: "[Sub-topic]"
      format: [blog, video, social, newsletter]
      priority: [high, medium, low]
      search_intent: [informational, navigational, transactional]
  kpis:
    - metric: "[e.g., organic traffic to pillar pages]"
      target: "[e.g., 5,000 visits/month within 6 months]"

Campaign Planning Structure

Campaign Brief Template

Every campaign should start with a brief that answers these questions:

campaign:
  name: "[Campaign Name]"
  objective: "[Single clear objective — use SMART format]"
  target_audience:
    primary: "[Persona with demographics and psychographics]"
    secondary: "[If applicable]"
  key_message: "[One sentence — what should the audience think/feel/do?]"
  channels:
    - channel: "[e.g., LinkedIn]"
      role: "[e.g., thought leadership, lead gen]"
      budget: "[If applicable]"
      content_types: ["posts", "articles", "ads"]
  timeline:
    start: "YYYY-MM-DD"
    end: "YYYY-MM-DD"
    milestones:
      - date: "YYYY-MM-DD"
        deliverable: "[What ships]"
  success_metrics:
    primary: "[The ONE metric that defines success]"
    secondary:
      - "[Supporting metric 1]"
      - "[Supporting metric 2]"
  budget:
    total: "[Amount]"
    breakdown:
      - category: "[e.g., paid ads, tools, freelancers]"
        amount: "[Amount]"
  risks:
    - risk: "[What could go wrong]"
      mitigation: "[How to prevent or respond]"

Campaign Types and Playbooks

Competitive Positioning Matrix

Building a Competitive Matrix

Step 1: Identify competitors

• Direct competitors (same solution, same audience)
• Indirect competitors (different solution, same problem)
• Substitutes (what people use instead, including doing nothing)

Step 2: Define comparison dimensions Choose 5-8 dimensions that matter to your target buyer. Examples:

• Price, ease of use, feature depth, integrations, support quality, time-to-value

Step 3: Score honestly Rate each competitor 1-5 on each dimension. Be honest — inflating your score undermines the exercise.

Step 4: Find your wedge The wedge is the dimension where you score highest AND competitors score lowest. This becomes your primary positioning angle.

competitive_matrix:
  dimensions:
    - name: "[Dimension]"
      weight: [1-5]  # How important to buyer
  competitors:
    - name: "[Competitor]"
      scores:
        "[Dimension]": [1-5]
      positioning: "[Their main claim]"
  your_wedge: "[Dimension where you win]"
  messaging_angle: "[How to frame your advantage]"

OKR Writing for Marketing

OKR Structure

Objective: Qualitative, inspirational, time-bound. Key Results: Quantitative, measurable, challenging but achievable (70% hit rate target).

Marketing OKR Templates

Growth-stage OKR:

O: Establish [Brand] as the go-to solution for [Job-to-be-Done]
  KR1: Grow organic traffic from [X] to [Y] monthly visits
  KR2: Achieve [X]% trial-to-paid conversion rate (from [current]%)
  KR3: Reach [X] qualified leads per month via content marketing