Strategy Foundations

Strategy foundations — what makes a marketing plan real

A strategy is not a tactic list. A strategy is the insight that makes a specific set of tactics correct for a specific business at a specific moment. If the insight is missing, the tactic list is indistinguishable from a generic agency deck.

Triggers

• company_plan
• company_set_strategy_inputs
• marketing strategy
• positioning
• tactics
• campaign
• launch plan
• 30-day strategy

The five agency principles (load-bearing)

1. STRATEGY BEFORE TACTICS — every tactic must ladder to a stated objective. If you can't name the objective in one sentence, the tactic is decoration.
2. DISTINCTIVE > DIFFERENT — create memory structures (recognizable hooks, repeated assets), not just differentiation. Sameness is invisible; memory is durable.
3. COMPOUND EFFECTS — prioritize tactics that build on each other over time (an editorial calendar that becomes a SEO moat) over one-shot stunts.
4. MEASURE WHAT MATTERS — vanity metrics (impressions, follower counts) are a distraction. Pick a North Star that corresponds to revenue or activation.
5. SPEED TO LEARN — launch fast, iterate faster. The perfect strategy that ships in week 4 loses to the rough strategy that runs experiments in week 1.

Four strategic frameworks (apply at least one)

• PESO — Paid / Earned / Shared / Owned media. Maps every tactic to its distribution category so you know your channel mix.
• RACE — Reach / Act / Convert / Engage. Maps every tactic to its funnel stage. Most strategies over-index on Reach; balanced strategies have all four.
• See-Think-Do-Care — intent-based marketing. What is the audience trying to do at this moment? Tactics that don't match intent fail.
• Jobs-to-be-Done — focus on the customer outcome, not your features. "Hired for what job?" beats "what does it do?".

Reference campaigns to learn from (real numbers)

• Slack — "So Yeah, We Tried Slack" — 8,000 companies in 24hrs from authenticity-led B2B viral.
• HubSpot — Inbound Marketing flywheel — $1B+ company built on free tools and content.
• Spotify Wrapped — UGC engine — 60M shares annually, zero ad spend.
• Dollar Shave Club — $4,500 video → $1B acquisition. Hook + ruthless brevity.
• Notion — Template Gallery — 30M users via community-led growth.

When proposing a tactic, name which reference campaign or framework it inherits from. "Editorial calendar" with no provenance is decoration; "HubSpot-style flywheel content" with three named pillars is a tactic.

The four dead shapes (do NOT use)

1. Tactic-first strategy — listing tactics with no objective ("we'll do SEO + email + social"). Always start with the insight.
2. Generic positioning — "We help businesses leverage AI". Replace every "leverage" with a specific verb.
3. Vanity-metric north star — measuring impressions or followers. Pick a metric that connects to a dollar.
4. One-channel monoculture — putting all weight on one platform is fragile. PESO forces channel diversity.

When you're inside company_plan

1. Read company.yaml (product) + strategy_inputs (business context) + the capability map from company_capabilities.
2. Pick the strategy mode from inputs (standard / unconventional / guerrilla / brand-awareness / controversial). Don't default — different brands need different tones.
3. Pick the focus (full / SEO / content / paid / social / email / brand / GEO). Match to the company's channels list, not your preference.
4. Output the full JSON schema (16+ fields) including the EloPhanto extensions: vault_requirements, tool_requirements, voice_seed, agent_role_assignments, execution_priority.
5. Be exhaustive on requirements. Every credential the strategy assumes (SMTP, social tokens) becomes a vault_requirements entry. Every tool/connector the strategy mentions (LinkedIn poster, podcast scheduler) becomes a tool_requirements entry. Missing entries become operator blockers later.
6. Seed the voice contract. Pull 3-6 hookTemplates from creativeDirections, list 3-8 banned phrases that would contradict the desired voice, name 2-4 tone descriptors, write one cta_style sentence. This pre-seeds Phase 10's voice gate so drafts are lint-able on day one.

What this skill does NOT do

• It does NOT generate the strategy itself — that's company_plan's job (it ships a full LLM-tuned prompt with these principles embedded).
• It does NOT pick tactics for any specific business — tactics depend on product + audience + budget + risk.
• It does NOT replace per-company voice.yaml — voice is downstream of strategy; the voice_seed in the strategy proposal feeds the Phase 10 contract.