# Marketing Strategy

> Marketing strategy, positioning, personas, and channel planning with mandatory discovery gates

- Skill: `majiayu000/marketing-strategy-2` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds add majiayu000/marketing-strategy-2`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/majiayu000/marketing-strategy-2/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Product & Planning
- Author: majiayu000 (https://skillmd.com/u/majiayu000)
- Updated: 2026-09-09
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/majiayu000/marketing-strategy-2

---


# Strategy Skills

Build marketing strategy, positioning, personas, and action plans with mandatory gates.

---

## The Iron Laws

```
1. NO POSITIONING WITHOUT DISCOVERY FIRST
2. NO PERSONA WITHOUT EVIDENCE SOURCE
3. NO NEW CHANNELS WITHOUT CURRENT CHANNEL AUDIT
```

Violating the letter of these rules is violating the spirit.

---

## Positioning

### When to Use

- "help me position [brand]"
- "create positioning statement"
- "what makes us different"
- "build messaging framework"

### Discovery Gate (MANDATORY)

BEFORE writing positioning, ask these ONE AT A TIME:

**Phase 1: Understand Brand**
1. "What does [brand] sell? (specific product/service)"
2. "Who buys it? (specific role/persona)"
3. "What problem does it solve for them?"
4. "What happens if they don't solve this problem?"

**Phase 2: Understand Market**
5. "Who are your main competitors? (name 2-3)"
6. "Why do customers choose you over them?"
7. "What can you claim that competitors cannot?"

**Phase 3: Validate**
8. "Is this differentiator: Believable? Provable? Sustainable?"

**IF any answer is "I don't know"**: That's a gap to fill, not to assume.

### Quality Gates

| Element | Good | Bad (Reject) |
|---------|------|--------------|
| **Audience** | "VP Engineering at Series B SaaS, 50-200 employees" | "Businesses" / "Everyone" |
| **Need** | "Ship features faster without breaking production" | "Be more efficient" |
| **Benefit** | "Reduces deployment time by 60%" | "Saves time" |
| **Differentiator** | "Only platform with automatic rollback on error spike" | "Better than competitors" |

### Positioning Statement Format

```
📍 POSITIONING STATEMENT

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

For **[specific target audience]**
who **[specific need/problem]**,

**[Product name]** is a **[category]**
that **[key benefit - specific, measurable]**.

Unlike **[named competitor or alternative]**,
we **[specific, provable differentiator]**.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

**Tagline:** "[Short, memorable version]"

**Discovery Completed:**
- Target audience: [Source/validation]
- Differentiator: [Evidence/proof point]
- Competitor comparison: [Based on what]
```

### Red Flags - STOP

If you're writing:
- "Innovative" / "Leading" / "Best-in-class" → Empty claims, ask for specifics
- "Businesses of all sizes" → Too vague, narrow the audience
- "Unlike traditional solutions" → Name the actual competitor
- "Saves time and money" → Generic, what specifically?

---

## Personas

### When to Use

- "create persona"
- "who is our audience"
- "buyer persona"
- "target audience"

### Evidence Gate

BEFORE creating personas, identify evidence source:

| Source | Confidence | How to Handle |
|--------|------------|---------------|
| Customer interviews (10+) | High | Use confidently |
| Sales/support call patterns | Medium | Use with caveats stated |
| Brand context inference | Medium | State assumptions clearly |
| No data (guessing) | Low | Ask for evidence first |

### Persona Format

```
👤 PERSONA: [Name - not stereotypical like "Marketing Mary"]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## Profile
- **Role:** [Specific title]
- **Company:** [Size + industry]
- **Reports to:** [Who]
- **Budget authority:** [Yes/No/Partial]

## Pain Points (ranked)
1. [Most painful - specific, quantified if possible]
2. [Second]
3. [Third]

## Goals (ranked)
1. [Primary - specific outcome]
2. [Secondary]

## Decision Process
- **Researches via:** [Specific channels]
- **Influenced by:** [People/sources]
- **Timeline:** [Buying cycle length]

## Messaging

✅ **DO say:**
- [Specific message based on pain points]

❌ **DON'T say:**
- [What turns them off]

**Evidence Source:** [Where this data came from]
```

### Persona Limit

Maximum 3 personas:
- **Primary** (70%+ of customers)
- **Secondary** (20%)
- **Tertiary** (10% - only if distinctly different)

More than 3 = haven't prioritized. Ask: "Which ONE drives most revenue?"

---

## Channel Strategy

### When to Use

- "what channels should I focus on"
- "channel strategy"
- "should I try [channel]"
- "audit my marketing"
- "where should I advertise"

### Optimize Before Expand Gate (NON-NEGOTIABLE)

**Step 1: Discover Current Investments**

Ask: "What marketing channels are you currently investing in?"

Wait for answer. Checklist:
- [ ] Google Ads?
- [ ] Meta Ads (Facebook/Instagram)?
- [ ] LinkedIn Ads?
- [ ] SEO/Content?
- [ ] Email marketing?
- [ ] Social media (organic)?
- [ ] Other?

**Step 2: Assess Each Active Channel**

For EACH channel mentioned, ask:
"For [channel], what's the performance?"
- Profitable (making money)?
- Break-even (covering costs)?
- Unprofitable (losing money)?
- Unknown (not tracking)?

**Step 3: Gate Check**

```
IF any channel is "unprofitable" or "break-even" or "unknown":

⛔ GATE BLOCKED

Current channel [X] needs attention first:
- Performance: [status]
- Recommendation: [Optimize/Pause/Track]

Let's address this before considering new channels.
```

```
IF all channels are "profitable":

✅ GATE PASSED

Current channels are healthy. Now we can discuss:
1. Scaling existing profitable channels
2. Testing new channels
```

### Channel Audit Format

```
📊 CHANNEL AUDIT

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

| Channel | Status | Performance | Action |
|---------|--------|-------------|--------|
| Google Ads | Active | Profitable | 📈 SCALE |
| Meta Ads | Active | Break-even | 🔧 OPTIMIZE |
| SEO | Active | Unknown | 📊 TRACK |

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## Recommendations

### 🥇 Priority 1: [Channel]
**Action:** [OPTIMIZE/SCALE/PAUSE]
**Why:** [Specific reason]
**Next Step:** [Specific action, 5-15 min]

### ⛔ Pause/Fix First:
- [Channel]: [Why]

## Gate Status
- Channels audited: ✅
- All profitable: [Yes/No]
- Can recommend new: [Yes/No + reason]
```

### Deflection Responses

| User Says | Correct Response |
|-----------|------------------|
| "Should I try TikTok?" | "First, what channels are you currently using? Let me audit those." |
| "I want to expand to LinkedIn" | "Before adding channels, are your current ones profitable?" |
| "What's the best channel for B2B?" | "Depends on your situation. What are you already investing in?" |

---

## Playbook

### When to Use

- "create a playbook"
- "what should I do first"
- "marketing action plan"
- "next steps"

### Task Granularity

Each task = ONE specific action (5-15 minutes):

❌ BAD: "Optimize landing pages"

✅ GOOD:
- "Identify top 3 landing pages by traffic (check analytics)"
- "Run page 1 through PageSpeed Insights"
- "List the top 3 issues from the report"
- "Fix issue #1 on page 1"

### Playbook Format

```
📋 PLAYBOOK: [Brand Name]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## Week 1-2: Quick Wins
- [ ] (10 min) [Specific action]
- [ ] (15 min) [Specific action]
- [ ] (10 min) [Specific action]

## Week 3-4: Foundation
- [ ] (30 min) [Specific action]
- [ ] (20 min) [Specific action]

## Month 2+: Growth
- [ ] [Specific action]
- [ ] [Specific action]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

**Based on:** [Channel audit / positioning / etc.]
**Priority focus:** [Main area]
```

---

## Verification Checklist

BEFORE presenting strategy output:

### Positioning
- [ ] Discovery questions completed (all 8)?
- [ ] Audience specific (not "businesses")?
- [ ] Benefit measurable?
- [ ] Differentiator provable?
- [ ] Named a specific competitor?

### Personas
- [ ] Evidence source stated?
- [ ] Pain points specific and quantified?
- [ ] Limited to 3 or fewer?

### Channels
- [ ] Current investments discovered?
- [ ] Each channel's performance assessed?
- [ ] Gate check completed?
- [ ] No new channel recs without gate pass?

If any unchecked: Go back and complete.