Marketing Skills v2.3.0

A minor release adding one substantial new skill (marketing-plan) — a comprehensive AARRR-structured marketing plan generator written for fractional CMOs and founders. No changes to any of the other 42 skills' content, plus two small reverse cross-references so users browsing marketing-ideas and customer-research discover marketing-plan.

Total skills: 43

New skill: marketing-plan

The "fCMO deliverable" — the kind of marketing strategy artifact a fractional CMO presents to founders at the start of an engagement. Produces a 13-section, ~10K-word, Notion-paste-ready plan document customized to the client's actual budget, team, stage, and tooling stack, with future funding milestones mapped explicitly.

The 13-section structure

1. Executive summary — 3 big bets, 90-day priorities, 12-month outcome (written so it can be lifted into an investor or board update)
2. Strategic frame — Category claim, ICP, business-model logic, brand voice
3. Current state — Scored against an embedded 17-section current-state rubric, with phase of SaaS growth named ($0–10K / $10K–100K / $100K–1M / $1M+)
4. Acquisition — Channels current + planned + skipped, 90-day and 12-month moves, skills + tools
5. Activation — Onboarding, first session, signup, paywall, lifecycle setup
6. Retention — Lifecycle flows, churn prevention, win-back
7. Referral — Ambassador / affiliate / WOM mechanics
8. Revenue — Pricing, packaging, upsells, B2B ACV, plus the required unit-economics table (ARPC, blended CAC, retention, LTV)
9. 90-day roadmap — Weeks 1–2 / 3–4 / 5–8 / 9–12, AARRR-tagged, owner-assigned
10. 12-month outlook — Quarterly milestones tied to funding-stage capability unlocks, anchored to a defensible growth pattern (linear, step-function, or layered S-curves), with budget method shown explicitly
11. Marketing operations stack — Skills + MCP/API integrations mapped to each AARRR stage, plus a RACI mapping the three core marketing functions (Growth / Product / Content) to internal owner and external executor
12. Tactical idea bank — All 139 ideas from marketing-ideas cross-referenced to AARRR + client-specific status (Now / Q2 / Q3+ / Q4+ / Skip)
13. Measurement, RACI, open decisions, appendix — North-star metric, leading indicators by stage, RACI table

Three-phase workflow

INIT → REVIEW → FINALIZE. Read materials, conduct structured intake covering funding state, team, budget, channels active, what's done, in-flight, stuck, tooling. Walk through each of the 13 sections interactively with approve/adjust/expand options. Compile to final_plan.md with a verification pass, optionally publish to a shared repo.

Fully resumable via ~/marketing-plans/{client-slug}/progress.md state machine — interrupt and pick back up at the next unfinished section.

Reference framework (13 docs)

• methodology.md — full three-phase workflow with 10-topic intake questionnaire
• plan-template.md — 13-section template with per-section guidance and heuristics
• aarrr-framework.md — AARRR primer + diagnostic rules for which stage is the binding constraint
• current-state-rubric.md — self-contained 17-section scoring lens with score guides + common shape patterns
• ops-stack-mapping.md — marketing skills + MCPs/APIs mapped to AARRR stages, capability-unlocks-by-funding-stage table
• idea-cross-reference.md — all 139 marketing-ideas mapped to primary AARRR stage with timing defaults
• funding-stage-unlocks.md — 5 tiers (pre-seed → Series B+) with budget profiles, capability unlocks, hire patterns
• measurement-framework.md — north-star patterns by business model, leading indicators by AARRR stage, KPI patterns by quarter, kill criteria, anchoring against the VC growth path, forecasting reality check
• client-types.md — variations by archetype (B2B SaaS, D2C app, hybrid hardware+software, marketplace, dev tool, deep-tech/clinical, commerce)
• example-quietude.md — anonymized canonical reference plan from a real fCMO engagement
• budget-planning.md — (new) two scientific methods for setting the marketing budget (Method 1 Revenue-Based 5–40% of ARR, Method 2 Goal-Based formula reverse-engineered from the revenue target), blended CAC calculation (must include salaries, content, tools, retainers — not just paid spend), the 10–20% experimental buffer rule, the 3-3-2-2-2 VC growth path (3× in years 1–2, 2× in years 3–7 from $1M ARR), and the forecasting reality check
• growth-patterns.md — (new) the real shape of SaaS growth: $0–10K / $10K–100K / $100K–1M phases with binding constraints, linear vs step-function vs layered S-curve patterns, Channel × Product × Market S-curve orchestration (start the next curve before the current one plateaus)
• team-and-agency-model.md — (new) strategy in-house / execution outsourced principle, three core marketing functions (Growth = demand engine, Product = story engine, Content = trust engine), π-shaped marketer framework (vs T-shaped) with high-leverage skill-set combinations, title progression (Manager → Lead → Director → VP → Chief), agency selection framework (individual contractors → small niche → small generalist → large), three-stage scaling model (Early / Growth / Scale)

The budget-planning, growth-patterns, and team-and-agency-model frameworks are drawn from Founding Marketing by Corey Haines.

6 evals in skills/marketing-plan/evals/evals.json covering: standard fCMO engagement, pre-seed budget tier, prior-audit ingestion, resumable state machine, hardware+software archetype, and quick-plan pushback. All 43 skills now have evals/ directories (was 42/43 before this release).

Cross-reference additions (minor)

• marketing-ideas — Related Skills now points to marketing-plan (Section 12 of the plan cross-references all 139 ideas)
• customer-research — Hand-off table now includes a row for rolling research into a comprehensive plan

Upgrade

No reinstall required for existing skills. marketing-plan installs alongside; the other 42 skills are unchanged. marketplace.json and plugin.json are both at 2.3.0.

To install just marketing-plan:

npx skills add coreyhaines31/marketingskills --skill marketing-plan

Or use the slash command pattern:

/marketing-plan {client-name-or-domain}

Full changelog

• #331 — Feature PR adding the marketing-plan skill
• #335 — Public-release polish (rubric self-contained, evals added, reverse cross-references)
• #334 — Release v2.3.0 → main
• #336 — Sync development with main post-release (README auto-commit)
• #337 + #338 — Post-release VERSIONS.md doc correction
• #341 — Budget, growth-patterns, and team-and-agency-model frameworks added (folded into v2.3.0)
• #342 + #343 — Release notes expansion + dev → main fold-in

Full diff: v2.2.0...v2.3.0