The canonical template for every marketing plan generated by this skill.
The canonical template for every marketing plan generated by this skill. Each section has a purpose, a structure, and inline prompts for what to draft.
The Quietude plan (see references/example-quietude.md) is the canonical reference implementation.
# {Client} — Marketing Plan v1
**Prepared by:** {Author / fCMO name}
**For:** {Founders / leadership team}
**Date:** YYYY-MM-DD
**Status:** Draft v1 — for team reviewPurpose: Lift-and-share. A founder should be able to paste this into a board update or investor email without editing.
Length: 400–700 words. Tight.
Structure:
Voice notes:
Purpose: Distill positioning, ICP, business-model logic, and brand voice into a single page that any team member or new hire can read to orient.
Length: 800–1500 words.
Structure:
Pulled from positioning doc / seed deck / founder language.
Is the company creating a new category, redefining an existing one, or competing in a defined category? Name it. State the category-defining frame in 2–3 sentences. Reference the source (founder's words, ICP doc, etc.).
Demographics / firmographics + stated problem vs. real problem + what they're actually buying. Tight, 4–6 bullets.
How does the company make money? What's the customer-acquisition unit economics theory? What's the compounding channel thesis (if any)? Pulled from seed deck / financial model / founder narrative.
If the client has documented voice rules, list them. YES / NO vocabulary. CTA rules. Tone. Core method (initiatory, explanatory, narrative, etc.). Every other section of the plan must respect these.
Voice notes:
Purpose: Anchor the plan in reality. What's the team, budget, in-flight work, and stuck work today?
Length: 1000–2000 words.
Structure:
Table of every person with marketing surface area:
| Person | Role | Marketing surface area | |---|---|---|
Be honest about gaps. If there's no dedicated marketing hire yet, name when one becomes necessary and what role (see references/team-and-agency-model.md — first hire should be π-shaped strategist titled Manager or Lead, not VP/CMO).
references/budget-planning.md for the calculation)State the funding-stage tier this maps to (see references/funding-stage-unlocks.md). Implication: what 90-day plan must produce without lever pulls that require future budget.
Name the current phase: $0–10K ARR / $10K–100K / $100K–1M / $1M–$10M / $10M+. Each phase has its own binding constraint and dominant growth pattern (see references/growth-patterns.md). Section 10 sequences the move into the next phase.
Table:
| Asset | Status | Marketing leverage | |---|---|---|
This is where past launches, PR moments, content pillars, certifications, notable users get acknowledged. Critical: don't write a plan that ignores work the team is proud of.
Table:
| Item | Status | Blocker | |---|---|---|
Be honest about blockers. Where the blocker is "no time" or "no decision," that goes to Section 13's open decisions.
Table:
| Issue | Cost of inaction | Action | |---|---|---|
Stuck things are the most leverage-positive places to focus the first weeks of the 90-day plan.
17-section scored snapshot using the embedded current-state rubric. See references/current-state-rubric.md for the full rubric and scoring guides.
If a prior scored audit exists, paste those scores in. Otherwise score from available materials and note "scored from materials" under the heading.
| # | Section | Score | Note | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | Positioning | 0–5 | | | 2 | Customer research | 0–5 | | | ... | ... | ... | ... | | 17 | Internationalization | 0–5 | |
Total: X / 85 (Y%). Note the shape of strength and weakness — that shape is the gap the rest of the plan closes.
Voice notes:
Purpose: Answer "how do strangers become aware of us?" Map every channel: current state, planned moves, skipped (with reason).
Length: 1000–1800 words.
Structure:
Brief. What's working today, what's not, what the data shows about channel mix.
Numbered "Moves." Each move is a paragraph (3–6 sentences) describing the channel, the thesis, and the specific work. Common moves:
seo/plan.md). Otherwise: keyword research, pillar/spoke structure, content cadence.Week-by-week breakdown of the ships in the first quarter.
Quarter-by-quarter outcome state (Q1 / Q2 / Q3 / Q4).
seo-audit, ai-seo, ads, social, competitors, etc.)Purpose: Answer "once someone tries us, do they have an experience that converts?"
Length: 800–1500 words.
Structure: Same as Acquisition (Current state / The plan / 90-day / 12-month / Skills + tools).
Common moves:
onboarding, signup, paywalls, copywriting, marketing-website-design, ab-testing, etc.
Purpose: Answer "once someone converts, do they stay and deepen?"
Length: 800–1500 words.
Structure: Same as above.
Common moves:
emails, churn-prevention, copywriting, paywalls, etc.
Purpose: Answer "do retained users bring more users, and at what cost?"
Length: 500–1200 words.
Structure: Same as above.
Common moves:
referrals, social, emails (for ambassador lifecycle), copywriting, etc.
Purpose: Answer "what do we charge, who pays, and how does it compound?"
Length: 500–1200 words.
Structure: Same as above.
Common moves:
Required table:
| Metric | Value | Note | |---|---|---| | ARPC (avg monthly revenue per customer) | $X | Pulled from Stripe / billing | | Blended CAC | $X | Includes all marketing costs, not just paid | | Annual retention rate | X% | 1 − annual churn | | LTV (rough) | $X | ARPC × 12 / annual churn | | LTV / CAC | X | Health benchmark: > 3 |
These feed the budget math in Section 10. If any of these are unknown, flag in Section 13 as top open decision.
pricing, paywalls, sales-enablement, revops, ab-testing, etc.
Purpose: The tactical execution layer. Every move ships within a named week, with an owner.
Length: Tables, not prose. Should fit on one printed page if possible.
Structure: Four 2–3-week sprints:
Highest-confidence, lowest-cost changes. Removing things that are broken.
| Move | Stage | Owner | |---|---|---|
Pillar/foundational work. Domain consolidation. First content. First flows shipping. First tests live.
Compounding work begins. Content cadence. Repeat tests. Channel scaling.
Second-order moves. Layered tactics. 90-day review prep.
Purpose: Quarterly milestones with explicit funding-stage capability unlocks named, anchored against a defensible growth pattern.
Length: Four sub-sections, one per quarter. ~250–400 words each. Plus a short framing paragraph at the top naming the budget method and growth pattern.
State explicitly:
references/budget-planning.md. Show the math.references/measurement-framework.md.references/growth-patterns.md.Funding state: {tier} per funding-stage-unlocks.md
Focus: One-sentence focus theme for the quarter.
Outcomes by end of Q{N}:
KPI targets: 3–5 specific numerical targets.
Channel/Product/Market S-curve position: Which curves are growing, which are plateauing, which is the next one being staged for this quarter (see growth-patterns.md — layering principle).
Purpose: The fCMO differentiator. Show how a small team + agentic tooling executes the plan without hiring at every channel.
Length: Tables + brief explanation.
Structure:
1–2 paragraphs explaining the principle: small team + marketing-skills library + MCP integrations = output of a larger team.
| Stage | Primary skills | Supporting skills | |---|---|---| | Acquisition | (list) | (list) | | Activation | (list) | (list) | | Retention | (list) | (list) | | Referral | (list) | (list) | | Revenue | (list) | (list) | | Cross-cutting | (list) | (list) |
| Stage | Existing connections | fCMO tooling layer | |---|---|---|
Pick one operational moment that proves the stack works (e.g., "Customer.io MCP let the non-technical founder draft a flow live on the kickoff call"). Anchor the abstract claim in a specific event.
| Stage | Headcount | Tooling | Channels live | |---|---|---|---| | (current) | (list) | (list) | (list) | | (next round) | (delta) | (delta) | (delta) | | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Apply the principle from references/team-and-agency-model.md: strategy in-house, execution often outsourced.
| Function | Owned by (internal strategic role) | Executed by (IC / contractor / agency) | |---|---|---| | Growth marketing (demand engine) | | | | Product marketing (story engine) | | | | Content marketing (trust engine) | | |
If the team is missing a strategic owner for one of these functions, the first 90-day move (Section 9) should be the hire — Manager or Lead title, π-shaped if possible, not VP/CMO.
If execution capacity is the gap, name the contractor or small niche agency in the right cell rather than the team's existing IC.
Pull from references/funding-stage-unlocks.md.
Purpose: Cross-reference all 139 ideas from the marketing-ideas skill against AARRR stages, with client-specific status.
Length: Long — tables can easily total 150+ rows.
Structure:
Explain the cross-reference: Sections 4–8 prescribe what's being done. This section maps what's possible.
By status (Now / Q2 / Q3+ / Q4+ / Skip), tables of relevant marketing-ideas by number.
| # | Idea | Client note | |---|---|---|
Use references/idea-cross-reference.md as the source-of-truth mapping. Apply client-specific filters during draft (brand voice rules out some; funding stage shifts timing of others).
Purpose: Operational close. Define how the plan gets measured, who owns what, what's still TBD, and where to find the deeper docs.
Structure:
North star (proposed): One metric that captures the business-model thesis. For Quietude it was blended-LTV-to-blended-CAC; for a B2B SaaS it might be NRR × NPS; for a marketplace, take-rate × monthly transacting users. Make it specific to the company.
Leading indicators by AARRR stage: Table:
| Stage | Leading indicators | |---|---| | Acquisition | ... | | Activation | ... | | Retention | ... | | Referral | ... | | Revenue | ... |
Review cadence:
| Domain | Responsible | Accountable | Consulted | Informed | |---|---|---|---|---|
Common domains: strategic plan, brand voice, app/product implementation, lifecycle, SEO content, App Store, founder-led social, events, ambassadors, B2B sales, pricing, investor narrative, future hires.
Ranked by impact. Each is: name + impact + what's blocked.
Published in this repo / shared with team: {relative paths to docs in the shared repo}
Founder-authored strategic context (internal knowledge base): {names of docs the team has access to outside the plan repo}
fCMO working drafts (not yet published): {names + how to access from author}
*{Client} Marketing Plan v1. Prepared by {Author}, {Date}. For team review and discussion.*some-skill) and a tool (Customer.io MCP / Stripe MCP / Ahrefs / etc.).