Suede Marketing Plan

Suede Marketing Operating Plan

Suede produces a comprehensive marketing operating plan across Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue. Build the 12-month plan from the client's verified budget, team, stage, evidence, constraints, and public Suede execution routes, then cross-reference the suede-marketing-ideas library and embedded 17-section current-state rubric.

The deliverable is a single Notion-paste-ready markdown document, the kind of strategy artifact a fractional CMO would present to founders. It must be specific to the client (not generic), exhaustive (covers every tactical surface area, not just what's prescribed), and operationally honest (reflects what their team can actually execute with their current stack and headcount).

How this skill is invoked

/suede-marketing-plan {client-name-or-domain}: the argument is the client name or domain; with no argument, prompt for it.

Read .agents/product-marketing.md first if it exists and ask only for what it does not cover; see suede-product-marketing for path fallbacks.

On invocation, the skill reads .agents/suede-marketing-plans/{client-slug}/progress.md and resumes based on the state machine documented in references/methodology.md Step 1.1.2 (fresh → INIT → REVIEW → FINALIZE → finalized). Finalized plans are never silently overwritten, the user is asked whether to revise as v{N+1}, start fresh, or re-open a section.

The three phases

The full workflow lives in references/methodology.md. Quick summary:

Phase 1: INIT (research + intake)

Read all available materials about the client. Pull data from any wired tools (Ahrefs, GA4 MCP, Stripe MCP, etc.). Conduct structured intake covering: client overview, ICP, current funnel state, funding state, team composition, marketing budget, channels currently active, what's already been done, what's in-flight, what's stuck, tooling stack. Save to research.md.

Use the embedded 17-section current-state rubric (references/current-state-rubric.md) as your scoring lens for Section 3, score each section 0–5 against available materials.

Phase 2: REVIEW (walk through each of 13 sections interactively)

Present each section's draft in chat. For each section you can:

• Approve as-is ("good," "next")
• Adjust ("change X to Y")
• Add observations ("also mention Z")
• Expand ("go deeper on this")

Persist each confirmed section with the recoverable write-intent transaction in references/methodology.md: record section number and content hash, promote sections/NN.md, reconcile its checkbox/artifact/current-section/timestamp metadata, verify, then clear the intent. If interrupted, run /suede-marketing-plan client-name to reconcile the intent before continuing.

Phase 3: FINALIZE (compile + verify + publish)

Compile all 13 sections into final_plan.md. Run a verification pass: confirm suede-marketing-ideas idea numbers, public Suede routes, and named integrations are accurate; check for machine-specific paths that should not ship; ensure the brand voice matches what was captured in the strategic frame.

Optionally offer to publish to a shared GitHub repo (e.g., {client-org}/{client-context}/marketing/plan.md) if the user wants to share it with the team.

The 13-section plan structure

Full template lives in references/plan-template.md. The 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 distilled, business-model logic, brand voice non-negotiables.
3. Current state: Team, budget, what's done, what's in-flight, what's stuck. Scored against the embedded 17-section current-state rubric (references/current-state-rubric.md).
4. Acquisition: How strangers become aware. Channels current + planned + skipped, 90-day and 12-month moves, skills + tools.
5. Activation: How a new user has an experience that converts. Onboarding, first session, App Store / signup, paywall, lifecycle setup.
6. Retention: How a converted user stays and deepens. Lifecycle flows, churn prevention, win-back, support-as-marketing.
7. Referral: How retained users bring more users. Ambassador / affiliate / Guides / WOM mechanics.
8. Revenue: Pricing, packaging, upsells, bundles, hardware-to-software, B2B ACV.
9. 90-day roadmap: Weeks 1–2 (Unblock), 3–4 (Foundation), 5–8 (Velocity), 9–12 (Compound). AARRR-tagged, owner-assigned.
10. 12-month outlook: Quarterly decision checkpoints tied to verified resource, evidence, owner, and approval conditions.
11. Marketing operations stack: Available marketing skills and authorized integrations mapped to each AARRR stage, owner, review gate, and fallback.
12. Tactical idea bank: Every idea in the tactic library owned by suede-marketing-ideas, cross-referenced to AARRR + an evidence-based status: Current / Approved test / Conditional / Deferred / Skip.
13. Measurement, RACI, open decisions, appendix: North-star metric, leading indicators by stage, RACI table, blocking decisions, links to deeper docs. Read references/measurement-framework.md before writing this section, it holds the north-star selection patterns, leading indicators by AARRR stage, review cadence, KPI target setting, kill criteria, and guardrail metrics this section compiles from.

The AARRR framing

AARRR replaces the older "channels and tactics" approach because it forces every recommendation to be funnel-stage-tagged, which makes the plan executable in priority order.

Full primer in references/aarrr-framework.md. Quick rule:

• Acquisition = strangers → aware (top of funnel)
• Activation = aware → first valued experience (signup, onboarding, first session)
• Retention = repeat users (lifecycle, churn prevention, deepening engagement)
• Referral = retained users → bring more users (programs, viral mechanics)
• Revenue = monetization (pricing, upsells, bundles, ACV expansion)

Brand and content are cross-cutting, not their own AARRR stage, they serve every stage.

The current-state rubric

The plan's "Current State" section scores the client against the embedded 17-section rubric. Full rubric in references/current-state-rubric.md, it's the source of truth, not a derivative of any external skill.

If the user already has a separately scored audit, preserve it as dated evidence and reuse only scores whose sources, scope, cohort/window, and definitions still match the current state. Otherwise, score from current materials using the rubric's evidence gate; mark unsupported rows Unknown.

Cross-references: skills this plan integrates with

1. suede-marketing-ideas: owns the tactic library and its numbering. Section 12 of the plan cross-references every tactic to AARRR + client status; that skill's reference owns the count and the evidence stance. Detail in references/idea-cross-reference.md.
2. suede-product-marketing: Sets up the foundational .agents/product-marketing.md context file (positioning, ICP, voice). Read this first; Section 2 (Strategic frame) builds on it.
3. AARRR-stage-specific skills: suede-onboarding, suede-signup, suede-emails, suede-referrals, suede-pricing, etc. The "Marketing operations stack" (Section 11) maps these to AARRR stages.

The plan is opinionated about which skills serve which stages. Full mapping in references/ops-stack-mapping.md.

The marketing operations stack

This is the differentiator of an fCMO-style plan vs. a generic marketing plan. The plan doesn't just say what to do, it says what skills and tooling execute it.

The public Suede skill pack and verified integrations can make approved workflows more repeatable for a small team. The plan must show the stack explicitly, AARRR-stage by AARRR-stage, without claiming that tooling replaces headcount or guarantees throughput; capacity still depends on the client's data, owners, review process, and operating constraints.

Full mapping in references/ops-stack-mapping.md.

Conditional capability unlocks

Every plan must explain what changes when budget becomes available, but funding stage alone never determines spend or hiring. Use references/funding-stage-unlocks.md as a question set. Derive each unlock from verified cash, runway, board-approved burn, measured acquisition capacity, current owners, and category constraints.

Setting the budget with traceable assumptions

Use the client's dated finance and funnel inputs to build scenarios, then have the accountable finance owner approve the maximum spend, review date, and stop conditions. Full limitations live in references/budget-planning.md:

1. Capacity-based: start from the approved cash/runway ceiling and measured channel capacity; model an outcome range.
2. Goal-based scenario: work backward from a target using sourced ARPC, retention, gross margin, blended CAC, and delivery capacity. Treat the result as a sensitivity model, not a forecast or funding recommendation.

Do not append a universal experiment percentage or stage-based growth multiple. The accountable owner chooses a bounded test amount the company can lose without breaching runway.

Growth patterns: the real shape of SaaS growth

Use references/growth-patterns.md to compare linear, step-function, and layered curve hypotheses against dated client evidence. ARR and funding stage are context, not universal phases. The plan must name uncertainty, capacity, review dates, and stop conditions rather than promise a curve.

Team and agency model

Use references/team-and-agency-model.md to map outcomes, current owners, capacity, access, risk, and duration before choosing an employee, contractor, agency, automation, or deferral. Do not infer the first hire, title, vendor type, or outsource ratio from stage or company size.

What every plan must customize

A generic plan is a failed plan. Every plan must explicitly customize for:

1. Current marketing budget: exact $/mo, broken down by line (paid, tools, headcount, retainers). Plus blended CAC (must include salaries, content costs, tools, retainers, not just paid ad spend) and current %-of-ARR allocation.
2. Unit economics: ARPC, annual retention rate, LTV. These feed the budget math in Section 8 and Section 10.
3. Team composition and surface area: every person who touches marketing, their outcome, capacity, skills, access, and approval boundary.
4. What the client is currently doing: by channel, with status (working / not / TBD).
5. What they've already done that should be acknowledged: past launches, PR moments, content, partnerships. Don't write a plan that ignores work they're proud of.
6. Observed growth pattern: evidence for linear, step-function, or layered behavior, plus uncertainty and the current constraint.
7. Conditional capability milestones: the exact evidence, resources, approval, and stop conditions that would unlock a hire, channel, or vendor.
8. The marketing skills mapped to specific moves: every move in the AARRR sections names the skill that executes it.
9. The execution method and access state: every move names its owner, current capacity, manual or tool-assisted method, review gate, and fallback. A tool is optional and never evidence that hiring is unnecessary.

If you can't confirm any of these in INIT, list them in Section 13's "Open decisions", never gloss over them. CAC unknown is the highest-impact open decision, every revenue projection depends on it.