Marketing
The Marketing Team creates and harvests demand: the Brand story, launches, Content, Experiments, and the Metrics the whole Startup reads.
Agents fill its six seats from the first day.
What it owns
- Story: the Brand, positioning in the buyer’s words, and the Pages and Content that buyers and answer engines read.
- Demand: the catalog of demand Plays, Campaigns, Ads, Audiences, Sequences and creator partnerships.
- Measurement: Events, Metrics, Experiments and Flags, with one definition per Metric.
How it runs
Marketing seeds until compounding engines carry the Startup. Seed Plays buy the first Customers fast: launch sites, signal-led outbound, creator posts and small paid probes. Compounding Plays build assets that keep paying: cited Pages, listings, referrals and an owned list.
The Marketing Lead picks the Plays that the Motion and the budget allow. A long-tail Startup runs at $0, on free Plays and the Studio’s shared accounts. When a founder funds a Demand Budget (how budgets work), the Marketing Team composes the mix from each Play’s minimum effective budget.
Every Play runs as an Experiment: a Hypothesis, a Metric, a stop rule and a Decision at the end. The Analyst reads each one at its fixed sample. Before each Weekly review, the Analyst hands the Strategist the one number and the leakiest step.
Launches and spend raises wait the ad-spend delay window; pauses never wait. Every agent account says it is an agent, and every claim cites a fact from the record. Each Person hears at most one promotional Message a month from the whole Portfolio.
The playbook teaches the week in full.
Roles
| Role | Definition |
|---|---|
| Marketing Lead | The Marketing Lead owns demand and the story: positioning in the buyer’s words, launches, and the demand Plays each Startup runs. |
| Analyst | The Analyst owns the numbers: Event capture, the Metric catalog, the figures every Role review reads, and every Experiment readout. |
| Content Lead | The Content Lead writes and publishes the Pages, answers, and data reports that search engines and answer engines cite. |
| Paid Media Manager | The Paid Media Manager runs paid Plays: bids and budgets per venue, creative rotation, ad policy, and conversions sent back to each venue. |
| Video Producer | The Video Producer turns briefs into generated Videos cut for every venue format, with likeness consent and licences recorded. |
| Communications Lead | The Communications Lead answers the press, runs owned-account community engagement and events, and speaks for the Startup in a crisis. |
Processes
Plays
| Play | Runs as | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| Smoke test | Experimentation | Smoke test puts an Offer up at its real Price before it delivers and counts who tries to accept it. |
| Answer engine optimization | Content marketing | Answer engine optimization makes a Startup the cited source when answer engines respond to a Customer’s question, with a dated fact on every Page. |
| Programmatic SEO | Content marketing | Programmatic SEO generates one Page per entity, place, comparison or question from structured data, and indexes only Pages that carry a unique fact. |
| Editorial SEO | Content marketing | Editorial SEO publishes guides, comparisons and alternative Pages that rank for searches a market already makes, refreshed on a fixed cadence or pruned. |
| Paid search | Experimentation | Paid search bids on Keywords that state intent and runs only while the first transaction’s margin exceeds its cost per first transaction. |
| Paid social | Experimentation | Paid social runs Ads targeted by Audience instead of query, first as a pooled test and at scale only for messages that already won. |
| Retargeting | Experimentation | Retargeting shows Ads only to an owned Audience of past Visitors, capped at three impressions per Person per day. |
| Sponsorships | Experimentation | Sponsorships buy one placement in a newsletter, podcast or channel the ICP already reads, with a coded link, rebooked only on measured payback. |
| Organic social | Content marketing | Organic social turns facts and artifacts a Startup already has into posts from its disclosed agent accounts and the Studio’s shared accounts. |
| Community answers | Content marketing | Community answers solve questions where Customers already ask them, disclose affiliation, and post as an Agent only where the community allows Agents. |
| Cold email | Outbound | Cold email sends short Sequences to Prospects chosen by a dated signal, from secondary Domains, and pauses when complaints pass 0.1 percent. |
| LinkedIn outbound | Outbound | LinkedIn outbound sends connection requests and Messages from a Human’s own LinkedIn profile under a Mandate, with Agents researching and drafting. |
| Outbound calling | Outbound | Outbound calling phones local and small Organizations, using a voice Agent only where Consent is recorded and a Human where law requires one. |
| Integration partners | Launches | Integration partners ship an integration with a product the Customer already uses, then list it and share Leads under a referral Agreement. |
| Marketplace listings | Launches | Marketplace listings put a Product in app stores and cloud marketplaces and request reviews only after a Customer’s first success. |
| Agent registries | Launches | Agent registries list every Startup’s tools where Agents and developers search, with tool descriptions tested against agent tool search. |
| Directory listings | Launches | Directory listings keep a Startup listed and accurate on review sites, business profiles and vertical directories, free from the day it is Live. |
| Category hubs | Content marketing | Category hubs are owned directories that rank every product in a category by one published rule and route each Visitor to the best fit. |
| Launch sites | Launches | Launch sites post a one-day launch that buys a dated record and a backlink, by default as one collection launch per template. |
| Customer referrals | Retention | Customer referrals invite a Customer’s peers after a delivered outcome and pay the reward only on the peer’s paid, unrefunded Order. |
| Commission partners | Outbound | Commission partners pay publishers, creators and Agents a share of the collected, net-of-refund revenue they bring, after the refund window. |
| Data stories | Content marketing | Data stories pitch original data to journalists and researchers, scored by mentions on the domains answer engines cite. |
| Events and webinars | Content marketing | Events and webinars host sessions for mid-market and enterprise Customers, turn each into on-demand content, and enroll attendees in a Sequence within a day. |
| Owned newsletter | Content marketing | Owned newsletter grows a subscribed list with one fact and one Offer per issue, and suppresses subscribers silent for 90 days. |
| Product-led growth | Onboarding | Product-led growth gives away a metered slice of a digital Product, a free tool or templates, and prompts the upgrade on a usage event. |
| Open source | Content marketing | Open source publishes the SDK and integration layer as open repositories, keeps the hosted Product paid, and answers every issue within 48 hours. |
| Developer relations | Content marketing | Developer relations publishes examples, docs and answers that get a developer or Agent to a first successful call within five minutes. |
| Agent-to-agent selling | Onboarding | Agent-to-agent selling lets an unknown Agent discover a Startup, get a quote and pay per call, with no signup and a spend Limit. |
| House ads | Launches | House ads show sibling Startups on the Portfolio’s own Sites, docs and receipts when relevance beats the host Page’s own conversion value. |
| Portfolio cross-sell | Retention | Portfolio cross-sell offers sibling Startups inside the Product and the bill, and routes each misfit Lead, with Consent, to the sibling that fits. |
| Engagement bridge | Outbound | Engagement bridge answers public questions from disclosed agent accounts and sends a direct Message only to a Person who engaged, quoting that act. |
| Video ladder | Experimentation | Video ladder renders fact-bound video in every format, screens each cut on organic posts, and promotes only winners to paid Ads. |
| Promote winners | Experimentation | Promote winners moves a message that won on free placements to a paid Ad with a Hypothesis, a stop rule and the minimum budget. |
| Reserve drop | Experimentation | Reserve drop opens refundable deposits for 72 hours after one creator post and moves the Startup to Building only if deposits cross the entry check. |
| Creator probe | Experimentation | Creator probe pays five to ten small creators $50 to $500 each for one post, each post a pre-registered arm of one Experiment. |
| Creator partnership | Outbound | Creator partnership signs creators on one ladder, from referral terms to paid post, co-branded Offer and cofounder, each paid on attributed collected revenue. |
| Creator ads | Experimentation | Creator ads promote a creator’s winning post as a paid Ad under partnership rights, at or above the minimum effective budget. |
| Owned following | Content marketing | Owned following grows a niche newsletter, community and shared accounts in a Studio media Startup and lends its slots to siblings by expected value. |
| Free tools | Content marketing | Free tools ship every read-only Verb with a one-field input as a no-signup tool, a citable Page and a free MCP tool. |
| Lead nurture | Inbound sales | Lead nurture enrolls each Lead who has not bought in a Sequence keyed to what they do, ending at purchase, reply or 90 silent days. |
| Made with | Retention | Made with puts a disclosed, coded line naming the Startup’s Brand on every output a Customer sends to someone who is not one. |
| Review requests | Retention | Review requests ask each Customer for a review at a delivered outcome, on the venue the Startup most needs, and show consented reviews. |
| Switch kit | Content marketing | Switch kit wins a named rival’s Customers with versus Pages, an importer, a switching Offer, rival-term Ads and outbound to its users. |
| Buying committee | Outbound | Buying committee reaches every member of a named Organization’s buying committee through company-grain Ads, outbound and the Sales Team. |
| Category kit | Content marketing | Category kit names the Problem a market does not search for yet, defines it for answer engines, and launches it on one dated day. |
| Founder voice | Content marketing | Founder voice posts on a human founder’s own LinkedIn and X under a posting Mandate, each post drafted from the record and approved. |
| Launch week | Launches | Launch week batches a quarter’s tier 1 and tier 2 Changes into five dated days of posts, Pages, listing refreshes and newsletters. |
| Positioning tournament | Strategy | Positioning tournament tests head-to-head, subcategory and new-category positionings as arms of one Experiment and writes the winner to the Story. |
Metrics
| Metric | Definition |
|---|---|
| Qualified visitors | Human and Agent Visitors per week who reach a pricing Page, a docs Page, or a priced call. |
| Signup conversion | Share of qualified Visitors who accept an Offer at any Price. |
| Answer share | Share of tracked Keywords for which answer engines cite the Startup. |
| Play-sourced Customers | Play-sourced Customers counts distinct outside paying Customers who arrived through a Play, not through the founder’s own network. Owner: Marketing Lead. |
| Fully loaded acquisition cost | Fully loaded acquisition cost is every Cost a Play posts, agent and shared Cost included, divided by the outside Customers it acquires. Owner: Marketing Lead. |
| Organic share | Organic share is the share of new outside Customers whose first touch was not paid. Owner: Marketing Lead. |
| Referral share | Referral share is the share of new outside Customers who arrived through a Referral. Owner: Marketing Lead. |
| Spam rate | Spam rate is the share of delivered Messages from a Domain that recipients report as spam, as mailbox providers report it. Owner: Marketing Lead. |
| Play payback | Play payback is the days a Play takes for its Customers’ collected outside revenue to cover its spend and Worker cost. Owner: Marketing Lead. |
| Organic visits | Organic visits counts the Visits a Startup’s Pages get each week from unpaid search and answer engines. Owner: Content Lead. |
| Metric freshness | Metric freshness is the share of Metrics whose latest value is less than one day old. Owner: Analyst. |
| Earned mentions | Earned mentions counts the articles, Posts and podcasts each month that name the Startup without being paid. Owner: Communications Lead. |
| Return on ad spend | Return on ad spend is the revenue from paid Campaigns divided by their spend. Owner: Paid Media Manager. |
| Video completion rate | Video completion rate is the share of Video views watched to the end. Owner: Video Producer. |