Marketing plan

Marketing Plan Playbook

Authored by Claude Fable 5. Most AI marketing plans are interchangeable sludge: "leverage social media, build a community, create valuable content." That advice fits every product and helps none. This playbook forces the specifics that make a plan actually executable — a real person to reach, a sharp reason to care, and channels chosen because that's where those people already are.

Why this exists

A marketing plan is only as good as its positioning, and positioning is only real when it's specific enough to exclude someone. "For everyone who likes media" is not positioning. The steps below refuse to produce channel tactics until the product, the person, and the angle are pinned — because tactics without those are astrology.

Phase 0 — Understand the product for real

Read CLAUDE.md, the README, the actual app. Answer in your own words:

• What does it genuinely do, and what's the ONE thing it does better or differently than the obvious alternative?
• What's the wedge — the single feature or moment that makes someone go "oh, I need this"? (For RankList, that might be notes you'll actually remember months later, not "ranked lists" — everyone has ranked lists.)

Don't market the category; market the wedge.

Phase 1 — Pin the audience (specific enough to exclude)

Vague audience = vague everything downstream. Define:

• The beachhead: the narrowest group who feels the pain most acutely and will tell their friends. Not "media fans" — "people in LitRPG/progression- fantasy audiobook communities who lose track of what they've read." Narrow wins the first 1,000 users; broad comes later.
• Where they already gather: the specific subreddits, Discords, forums, hashtags, creators, newsletters. Name them. If you can't name three real places, the audience is still too vague — go back.
• What they currently do instead (the status quo you're replacing — spreadsheets, memory, Goodreads, a notes app).

Phase 2 — Positioning statement

Write it in this exact frame, filled with specifics:

For <beachhead audience> who <specific pain>, <product> is the <category> that <the one differentiated benefit — the wedge>. Unlike <the real alternative they use now>, it <the key difference>.

If this sentence could describe a competitor, it's not sharp enough. Rewrite until it couldn't.

Phase 3 — Channel plan (fit channel to audience, not to fashion)

For each channel you propose, justify it against Phase 1's "where they gather." Reject channels that don't map to a real place your audience is. For each chosen channel specify:

• Why this channel (which audience-gathering-place it maps to)
• The specific play (not "post on Reddit" — "share the app in r/litrpg as a fellow reader solving my own tracking problem, lead with a screenshot of a real ranked list, follow community self-promo rules")
• The asset needed (a demo GIF, a launch post, a screenshot set, a short video)
• The metric that tells you it's working (signups from that source, not vanity likes)

Cover the launch-appropriate mix, but only what fits: organic community, a launch-day moment (Product Hunt / relevant community / Show HN if it fits), content/SEO if search intent exists, and any owned channels (email, the app's own share features — a shareable ranked list IS a growth loop; design for it).

Phase 4 — Sequenced launch calendar

Marketing fails when it's a one-day blast. Lay out a timeline:

## Pre-launch (T−2 weeks)
- <build-in-public posts, waitlist, seed the communities you'll launch in so
  you're not a stranger on launch day>
## Launch week
- <the coordinated moment: what goes where, in what order, day by day>
## Post-launch (ongoing)
- <the repeatable loop — content cadence, referral/share mechanics, retention
  hooks that bring people back>

Phase 5 — Deliver

# Marketing Plan — <product> — <date>

## The wedge
<one sentence: the thing that actually makes people want this>

## Positioning statement
<the filled-in frame from Phase 2>

## Beachhead audience & where they are
<the specific group + named places>

## Channel plan
<per-channel: play, asset, metric>

## Launch calendar
<pre / during / post>

## First three things to do this week
<concrete, small, startable today — plans die when step one is vague>

End with those three startable actions. A plan the user can begin today beats a comprehensive strategy they'll admire and never execute.