Launch campaign

Launch Campaign

A feature that ships without a launch is a feature nobody hears about. The default failure is a single tweet with no positioning, no seeded community, no landing page, and no way to tell if it worked. This skill is the go-to-market conductor: it drives a shipped feature through the Grow phase as a sequence — strategy, community, SEO, content, social, email, referral, measurement — running the right marketing persona at each step, gating on the critical ordering rule, and producing a complete launch kit instead of one improvised post.

It is the Grow-phase analogue of [[product-discovery]] and composes the marketing skills under skills/marketing/ — it does not replace them. It decides which marketing skill and agent run when and refuses to drive traffic before the ground is prepared. Output is a launch kit, not code.

When to Use

• A feature or product just shipped ([[launch-readiness]] passed) and needs to be marketed
• You need a coordinated campaign — positioning + content + social + SEO + email — not a one-off post
• Kicking off a launch and want the marketing team (agents/marketing/…) to act as a sequence, not a roster
• Closing the loop after [[product-discovery]] → Build → ship: the discover → build → launch arc

Skip when:

• You need exactly one artifact (one blog post, one keyword pass) — load that marketing skill directly via marketing/SKILL.md ([[content-marketing]], [[seo-growth]], …)
• The feature isn't shipped yet — finish [[launch-readiness]] first (rollout, monitoring, rollback)
• It's ongoing growth ops on a live product, not a launch — use [[growth-strategy]] directly

Not a substitute for [[launch-readiness]] (the engineering release gate — rollout/rollback/monitoring) or the individual marketing skills it sequences. This skill markets a launch; it does not make the release safe.

Process

Run the phases in order, each with a persona lens, a governing skill, and an exit gate. Keep one written campaign brief as the source of truth. The launch kit's artifacts mirror the repo's docs/launch/ convention.

1. Intake — what shipped, and for whom

• Pull the ICP, problem, and primary success metric from the [[product-discovery]] package (or define them now if absent). State what changed for the user and the one number this launch moves.
• Gate: ICP, the user-facing value, and the launch's primary metric are written down. No ICP → no campaign (cuts the #1 marketing red flag).

2. Strategy & briefs — growth-lead lens

• Skill: [[growth-strategy]]. Produce positioning, the channel plan, the campaign calendar, and a short brief per channel. growth-lead writes briefs — not posts or articles.
• Gate (sign-off): positioning and channel plan approved before any asset is produced.

3. Seed the community — community-manager lens

• Skill: [[community-engagement]]. Seed content, welcome flow, and early-adopter touchpoints before any traffic is driven.
• Gate (critical ordering rule): community is seeded before social distribution runs. Driving traffic to an empty community wastes the launch — do not skip or reorder this.

4. SEO landing & keywords — seo-strategist lens

• Skill: [[seo-growth]]. Landing-page on-page SEO and a keyword map with one page per keyword (no cannibalization). Hand spoke topics to content.
• Gate: landing page is SEO-ready and keywords are assigned without overlap.

5. Launch content — content-marketer lens

• Skill: [[content-marketing]]. The launch blog/announcement plus supporting tutorials, built on the SEO spoke topics. content-marketer hands social snippets to the next step.
• Gate: launch article(s) drafted and tied to the positioning and keywords.

6. Social distribution — social-media-manager lens

• Skill: [[social-distribution]]. A post pack and launch thread, per-platform (no single caption cross-posted everywhere). Coordinate timing with community-manager.
• Gate: platform-tailored posts + launch thread ready; community seeded (step 3) confirmed first.

7. Lifecycle loops — email-marketer & referral-manager lenses

• Skills: [[email-nurture]] (welcome/nurture sequence) and [[referral-loop]] (invite/viral loop) where they fit the product. These convert and compound the launch traffic.
• Gate: email sequence and referral loop drafted, or explicitly waived with a reason.

8. Measurement & review — growth-lead + product-analyst lenses

• Define how each channel reports to the primary metric from step 1, and set the weekly review cadence ([[observability]] for instrumentation; product-analyst reads results back to the PM).
• Gate: every channel maps to the primary metric; a weekly review is scheduled.

9. Assemble the launch kit

Produce the artifacts as separate, linked docs under docs/launch/:

• Campaign brief + positioning (step 2)
• Community seed plan (step 3)
• SEO landing + keyword map (step 4)
• Launch blog/announcement + tutorials (step 5)
• Per-platform social post pack + launch thread (step 6)
• Email sequence + referral loop, or recorded waiver (step 7)
• Measurement plan + weekly-review cadence (step 8)

State the launch date and the owner of the weekly review. The campaign is ready when it could run without re-deciding what to say, where, or how success is measured.

Common Rationalizations

• "Just post it on social first." — Without positioning and a seeded community, posts bounce; run steps 2–3 first.
• "SEO can wait." — Every month delayed is compounding organic traffic lost; do it at launch (step 4).
• "One caption works everywhere." — Cross-posting one caption tanks engagement; tailor per platform (step 6).
• "We'll measure later." — A launch with no primary metric can't be judged or improved; define it in step 1.
• "Marketing is separate from product." — Community and analyst feedback loops back to the PM; wire the review (step 8).
• "Do the whole launch in one pass." — Skipping the strategy and community gates is how a launch fizzles.

Red Flags

• No ICP or primary metric defined before assets are produced
• Social launch fired before the community is seeded (ordering rule violated)
• One caption cross-posted to every platform
• Keywords assigned to multiple pages (cannibalization)
• A "launch" that's a single post with no positioning, landing page, or measurement
• Marketing started before the feature actually shipped ([[launch-readiness]] skipped)
• The kit is one wall of text instead of linked, named artifacts with an owner and a review cadence

Verification

• ICP, user-facing value, and primary launch metric written down (step 1)
• Positioning + channel plan + per-channel briefs approved before assets ([[growth-strategy]])
• Community seeded before social traffic — ordering rule respected ([[community-engagement]])
• Landing page SEO-ready; one page per keyword, no cannibalization ([[seo-growth]])
• Launch content drafted on the SEO spokes; social snippets handed off ([[content-marketing]])
• Per-platform social post pack + launch thread ready ([[social-distribution]])
• Email sequence and referral loop drafted or explicitly waived ([[email-nurture]], [[referral-loop]])
• Every channel maps to the primary metric; weekly review scheduled with an owner
• Launch kit produced as separate linked docs under docs/launch/