/marketing-ideas — structured ideation upstream of content

Produce a ranked list of marketing ideas from a brief. Sits upstream of execution skills — /thought-leadership writes the piece; this skill surfaces which topic to write.

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When to invoke

• Weekly Genesys ideation cadence — before the content calendar push.
• Client kickoff — surface candidate plays before committing to a content plan.
• Stuck moment — campaign / quarter calendar empty, need 8–12 starter ideas.
• Reactive moment — competitor moved, new tool surfaced, signal from sales — generate ideas to address.

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Workflow

Step 1 — Brief intake

Capture in order:

• Audience: ICP segment or persona (e.g., "GTM Engineers at 50–500 person B2B SaaS").
• Goal: pipeline / brand / activation / retention / category-building.
• Constraints: budget, team capacity, deadline, voice-of-customer evidence available, brand voice rules.
• Context: existing content in the cluster (so we don't duplicate); recent client wins / losses (so we feed proof).

If any field is unclear, ask once — don't generate against ambiguous briefs.

Step 2 — Generate across 4 modes (2–3 ideas per mode)

Mode	Examples
Campaign (multi-asset, multi-week arc)	Launch series, narrative-driven nurture, product-led contest
Content piece (single asset)	Thought-leadership post, AEO article, comparison page, podcast episode
Experiment (test a hypothesis)	New CTA on landing page, signup flow A/B, pricing test
Lead magnet (gated asset for capture)	Calculator, template, benchmark report, framework

Aim for 8–12 total ideas. Quantity-then-quality — pull more than you'll keep so ranking has options.

Step 3 — Rank by 3-factor scoring

Score each on:

Factor	Weight	Question
Audience pain match	40%	Does this directly address a top-3 pain in the ICP?
Proof asset availability	30%	Do we have customer evidence / data / story to back this credibly?
Competitive whitespace	30%	Is the angle non-obvious — i.e., not the top-10 result for the query?

Total / 100. Top 3 land in the recommended queue.

Step 4 — Recommended next-3 with downstream handoffs

For each of the top 3:

• Restate the idea in one sentence.
• Name the downstream skill (/thought-leadership / /aeo-content / /linkedin-content / /lead-magnets / /webinar-brief).
• Note the brief the downstream skill will need (target keyword, hook, proof asset, format).

---

{Client / Genesys} ideation — {date}

Brief

• Audience:...
• Goal:...
• Constraints:...
• Context:...

Candidate ideas (8–12)

#	Mode	Idea (1 sentence)	Pain match (0-40)	Proof (0-30)	Whitespace (0-30)	Total
1	Campaign	...	35	25	25	85
2	Content	...	30	30	20	80
...

Recommended next-3

1. {Idea} — handoff to /thought-leadership with brief: {target keyword, hook, proof asset, format}.
2. {Idea} — handoff to /aeo-content with brief:...
3. {Idea} — handoff to /lead-magnets with brief:...

Backlog (rank 4–8)

-...

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## Anti-patterns

- ❌ Generate ideas without a brief. Output reads generic.
- ❌ Skip the ranking step — "here are 12 ideas, pick one" pushes the work back to the user.
- ❌ Optimize for whitespace alone (everything contrarian). Some obvious-angle posts are obvious because the audience needs them.
- ❌ Recommend an idea we have no proof asset for. Sounds smart, fails on execution.
- ❌ Generate without naming downstream handoffs. The idea dies in a doc.

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## Integration with other skills

- **Upstream:** `/icp-research` + `/positioning` + `/content-strategy` + `/expert-pov` provide brief inputs.
- **Downstream:** Top-3 hand off to `/thought-leadership`, `/aeo-content`, `/linkedin-content`, `/lead-magnets`, `/webinar-brief`.
- **Cadence:** weekly Genesys ideation runs; ad-hoc client kickoff or quarterly refresh.

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## Attribution

This skill adapts patterns from [`coreyhaines31/marketingskills/marketing-ideas/SKILL.md`](https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/blob/main/skills/marketing-ideas/SKILL.md) (MIT license, © Corey Haines / Conversion Factory). Adapted to Genesys operator voice with explicit downstream-skill handoffs.

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## Final ship gate

Run `/premortem --output` before ship. See [`/premortem` skill](../../../../meta/orchestration/premortem/SKILL.md) for the 5 execution domains (will-it-resonate / will-it-convert / will-it-stay-on-brand / will-stakeholder-push-back / will-it-degrade-over-time) and output template.

Trivial-case escape: `## Premortem\nNo failure modes — trivial change` satisfies the contract for genuinely trivial outputs.

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