Suede Marketing Idea Prioritizer

Suede turns a broad tactic library into a bounded shortlist scored against the user's audience, stage, evidence, capacity, cost, and risk. The goal is not to label the library's tactics "proven"; it is to identify which few deserve validation in this specific situation and which should be deferred or rejected.

How to Use This Skill

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.

When asked for marketing ideas:

1. Ask the Task-Specific Questions below until product, audience, stage, budget, owner capacity, and what has already been tried are on the record. Do not score against assumptions.
2. Pull candidates from the category index below (full descriptions in references/ideas-by-category.md). Score no more than 8 candidates.
3. Score every candidate with the rubric below and apply its decision rule.
4. Return the shortlist in the Output Format, including the required rejection.

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Ideas by Category (Quick Reference)

Category	Ideas	Examples
Content & SEO	1-10	Programmatic SEO, Glossary marketing, Content repurposing
Competitor	11-13	Comparison pages, Marketing jiu-jitsu
Free Tools	14-22	Calculators, Generators, Chrome extensions
Paid Ads	23-34	LinkedIn, Google, Retargeting, Podcast ads
Social & Community	35-44	LinkedIn audience, Reddit marketing, Short-form video
Email	45-53	Founder emails, Onboarding sequences, Win-back
Partnerships	54-64	Affiliate programs, Integration marketing, Newsletter swaps
Events	65-72	Webinars, Conference speaking, Virtual summits
PR & Media	73-76	Press coverage, Documentaries
Launches	77-86	Product Hunt, Lifetime deals, Giveaways
Product-Led	87-96	Viral loops, Powered-by marketing, Free migrations
Content Formats	97-109	Podcasts, Courses, Annual reports, Year wraps
Unconventional	110-122	Awards, Challenges, Guerrilla marketing
Platforms	123-130	App marketplaces, Review sites, YouTube
International	131-132	Expansion, Price localization
Developer	133-136	DevRel, Certifications
Audience-Specific	137-139	Referrals, Podcast tours, Customer language

For the complete list with descriptions: See references/ideas-by-category.md

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Scoring Rubric

Score every candidate 0–3 on all six dimensions. 0 means "no evidence either way," not "probably fine."

Dimension	0	1	2	3
Audience	No evidence the ICP is reachable here	Plausible by category, unverified	ICP observed on this surface	Named communities/queries/accounts the user can point at
Stage	Preconditions absent	One precondition missing	Preconditions met, untested	Preconditions met and a comparable move already worked
Evidence	Support is "it's popular"	Third-party case studies only	Dated first-party signal from an adjacent channel	Dated first-party result for this audience
Capacity	No owner	Owner named, no hours	Owner + hours, displaces something	Owner + hours with no displaced commitment
Cost	Unknown total cost	Over the approved bounded amount	Within it, but consumes most of it	Within it with headroom
Risk	No stop condition definable	Reversible only at cost, gates unchecked	Reversible, gates identified	Reversible, cheap to stop, no legal/platform/brand exposure

Decision rule — apply in order, first match wins:

1. Any dimension scored 0 → Skip or Conditional, never a test this cycle. Name the zeroed dimension.
2. Total ≥ 14/18 and Evidence ≥ 2 and Capacity ≥ 2 → Approved test. State the test, the success metric, the review date, and the stop condition.
3. Total ≥ 10 with a single named blocker → Conditional. State the exact unlock condition and who can clear it.
4. Total ≥ 10 with no capacity in this window → Deferred. State the review date.
5. Total < 10, or Risk ≤ 1 → Skip. State the disqualifying dimension.

A tactic the user is already running is Current — score it, but do not present it as a new idea. These five statuses are the same set suede-marketing-plan Section 12 uses, so a shortlist drops into a plan without relabeling.

Caps. Score at most 8 candidates; surface at most 5; at most 3 carry Approved test at once. If more than 3 clear rule 2, rank by Capacity then Cost and move the rest to Deferred — capacity, not enthusiasm, is the binding constraint.

Required rejection. Every shortlist must name at least one tactic that is not recommended, drawn from the record rather than invented: something the user named under Task-Specific Questions 3 or 4 (already tried, or a competitor tactic they admire), or the highest-scoring candidate that still fails a dimension. Do not construct a strawman the user never raised. If the user named nothing and every scored candidate clears, say that explicitly instead of manufacturing a rejection.

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Output Format

When recommending ideas, provide for each:

• Idea name: One-line description
• Status: Approved test / Conditional / Deferred / Skip, with the six dimension scores and the total
• Why it fits: Connection to their situation, citing the evidence that scored the Evidence dimension
• How to start: First 2-3 implementation steps
• Expected outcome: The success metric, its review date, and the stop condition
• Resources needed: Time, budget, skills required

Close every shortlist with the required rejection, in this form:

Not recommended: [tactic] — fails [dimension] because [current evidence, or the absence of it].

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Task-Specific Questions

1. What's your current stage and main growth goal?
2. What's your marketing budget and team size?
3. What have you already tried that worked or didn't?
4. What competitor tactics do you admire?

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Boundaries

• Do not claim a tactic fits, is proven, or will grow revenue without current evidence and explicit scoring.
• Do not launch campaigns, publish content, spend money, contact prospects, or create accounts without authorization.
• Do not treat brainstormed ideas as a plan, forecast, commitment, or completed experiment.
• Do not decide budget, risk tolerance, brand claims, or channel priority when required context is missing.

Routing

• Use suede-marketing-plan to turn selected ideas into a sequenced roadmap.
• Use suede-marketing-loops for approved recurring workflows.
• Use suede-programmatic-seo, suede-competitors, or suede-emails for channel execution.
• Use suede-free-tools for engineering-as-marketing and suede-referrals for referral mechanics.
• Use suede-marketing-council when the shortlist is a coin-flip between two defensible directions and scoring does not separate them.
• Use suede-marketing-psychology for the behavioral mechanism behind a conversion tactic, stated as a testable hypothesis.