101

Overview

ttm-101 is the marketing fundamentals primer for engineers and developerneurs. It is an engineer-analogy-heavy tour of the core concepts that every other takeToMarket skill assumes you understand: positioning, ICP, channels, funnels, AEO vs SEO, the campaign lifecycle, and the system's invariants.

Run it once to get oriented. Invoke the whole tour with ttm-101 (the default is --all), or read a single section with ttm-101 --section <name>. Valid section names are positioning, icp, channels, funnel, aeo-vs-seo, lifecycle, and invariants.

The skill is read-only orientation: it prints engineer-friendly explanations and does not modify your workspace. The full source it follows lives at ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/workflows/education/ttm-101.md.

How it works

Print engineer-friendly explanations of core marketing concepts.

Section 1: Positioning

Engineering analogy: Positioning is your API contract. It's the promise of what your product is, who it's for, and what it does that competitors don't. Every downstream marketing asset MUST adhere to it.

Without positioning:

• Your homepage says one thing; your sales emails say another. Customers churn.
• You build features for the wrong customer. Roadmap drift.
• AI engines can't summarize who you are. You don't get cited.

A positioning statement has 5 parts:

1. Category — what kind of thing you are. ("Marketing OS for engineers")
2. Target audience — who specifically. ("Developerneurs and solopreneurs with no marketing experience")
3. Primary differentiator — the ONE thing competitors don't do. ("Positioning-invariant quality gates")
4. Proof points — specific numbers/cases that back the differentiator.
5. Must-not-say — terms you ban. (Why: prevents drift.)

In takeToMarket, .taketomarket/POSITIONING.md holds this. The quality gate wall enforces it.

Section 2: ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)

Engineering analogy: ICP is your user persona but enforced as a constraint. Anyone outside the ICP is anti-ICP — explicitly NOT a target.

Without ICP discipline:

• You market to everyone. Your message is bland. Nobody pays attention.
• You build features for tire-kickers. Real customers churn.

A good ICP has:

• Demographics: role, company size, industry, geography.
• Psychographics: what they believe, what they read, what they're frustrated by.
• JTBD: the job they hire your product to do.
• Pain severity + frequency.
• Anti-ICP: who you explicitly avoid.

In takeToMarket: .taketomarket/ICP.md.

Section 3: Channels

Engineering analogy: Channels are deployment targets. Each has its own runtime + idioms. You don't deploy a React app to AWS Lambda raw — you containerize it. Same with marketing: you don't post a long-form essay on Twitter, you adapt it.

Channels in takeToMarket:

• Organic Search / SEO — content that ranks on Google.
• AEO (AI Engine Optimization) — content that AI engines cite.
• LinkedIn — professional social.
• Email — direct + permissioned.
• Paid Ads — Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads.
• YouTube — video content.
• Social — Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok.
• Events — conferences, webinars.
• PR / Media — press, podcast tours.
• Affiliate / Partnerships — distribution via others.

Each channel has a playbook (playbooks/<channel>.md) rewritten under THE industry leader for that channel.

Section 4: Funnel

Engineering analogy: TOFU/MOFU/BOFU is a state machine. Users move through states. Each state has different content needs.

• TOFU (Top of Funnel): Stranger. Doesn't know they have your problem. Content: blog posts, social posts, YouTube videos. Goal: awareness.
• MOFU (Middle of Funnel): Aware of problem, evaluating solutions. Content: comparison pages, use-case pages, free tools, lead magnets. Goal: evaluation.
• BOFU (Bottom of Funnel): Ready to buy. Content: pricing pages, demos, case studies, testimonials. Goal: conversion.

In takeToMarket: each asset is tagged with its funnel position in the campaign brief.

Section 5: AEO vs SEO

Engineering analogy: SEO is for search engines (Google). AEO is for AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini). They optimize for different consumers.

• SEO signals: keywords, backlinks, page speed, mobile-friendliness, internal linking, schema markup.
• AEO signals: citability (clear answer blocks), structured data, definitional sentences, llms.txt, recent updates.

Modern marketing optimizes for BOTH. takeToMarket builds AEO-first while maintaining SEO floor.

Section 6: The 9-phase lifecycle

Engineering analogy: Every campaign goes through a state machine with 9 states. Each state has entry + exit conditions. Quality gates between states catch defects early (cheaper than catching them in production).

1. Brief — define outcome metric + positioning anchor + channel mix.
2. Discover — research market, audience, competitors.
3. Produce — generate assets in fresh contexts loaded with brief + refs.
4. Verify — run quality gates on every asset.
5. Review — present to user for approval.
6. Ship — publish/deploy.
7. Measure — analyze analytics against outcome metric.
8. Learn — extract lessons, update reference files.
9. Fix — root-cause + rework failed assets (capped at 3 attempts).

Section 7: takeToMarket invariants

Engineering analogy: These are unit-test-enforced contracts. Every asset must satisfy them or it doesn't ship.

1. Verifiable outcome metric. Every campaign declares ONE metric upfront. No metric → no campaign.
2. Positioning-invariant quality gate wall. Every asset is checked against POSITIONING.md before ship. Drift = block.
3. Mandatory humanizer pass. Every audience-facing asset passes through /ttm-humanize as the final step.
4. Compound learnings. Every campaign's lessons update .taketomarket/LEARNINGS.md. Future campaigns inherit.

End-of-tour

Pick one to do now:

• /ttm-init — set up your workspace if you haven't.
• /ttm-new-campaign — start a campaign.
• /ttm-101 --section <name> — re-read any section.

What if this doesn't fit?

Looks like /ttm-101 can't do that yet.

• Want a new skill? /ttm-request-skill
• Existing skill needs work? /ttm-improve-skill