marketing-expert

A Vellum assistant plugin that lets your assistant act as a full-stack marketing expert for any business — B2B or B2C; SaaS, ecommerce, marketplace, consumer, services, and more — only when the user actually needs marketing help. The depth is activated on demand by skills, not bolted onto every turn.

When to use this plugin

Use this plugin when you need your assistant to think and act like a seasoned marketing leader, not just answer marketing questions, but own outcomes. Common triggers:

• "Help me with marketing" / "I don't know where to start": the entry-point skill activates and routes you to the right playbook.
• Positioning & messaging: define or sharpen how you describe your product relative to alternatives.
• Demand & pipeline planning: work backward from a revenue target to channel budget and funnel math.
• Product or feature launches: tiered GTM launch plans with channels, timeline, owners, and metrics.
• Content & SEO / GEO: editorial strategy, article briefs, technical SEO audits, GEO articles built to get cited by AI answer engines.
• Competitive analysis: evidence-based teardowns and battlecards.
• Web design & visual assets: landing pages, simple sites, logos, social graphics, ad creative.
• Email sequences & brand voice: nurture flows, onboarding drips, voice definition and enforcement.
• Board / exec updates: compute KPIs, frame wins and misses, make asks.

If the request is marketing-related but doesn't map to a specific playbook, the plugin handles it directly with its operating principles and deterministic tools (funnel math, positioning canvas, launch briefs, competitive rubric).

Install

From the Vellum plugin marketplace:

assistant plugins install marketing-expert

It registers on the next assistant start. (Manual alternative: place this repo's contents at <workspaceDir>/plugins/marketing-expert/ and restart.)

How to start

1. Install the plugin (see Install above).

2. Ask your assistant for marketing help. No special command, just describe what you need. A few examples:

   "We're a B2B SaaS doing $40k MRR. Help me figure out where to spend our next $5k/month on marketing." "Plan the launch for our new feature next month." "I have no idea where to start with marketing for my side project."

3. Provide context when asked. The assistant works best with real numbers: revenue, CAC, conversion rates, budget. If you don't have them yet, it'll tell you what matters and make assumptions explicit.

4. Follow the playbook. The activated skill guides you through a structured workflow and calls the tools it bundles (funnel math, positioning canvas, etc.). You'll get quantified recommendations and 2 to 3 prioritized next actions, not generic advice.

How it works — two layers

Layer	What it is	What it's for
Skills (skills/)	On-demand step-graph playbooks; trigger on marketing requests	The mindset + rigorous, repeatable workflows
Tools (bundled in each skill's TOOLS.json)	Deterministic helpers a skill exposes once loaded	Math & structured scaffolds it shouldn't improvise

Activation model: the plugin adds no system-prompt footprint. The persona, operating principles, and competency depth live in the on-demand marketing-expert skill, which fires — via its activation-hints — when the user asks for marketing help and routes to the specific playbooks below. The deterministic tools are bundled into the skills that use them (each skill's TOOLS.json), so a tool loads with its skill and runs in the skill sandbox — nothing is registered as an always-on tool.

Skills

Skill	Try this	What you get
marketing-expert	"Help me with marketing, I don't know where to start"	The right playbook activated, plus a prioritized plan tied to your funnel and unit economics
marketing-plan	"Stand up a GTM plan I can keep updating"	A living plan doc (positioning, channels, calendar, ad framework, tracked action items) maintained across sessions
founder-marketing	"I'm a solo founder with no budget, how do I get my first customers?"	A zero-to-one growth plan: the 2 to 3 channels to run now and what to ignore
positioning-sprint	"What's our positioning? Help me sharpen it"	A Dunford positioning canvas and a messaging hierarchy ready for the site
demand-plan	"I need $500k in pipeline next quarter, what's the plan?"	A budget-by-channel plan worked backward from the target through funnel math
launch-playbook	"Plan the launch for our new feature next month"	A tiered launch brief: channels, timeline, owners, and success metrics
content-engine	"Build me a content strategy and editorial calendar"	Topic clusters, a calendar, SEO briefs, and a repurposing plan
draft-content	"Write the landing page copy for our new product"	Ready-to-ship copy with headline and CTA guidance
web-design	"Design a landing page for this product"	A clean, responsive, conversion-structured page that doesn't look templated
visual-assets	"Make me a logo and a set of social graphics"	Distinct concept directions and export-ready creative
email-sequence	"Design a 5-email onboarding drip"	A full sequence with goals, timing, subject lines, and body copy per email
brand-voice	"Define our brand voice and check if this draft is on-brand"	A documented voice and a flagged, corrected draft
seo-audit	"Why aren't we ranking? Audit our SEO"	A prioritized audit: keywords, on-page, technical, content gaps, competitors

Tools

Each deterministic tool is bundled into the skill it serves (via that skill's TOOLS.json) and becomes available only when the skill is loaded — nothing is registered always-on:

• funnel_math (in demand-plan) — CAC (blended & paid), LTV, LTV:CAC, payback months, and stage→stage→revenue funnel projections (B2B or B2C), with health flags. Real arithmetic.
• positioning_brief (in positioning-sprint) — April Dunford positioning canvas + gap checklist.
• gtm_launch_plan (in launch-playbook) — tiered launch/campaign brief: channels, timeline, owners, budget split, funnel-tied metrics.
• competitive_scan (in competitive-teardown) — competitor investigation rubric + comparison format (filled with the assistant's web tools).

Verify

1. After install, confirm load in the daemon logs (no marketing-expert load error).
2. Ask for marketing help (e.g. "how are we doing on CAC?" with some numbers, or "plan our Q3 launch") and confirm the right skill activates and its bundled tool runs — e.g. demand-plan loads and its funnel_math runs for the CAC math.

Operating principles

Beyond the marketing fundamentals, the marketing-expert skill enforces four execution principles drawn from real-user feedback:

• Brief first; depth in a document. Lead with a skimmable answer, ask for inputs as structured options, and push long strategy into the marketing-plan doc — not a wall of text in chat.
• Default to action through the browser. Live web tasks (handle checks, scraping IG/TikTok, dashboard logins) go straight to browser automation instead of stalling or handing the task back.
• Set integrations up, don't just describe them. Check whether the user has an account, serve the signup/API link, and collect secrets via the secure prompt before touching integration code.
• Be honest about data confidence. Label numbers as measured vs. inferred and name the tool that gets real data first — never present guesses as validated.

These assume the host assistant provides a browser/automation tool and a secure credential prompt; without them the behaviors degrade to explaining the steps.

Notes

• Built against @vellumai/plugin-api (beta; pin the peer-dep range).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.