Generate testable marketing options with ak:marketing-ideas

Use ak:marketing-ideas to explore a focused set of marketing options for a SaaS or software product. The Skill asks for product, audience, stage, goal, budget, team, and prior attempts, then recommends three to five catalog ideas with a starting path.

Choose ideation before commitment

Use ak:marketing-ideas when

• You need several plausible ways to reach, educate, acquire, activate, retain, or re-engage a defined audience.
• You want options filtered by stage, resources, budget, timeline, product, and current evidence.
• You want to compare content, search, product-led, community, partnership, event, paid, email, platform, localization, or unconventional approaches.

Choose another workflow when

• You need evidence that an audience, problem, or channel exists. Use ak:marketing-research.
• You need a sourced competitive comparison. Use ak:competitor.
• You have selected an option and need phases, owners, measures, and approval gates. Use ak:marketing-planning.

Prepare the decision context

Provide the product and business model, target customer, market, current stage, main goal, available team and skills, budget range, timeframe, existing channels, previous results, brand constraints, measurement capability, and actions that are out of bounds.

Attach evidence where possible. A tactic becomes more relevant because it fits the stated context, not because it appears in the catalog. If the context is missing, the Skill should ask rather than recommend a generic growth list.

Invoke the ideation brief

/ak:marketing-ideas "Suggest 4 low-cost ideas for a pre-launch workflow SaaS serving small product teams. Use only supplied audience evidence, rank by fit and reversibility, identify ethical or platform risks, and propose validation without publishing or spending"

/ak:marketing-ideas "Suggest 4 low-cost ideas for a pre-launch workflow SaaS serving small product teams. Use only supplied audience evidence, rank by fit and reversibility, identify ethical or platform risks, and propose validation without publishing or spending"

$ak:marketing-ideas "Suggest 4 low-cost ideas for a pre-launch workflow SaaS serving small product teams. Use only supplied audience evidence, rank by fit and reversibility, identify ethical or platform risks, and propose validation without publishing or spending"

Understand the recommendation stages

1. Clarify context. Confirm product, audience, stage, goal, resources, budget, timeline, prior work, constraints, and decision owner.
2. Filter the catalog. Select three to five ideas whose prerequisites and likely time horizon fit the context; avoid returning all 140 entries.
3. Explain fit. For each idea, connect the recommendation to supplied evidence and label unsupported reasoning as an assumption.
4. Define a safe start. Give the first two or three planning or validation steps, resources required, dependencies, and a reversible test where possible.
5. Compare options. Show trade-offs, risks, measurement needs, and the decision that would favor one option over another.
6. Hand off without execution. Return the recommendations for review, then use research or planning separately before any external action.

The canonical output fields are idea name, one-line description, why it fits, how to start, expected outcome, and resources needed. Treat “expected outcome” as a hypothesis and success definition, not a forecast.

Screen risky ideas before planning

Some catalog entries can create material effects: paid ads, retargeting and pixel sharing, audience uploads, engagement pods, giveaways, referral or affiliate incentives, contract buyouts, lifetime deals, localized pricing, acquisitions, sponsorships, outreach, public comparisons, controversial positioning, data publishing, or account creation. Do not execute or recommend deceptive engagement, undisclosed endorsements, unauthorized data sharing, spam, discrimination, dark patterns, false scarcity, or unsupported claims.

Ideation does not authorize network calls, provider use, spend, collection of personal data, customer contact, publication, pricing changes, contracts, or production changes. Each effect needs a separately reviewed plan and approval.

Verify the options and evidence

A useful recommendation set should include:

• The supplied facts and assumptions used to filter the catalog.
• Three to five options with fit, non-fit, prerequisites, cost category, effort, time horizon, owner, and dependencies.
• A falsifiable hypothesis, leading and guardrail measures, evidence needed, and a reversible validation step for each option.
• Ethical, privacy, legal, brand, platform, accessibility, financial, and operational risks where relevant.
• Rejected ideas and the reason they do not fit now.
• The next decision and approval required before research, planning, or action.

Troubleshoot and know the limits

The catalog is oriented to SaaS and software and includes platform references that can age. It defines no scoring formula, citation set, benchmark, provider, price, or performance guarantee, and it names no canonical output file. Continue with ak:marketing-research to validate assumptions or ak:marketing-planning to create an approved plan.