# Growth engineering Human Guide

## What This Is For
Activate this skill when the user's request involves any of the following: It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for growth marketing: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Growth engineering agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for growth engineering.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Growth engineering guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- Designing or improving a product-led growth (PLG) motion
- Building or optimizing referral programs (customer referral, partner referral, ambassador programs)
- Creating viral loops or increasing organic sharing mechanics
- Planning a product or company launch (Product Hunt, beta launches, waitlists)
- Improving user retention, reducing churn, or designing re-engagement campaigns
- Running growth experiments and building an experimentation culture
- Setting up or optimizing affiliate marketing programs
- Designing activation flows and reducing time-to-value for new users
- Building growth models or forecasting viral growth coefficients
- Solving cold-start problems for marketplaces or platforms
- Identifying and scoring product-qualified leads (PQLs)
- Any question about growth levers, growth loops, or sustainable acquisition strategies

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: When to Use This Skill, Brand Context (Auto-Applied), Required Context, Capabilities, Product-Led Growth (PLG) Strategy, Referral Systems, Viral Loop Design, Launch Playbooks, Retention Loops, Affiliate Marketing.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- **Apply brand voice** — Formality, energy, humor, authority levels must shape all content tone and word choices
- Do not ask the user for information that already exists in their brand profile.
- [ ] Write program terms and conditions (legal review required)
- [ ] Establish a violation escalation process (warning → commission hold → termination)
- | Effort | Person-months | Total work required (design + dev + QA) |
- Every experiment must start with a falsifiable hypothesis. A vague "let's try this" is not an experiment.
- Before running any test, calculate the required sample size to avoid inconclusive results.
- | Statistical significance | Probability of avoiding false positives | Standard: 95% (alpha = 0.05) |

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Growth engineering human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the indranilbanerjee/digital-marketing-pro skill entry for `growth-engineering`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Growth Engineering

## When to Use This Skill

Activate this skill when the user's request involves any of the following:

- Designing or improving a product-led growth (PLG) motion
- Building or optimizing referral programs (customer referral, partner referral, ambassador programs)
- Creating viral loops or increasing organic sharing mechanics
- Planning a product or company launch (Product Hunt, beta launches, waitlists)
- Improving user retention, reducing churn, or designing re-engagement campaigns
- Running growth experiments and building an experimentation culture
- Setting up or optimizing affiliate marketing programs
- Designing activation flows and reducing time-to-value for new users
- Building growth models or forecasting viral growth coefficients
- Solving cold-start problems for marketplaces or platforms
- Identifying and scoring product-qualified leads (PQLs)
- Any question about growth levers, growth loops, or sustainable acquisition strategies

## Brand Context (Auto-Applied)

Before producing any marketing output from this module:

1. **Check session context** — The active brand summary was output at session start. Use the brand name, industry, voice settings, channels, goals, compliance, and competitors shown there.
2. **If you need the full profile**, read: `~/.claude-marketing/brands/{slug}/profile.json`
3. **Apply brand voice** — Formality, energy, humor, authority levels must shape all content tone and word choices
4. **Check compliance** — Auto-apply rules for brand's target_markets and industry using `skills/context-engine/compliance-rules.md`
5. **Reference industry benchmarks** — Consult `skills/context-engine/industry-profiles.md` for the brand's industry
6. **Use platform specs** — Reference `skills/context-engine/platform-specs.md` for character limits and format requirements
7. **Check campaign history** — Run `python "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/campaign-tracker.py" --brand {slug} --action list-campaigns` before planning new work
8. **If no brand exists**, say: "No brand profile found. Use /digital-marketing-pro:brand-setup to create one, or I can proceed with general best practices."
9. **Check brand guidelines** — If `~/.claude-marketing/brands/{slug}/guidelines/_manifest.json` exists, load and enforce: `restrictions.md` for banned words, restricted claims, and mandatory disclaimers; `channel-styles.md` for channel-specific tone overrides (may differ from base voice); `messaging.md` for approved key messages, taglines, and positioning language; `voice-and-tone.md` for detailed voice rules beyond the 4 numeric scores. If producing content for a specific channel, channel style rules take precedence over base voice settings.

Do not ask the user for information that already exists in their brand profile.

## Required Context

Before executing, gather the following from the user (ask if not provided):

- **Product type**: SaaS, marketplace, ecommerce, mobile app, content platform, service business
- **Business model**: Subscription, transactional, freemium, free-trial, advertising-supported
- **Current stage**: Pre-launch, early traction (under 1,000 users), growth stage, scale stage
- **Key metrics**: Current MRR/ARR, user count, activation rate, retention rate, churn rate, NPS
- **Existing growth channels**: Which acquisition channels are active and their relative performance
- **Viral potential**: Whether the product has inherent sharing mechanics or requires artificial virality
- **Team and resources**: Engineering capacity for growth features, marketing budget, partnership resources
- **Target user**: Who the ideal user is and what their primary motivation for using the product is
- **Competitive landscape**: Key competitors and their growth strategies

## Capabilities

### Product-Led Growth (PLG) Strategy
- **Free-to-paid conversion**: Freemium model design, free trial optimization, feature gating strategy, usage-based pricing triggers
- **Activation metrics**: Define the "aha moment," map the steps to reach it, measure and optimize activation rate
- **Time-to-value optimization**: Reduce friction between signup and first value experience through onboarding design, templates, sample data, and guided tours
- **PQL scoring**: Define product-qualified lead criteria based on usage patterns, feature adoption, team size, and engagement frequency
- **Self-serve expansion**: In-product upgrade prompts, usage limit notifications, team invite flows, seat expansion triggers
- **Reverse trial**: Give full access first, then downgrade to free -- when this works better than traditional freemium

### Referral Systems
- **Give-and-get programs**: Both referrer and referee receive incentives (e.g., Dropbox's extra storage model)
- **Tiered referral rewards**: Escalating incentives based on number of successful referrals
- **Milestone referrals**: Rewards triggered at referral count milestones (1, 5, 10, 25) to maintain momentum
- **NPS-to-referral pipeline**: Target promoters (NPS 9-10) with referral requests at the moment of highest satisfaction
- **Double-sided incentive design**: Balancing referrer reward (motivation to share) with referee reward (motivation to convert)
- **Referral channel optimization**: Email, unique link, social share, in-app invite, SMS -- which channels perform for which product types
- **Fraud prevention**: Detecting self-referral, fake accounts, and incentive gaming without creating friction for legitimate referrers

### Viral Loop Design
- **Inherent virality**: The product naturally requires others to use it (Slack, Zoom, Google Docs)
- **Artificial virality**: Manufactured sharing through incentives, social features, or content creation (shareable reports, badges, results)
- **Content virality**: User-generated content that surfaces on external platforms and drives new users back
- **Social proof virality**: Visible usage signals (badges, signatures, "powered by" links, public profiles)
- **Viral coefficient calculation**: K-factor = invites per user x conversion rate of invites. K > 1 means exponential growth; K between 0.5-1.0 augments paid acquisition significantly
- **Viral cycle time**: Reducing the time between a user joining and their invitees joining. Shorter cycles compound faster even with lower K-factors

### Launch Playbooks
- **Tier 1 launch** (major product): Full press campaign, influencer seeding, Product Hunt, beta community, launch event, paid amplification
- **Tier 2 launch** (feature/update): Existing user announcement, targeted outreach, community posts, changelog, email campaign
- **Tier 3 launch** (minor update): In-app notification, changelog update, social media post