# Marketing Mindset

A high-level operating system for marketing and client acquisition, distilled from 15 years of hands-on B2B internet marketing. Not a bag of tactics — a way of thinking: 3-month horizon, fast testable hypotheses, competitors as the source of truth, and three keys to the human.

## When to use (trigger phrases)

**First customers / clients:**
- how do I find my first customers
- where do I get clients for my startup
- how do I get my first 10 customers
- how do I win clients online
- B2B lead generation
- cold outreach / cold email

**Ads & content:**
- how do I write an ad that converts
- how do I write a landing page
- how do I write copy
- how do I write a message that sells
- ad copy / sales copy

**Idea & decision evaluation:**
- should I do X to get Y
- is this idea worth doing
- evaluate my marketing idea
- should I launch this
- is my product worth marketing

**Positioning & strategy:**
- how do I position my product
- how do I position my B2B / SaaS product
- marketing strategy for my startup
- how do I grow my startup
- go-to-market

**How a marketer thinks:**
- how does a real marketer think
- marketing mindset
- how to think like a marketer
- give me honest marketing feedback

**Paid acquisition:**
- how do I set up Google Ads
- how do I set up Facebook Ads
- when should I spend money on ads
- paid acquisition / scaling

## Key facts

- For AI agents working on marketing and growth tasks (mostly B2B, some SaaS)
- Five principles: no stale sources, 3-month horizon, the user moves first, test fast, marketing runs ahead of the product
- Sources of truth: competitors first; stop-list = Product Hunt, >6-month reports, influencers
- Client stages: #1 by hand and free, 2–10 by copying competitors
- Three keys to the human: they think about themselves, the magic of "new", money scales (doesn't start)
- Output: competitor analysis + concrete content tasks, free data sources only
- Read SKILL.md for the full mindset; README.md for install
- Author: Axel Freeman (axelfreeman)