marketing-loops

---
name: marketing-loops
description: Use when setting up a recurring, self-running marketing workflow — a repeatable loop on a cadence (weekly, daily, on-trigger) — rather than a one-off task.
category: Marketing
version: 1.0.0
tools: []
---

# Marketing Loops

Marketing loops are repeatable marketing workflows run on a cadence, each with a defined trigger, a bounded set of steps, a self-check, and an explicit stopping condition. A loop turns a marketing task that would otherwise be done manually (and forgotten) into an always-on system: the weekly SEO opportunity scan, the ad-fatigue refresh, the churn-signal watch.

This is the operational cousin of marketing-ideas work. Ideas describe what to try once; loops describe what to keep doing on a schedule, wiring other marketing disciplines together to do it.

## How to Set One Up

Check the Knowledge Base for existing product-marketing context first, and use it instead of re-asking questions already answered there. Then:

1. **Clarify the job.** What outcome should this loop protect or grow — rankings, ad efficiency, activation, retention, revenue, referrals?
2. **Pick a loop** from the catalog below, or adapt the closest match.
3. **Tune the cadence** to how fast the underlying signal actually changes (see the cadence rule).
4. **Confirm the human checkpoint** — decide what runs autonomously vs. what gets staged for approval before publishing or spending.
5. **Schedule it** on the appropriate cadence (see Scheduling below).

If building a whole marketing operating system rather than one loop, start with tracking plus a weekly review — don't stand up dozens of loops at once.

## Anatomy of a Marketing Loop

Every loop needs all nine parts filled in. A loop missing a stop condition, a self-check, or its state handling is a liability, not an asset.

| Part | What it defines |
|---|---|
| Check cadence | How often the loop *looks* (weekly/daily/on-trigger) — match to signal speed |
| Acts when | The action condition — what must be true to actually *do* something vs. just check and skip. Most runs of a good loop are "checked, nothing to do." |
| Purpose | The one outcome this loop exists to move |
| Skills used | Which marketing disciplines the loop orchestrates each iteration |
| Loop body | The ordered steps run each iteration |
| Self-check | Verification done *before* acting, so the loop doesn't act on noise, seasonality, or a tracking bug |
| State / idempotency | What the loop remembers between runs: last-run marker, dedupe key, cooldown window, "already handled" set. Without this, loops double-act, re-nag the same people, or re-alert the same thing — non-negotiable for anything scheduled. |
| Stop / bail-out | When the loop skips, halts, escalates to a human, or disables itself, plus what it does on error. Every loop needs one, including heartbeat loops (theirs is "manual disable + error-halt," never "n/a"). |
| Output | Where results go: a draft, a notification, a report, a staged item for review |

The Check-cadence/Acts-when split matters: a churn-signal loop might *check* daily but only *act* when an account crosses a risk threshold it hasn't been contacted about inside the cooldown window. Conflating the two produces loops that either miss the window or spam.

## The Cadence Rule

Match cadence to how fast the signal actually changes, not to how often an update would feel nice.

| Signal | Realistic cadence | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Rankings, backlinks, domain authority | Weekly | Move slowly; daily checks are noise |
| Ad creative fatigue, CPA drift | Every 2–3 days | Platform feedback loops run in days, not hours |
| Activation / onboarding funnel | Weekly | Needs enough signups to be significant |
| Churn signals | Daily or on-trigger | Early intervention window is short |
| Content / copy decay | Monthly | Traffic erosion is gradual |
| Competitor changes | Weekly | Pricing/positioning shifts are infrequent but matter |
| Social listening / mentions | Daily | Engagement windows close fast |

Over-frequent loops are the most common failure mode: they generate busywork, burn budget, and train people to ignore the output.

## When Not to Loop

Skip a loop, or add a mandatory human checkpoint, when:

- **Strategy or creative direction is the real work.** Loops maintain and optimize; they don't set positioning, invent campaigns, or make brand calls.
- **The action publishes or spends without review.** Auto-drafting an ad, email, or post is fine; auto-publishing or auto-shifting budget needs a human checkpoint unless autonomous action has been explicitly authorized with guardrails (caps, allowlists).
- **The signal is too sparse to be significant.** A weekly conversion-rate loop on 40 visitors/week is measuring noise.
- **It's a vanity loop.** If nobody acts on the output, delete the loop — a loop that reports to a dashboard nobody reads is worse than nothing.

Any loop that sends, spends, publishes, or touches personal data needs guardrails: a two-tier action model (autonomous-safe vs. gated), spend/send caps, compliance with CAN-SPAM/GDPR/FTC/platform ToS, an always-escalate list for edge cases, and a required kill switch.

## Scheduling a Loop

Loops are agent-agnostic — the body works regardless of environment; only the scheduling mechanism changes. Time-of-day scheduling (fixed cron, e.g. `0 9 * * 1` for Mondays 9am) suits review-style loops like a weekly review or ranking watch. Dynamic/reactive pacing suits monitor-until-threshold loops like churn watch or launch-day tracking. For high-judgment loops, a manual cadence ("run this every Monday") is perfectly fine — the value is the repeatable body, not the automation.

## The Catalog

There are 43 marketing loops with full funnel coverage across SEO & Content, Paid, Earned/Social/Partnerships, Activation, Retention, Revenue, Referral & Advocacy, and Ongoing Ops. Each is a complete, adaptable spec — pick the closest match and tune it to the product, stage, and tooling in play. When nothing fits, author a new loop by working through the nine anatomy parts above with a concrete before/after example in mind; if the self-check, state/idempotency, and stop/bail-out can't be answered concretely, the loop isn't ready to run.

## Anti-Patterns

Looping without a stop condition (runaway spend or infinite churn); the same cadence for every loop (most run too often and get ignored); no self-check (the loop acts on noise, seasonality, or a tracking bug); no human checkpoint on spend/publish actions; building 10 loops at once instead of proving one earns its keep first.

Avoid banned vocabulary like "set it and forget it," "fully autonomous marketing," "AI does everything," "10x on autopilot," "growth hacking machine" — loops are disciplined systems with checkpoints, not magic.

## Coordinate With
@mention specialists in the channel each loop touches — ads, SEO, email, social, churn-prevention, pricing, referrals — to run the loop body. @mention an analytics specialist for the data most loops read before deciding whether to act, and an experimentation specialist for the hypothesis→test→promote-winner loop specifically.