Turn 'we should run ads' into a plan with a kill rule.
“We keep saying we should run ads, but nobody can say what a win looks like?”
The audiences, the offer per audience, the creative angles, the budget split, and the metric that calls it a win.
What this skill does
Takes a campaign goal and a budget and turns it into a plan a media buyer can execute: who you are targeting, what you put in front of each audience, the angles the creative should test, how the money splits, the one number that means it worked, and the rule that tells you when to shut a line off. It plans the campaign. It does not spend the money for you.
Inputs
- Works today with: a campaign goal, a monthly or total budget, who you sell to, and the offer you want to run. Paste it in a sentence or two.
- More powerful connected to an ad platform: it reads spend, impressions, clicks, and cost per result across your live campaigns, so the budget split and targets start from history, not guesses.
- Sharper with a web-analytics tool: closes the loop from click to signup or pipeline, so you optimize to the metric that pays, not the one that is easy.
- Sharper with a CRM: ties ad-sourced leads to real opportunities, so cost per lead becomes cost per qualified lead.
How it works
- 1Audiences (start narrow)
List the distinct audiences worth separate money: by segment, by intent, by stage. Cold prospecting, warm retargeting, and existing-list expansion are different buyers and should never share a budget line or a target. Name each one and why it is a real audience, not a slice you invented.
- 2Offer per audience
Each audience gets one offer matched to its temperature. Cold traffic rarely buys a demo on the first touch, so cold usually gets a low-friction offer (a guide, a teardown, a tool). Warm retargeting gets the direct ask. Never run the same offer to a stranger and to someone who already visited your pricing page.
- 3Creative angles (test the message, not just the image)
For each audience, name 2 to 4 angles to test: the pain, the outcome, the proof, the contrarian take. Angles are hypotheses about what the buyer cares about. You are buying data on which one is true. Hold the offer steady and let the angle be the variable.
- 4Budget split
Split the budget across audiences and angles with a bias: most of the money to the audience most likely to convert, a fixed slice reserved for testing new angles. Write the split as percentages that sum to 100, and note the reasoning so a buyer can defend it.
- 5Win metric and guardrail
Pick one WIN_METRIC the whole campaign is judged on, tied as close to revenue as your tools allow. Pick one GUARDRAIL_METRIC that caps waste. Clicks and impressions are diagnostics, not wins. If the only number you can see is a vanity number, say so and name the tool that would fix it.
- 6Kill rule
Write the rule before you launch, so you kill on evidence, not on feelings. A line dies when it passes KILL_WINDOW and misses the guardrail with enough spend to trust the read. Winners get more budget, losers get cut, and the test slice refills with new angles.
Output format
PAID-ADS PLAN · Q3 demo push · $18K/mo (illustrative)
Audience Offer Angles Split Win metric
Cold, paid social Teardown guide Pain / Outcome / Proof 40% CPL under target
Cold, paid search Demo (high intent) Outcome / Contrarian 30% Cost per qualified lead
Retargeting Book a demo Proof / Urgency 20% Demo booked
Test reserve rotating new angles 10% signal only
Kill rule: any line past 10 days and 1.5x target CPL with >$500 spend gets cut.
Reallocate to the top performer, refill the test reserve with a fresh angle.
Next move: connect the ad platform so the split starts from your real cost-per-result,
not these placeholders.
Tips
- Every audience has its own offer. No shared line between cold and warm.
- The win metric is the closest thing to revenue your tools can see, and the skill names what it cannot yet see.
- The kill rule is written before launch, with a spend floor so you are not reading noise.
- Any number shown as a target is labeled illustrative unless it came from your connected data.
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