E.g. examples you delete as you replace them.
Work through the eight stages below in order. Each one feeds the next, so skipping ahead means redoing work. Track your progress on the setup checklist.
You do not need to finish all eight stages before running anything. Stages 1 to 4 are the minimum before your first campaign. The rest can follow.
Read what this framework covers first if you want the scope. This is an operations framework: it fixes the decisions, names, and records that make work reviewable. It does not teach you to operate an ad platform, and several gaps you will notice are deliberate.
How the knowledge base is organized
Two rules make the whole thing hold together:
- Fill a workbook once, link to it everywhere else. A brief that pastes in the positioning statement creates a second copy that drifts. Link instead.
- Every finished thing gets saved to its library. A campaign brief nobody filed is a campaign nobody can learn from.
Stage 0: Decide where things get saved
The asset directory already records where creative, video, copy, and landing pages live. Read it first, then agree the one thing it doesn’t cover: where filled-in workbooks, finished briefs, and reports go.The setup path
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Stage 1: Shared vocabulary
Read the glossary and the naming conventions overview. Nothing to fill in. This exists so that the next seven stages mean the same thing to everyone.Then: nothing to save. Move on.
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Stage 2: Brand
Fill in the six brand workbooks in order: positioning, messaging, brand voice and tone, visual identity, logo usage, brand assets.Read brand strategy concepts and visual identity concepts first if you want the reasoning.Then: every creative and copy brief links to these. Nothing downstream restates them. Start at set up your brand for the walkthrough.
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Stage 3: Product catalog
Fill in the product catalog: every product and offer you advertise, each with a short identifier that never changes.Then: naming conventions draw their product values from this list, and every report can group spend by what it was selling. A single-product company can fill this in inside ten minutes and move on.
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Stage 4: Naming conventions
Decide your patterns in campaign, ad set, ad group and variant, ad, customer profile, file, and event naming conventions.Then: every campaign built in a platform uses these names from the first build, not renamed later. See name something.
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Stage 5: Tracking
Fill in UTM standards after reading UTM parameters. Then build your event tracking plan using the event naming conventions from stage 4.Then: save the tracking plan to the event library. Every link in every campaign is tagged from this standard. See set up tracking.
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Stage 6: Customer profiles
Fill in a customer profile brief for B2B, or B2C customer profiles, naming each one with the convention from stage 4.Then: save each finished profile to the customer profile library. Briefs link to a profile by name instead of redescribing it. See define a customer profile.
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Stage 7: Reporting
Fill in the marketing reporting data dictionary, then KPI definitions, reporting cadence, and dashboard standards. Pick a starter pack if one fits: ecommerce or sales-led.Read reporting framework concepts first for the reasoning.Then: set up the flat file that every report reads from. See report on results.
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Stage 8: Experiments
Define your ID pattern in the experiment ID workbook after reading experiment ID concepts.Then: every test gets an ID from this pattern before it launches. See run an experiment.
Once setup is done
Everything after this is ordinary work, and every task has a walkthrough under Find what you need. Start with the walkthrough rather than with a workbook, because it tells you which workbooks the task needs and in what order.Related resources
- Setup checklist Tick off the eight stages as you complete them.
- What this framework covers What is in scope, and what is deliberately not.
- New member onboarding What someone joining an already-set-up team reads.
- Glossary Every term used across these documents.
- Make a campaign The most common task, once setup is done.