skills/diagnose-marketing-structure/references/diagnostic-model.md

# Marketing Structure Diagnostic Model

## Contents

1. Equation types
2. Structural models
3. Bottleneck comparison
4. Common decision branches
5. Specialist routing

## 1. Equation types

- **Meaning equation:** communicates responsibility or causal framing. Never calculate from it.
- **Accounting equation:** adds or subtracts financial or countable components.
- **Probability equation:** represents conditional stages or yield. Define population and period before calculating.
- **Hypothesis tree:** maps possible drivers. Do not calculate until units, coefficients, overlap, and saturation are specified.

## 2. Structural models

### Revenue meaning

```text
Revenue exists when the customer decides to choose.
```

This is not an accounting formula.

### Revenue accounting

```text
Total revenue = trial revenue + repeat revenue
```

### Operating diagnosis

```text
Period revenue ≈ traffic × conversion rate × average value × continuation factor
```

Adjust definitions for contracts, cohorts, offline sales, multiple purchases, and margins.

### Customer-decision yield

```text
Demand occurrence
  → demand recognition or category entry
  → memory and recall / acquisition
  → consideration set
  → choice or intuitive selection
  → ability and friction
  → purchase or adoption
  → expectation and experienced value
  → re-recall, re-selection, continuation, or advocacy
```

### Availability

```text
Share is supported by mental availability and physical availability.
```

Use as a diagnostic relationship, not an exact multiplication rule.

### Trial and repeat hypothesis tree

```text
Trial revenue drivers:
population, recall, distribution, purchase rate, quantity, unit price

Repeat revenue drivers:
trial customers, re-recall, distribution, re-purchase rate,
quantity, frequency, unit price
```

### B2B

```text
Demand-bearing account / ICP
  → contact and recall
  → problem resolution, comparison, and sales value
  → internal approval and consensus
  → implementation and value realization
  → continuing relationship
```

### SaaS

```text
ICP demand → acquisition → activation and value realization → continuation
```

Do not use MA to repair activation or value failure.

## 3. Bottleneck comparison

For each candidate, record:

| Dimension | Question |
|---|---|
| Outcome sensitivity | If this improves materially, how much can the total outcome move? |
| Constraint severity | Is this near zero, a hard gate, or merely suboptimal? |
| Evidence | What supports it, and at what level? |
| Influence | Can the organization actually change it? |
| Time to learn | How quickly can a test distinguish the hypothesis? |
| Reversibility | Can a failed change be undone? |
| Implementation | Can current people, process, and incentives carry it? |

Select one primary bottleneck. Use a secondary candidate only when evidence is close or the primary cannot yet be tested.

## 4. Common decision branches

| Diagnosis | Priority | Do not substitute |
|---|---|---|
| Base demand is absent | Reconsider market or use case | More acquisition advertising |
| Problem is latent | Diagnosis, education, articulation | Fabricated fear or false urgency |
| Future demand can move forward | Current-value intervention | Ignoring future-demand cannibalization |
| New context/category may exist | Meaning, product, experience, education | Claiming predictable success |
| Recall is weak | Category entry, meaning, reach, trust | Awareness volume alone |
| Recalled but not chosen | Choice reason, price, evidence, risk | More CRM messages |
| Chosen but cannot buy/adopt | Distribution, inventory, payment, sales, UX | More advertising |
| Trial occurs but continuation fails | Expectation gap, value realization, product, CS | More reminders |
| Value exists but customers forget | Operational CRM or MA | Contacting people without recurring demand |
| B2B deal stalls | Approval, comparison, ROI, urgency, next step | Repeated closing only |
| Content is downloaded | Temperature, memory, internal explanation | Treating it as immediate purchase intent |
| KPI rises but KGI does not | Change KPI or causal hypothesis | Defending the KPI |

## 5. Specialist routing

| Dominant issue | Route |
|---|---|
| R, KGI/KPI, experiments, MMM, Signal/Guardrail | Measurement design |
| Advertising role, present/future value, structural spending | Advertising investment |
| ICP, sales meeting, deal stall, internal approval | B2B growth |
| MA readiness, CRM roles, CS, LTV | MA/CRM/LTV |
| Recall, meaning, PESO, expectations, touchpoints, buzz | Communications design |
| Causal claim, stale data, copied case, implementation politics | Reasoning audit |