How to use Claude Skills for marketing

If you're in marketing, you know the drill. You spend half your day briefing Claude on your brand voice, your target audience, and that one specific format your CMO loves. Then tomorrow, you start all over again.

Claude Skills changes that. Think of it as giving Claude a playbook that sticks around between conversations. You create it once, and Claude references it whenever you need it. For marketers juggling multiple campaigns, brands, or content types, this is kind of a big deal.

What are Claude Skills, anyway?

A Skill is basically an instruction file that lives in Claude's system. When you create one, you're packaging up expertise, guidelines, or workflows that Claude can tap into for specific tasks.

The platform comes with some built-in Skills for things like creating presentations or working with documents. But the real power for marketers is in creating your own custom Skills. You can build Skills for your brand voice, your content frameworks, your reporting templates, or anything else you find yourself explaining to Claude repeatedly.

Think of it this way: instead of being a helpful assistant who needs constant reminding, Claude becomes more like a team member who's already been onboarded and knows your playbook.

Creating your first marketing Skill: A walkthrough

Let's walk through actually building a Skill so you can see how it works. We'll create a brand voice Skill as an example, since that's something almost every marketing team needs.

Start by asking Claude to help you create a new Skill. You'll tell Claude you want to make a custom Skill for your brand voice guidelines. Claude will help you structure a SKILL.md file, which is just a markdown document with specific formatting.

In your Skill file, you'll want to include several key sections. First, a clear description of what the Skill does and when Claude should use it. Something like "This Skill should be used whenever creating customer-facing content for [Your Company], including social media posts, blog articles, email campaigns, and ad copy."

Next, document your actual brand voice. But here's the thing: don't just say "we're friendly and professional." That's too vague. Instead, break it down like this.

Your tone might be conversational but knowledgeable. You use contractions and write like you're talking to a colleague over coffee, but you back up claims with data. You're confident without being arrogant. You use "we" and "you" to create connection. You prefer active voice and short sentences.

Then include your forbidden words list. Maybe you never say "utilize" when "use" works fine. Maybe "synergy" is banned from all company communications. If your industry has overused buzzwords you avoid, list them.

Add examples of your voice done right. Pull three or four snippets from your best marketing content. Show Claude what great looks like for your brand. If you have examples of your voice done wrong (maybe from before you nailed down your guidelines), include those too with notes on what's off.

Finally, include any channel-specific variations. Your LinkedIn voice might be slightly more buttoned-up than your Twitter voice. Your email newsletters might use more personality than your case studies. Document these nuances.

Once you've created this Skill, save it. Now whenever you ask Claude to write marketing content, you can tell it to reference your brand voice Skill, and it'll have all that context without you needing to explain it again.

Real Skills that marketing teams are building

Let's get specific about the types of Skills that solve actual marketing problems. These aren't theoretical. They're based on what marketing teams actually struggle with day to day.

Email marketing command center

Create a Skill that covers your entire email strategy. Include your standard email template structure (how you open, where the CTA goes, how you close). Document your subject line best practices with 15-20 examples of your top performers. Note your preheader text strategy. Specify your personalization rules (when you use first names, when you reference past purchases, when you segment by behavior).

Include your A/B testing framework. What do you typically test? How do you structure your tests? What's your sample size threshold? Add guidelines for different email types. Your welcome series sounds different from your cart abandonment emails, which sound different from your monthly newsletter. A good Skill captures all of this so Claude can write emails that fit perfectly into your existing program.

Social media playbook

Here's a Skill that saves tons of time. Document your posting strategy for each platform. On LinkedIn, you lead with a hook, tell a quick story or share an insight, and end with a question or CTA. Your posts are 150-200 words. You use 3-5 relevant hashtags. You always include either a carousel, article link, or compelling image.

On Twitter, you use threads for complex topics, standalone tweets for quick takes. Your threads start with a promise of value ("Here are 7 ways we increased conversion by 40%"). You number your thread tweets. You summarize at the end and include a link to learn more.

For Instagram, you write captions that start with the payoff, not the setup. You use line breaks for readability. You put your hashtags in the first comment, not the caption. You always include a clear call to action.

Include your content pillars. Maybe 40% of your content is educational, 30% is community building, 20% is product-focused, and 10% is behind-the-scenes. Add your engagement guidelines. How do you respond to comments? What's your crisis communication protocol?

Content brief generator

This Skill turns Claude into your content strategist. Document your blog post structure: how you research topics, how you outline, your typical word count ranges, your SEO requirements, how you incorporate keywords naturally, where you place CTAs.

Include your research process. What sources do you trust? How do you verify information? What makes a stat citation acceptable? Add your headline formulas. Maybe you've found that "How to [achieve desired outcome] without [common obstacle]" performs well for your audience. Or "[Number] [adjective] ways to [achieve result]" gets clicks.

Specify your intro framework. Maybe you always start with a relatable problem, agitate it slightly, then promise a solution. Document your conclusion strategy. Do you summarize key points, end with a provocative question, or push readers toward a next step?

When you need a content brief, you just tell Claude the topic and reference this Skill. It generates a complete brief that matches your standards, saving you 30 minutes of work.

Campaign launch checklist

Build a Skill that walks through your entire campaign process. Start with the discovery questions you always need answered: Who's the audience? What's the goal? What's the budget? What's the timeline? What assets exist? What needs to be created?

Map out your typical campaign timeline. Week 1 is strategy and concepting. Week 2 is asset creation. Week 3 is review and revisions. Week 4 is final approvals and setup. Week 5 is launch and monitoring.

Include your stakeholder map. Who needs to approve creative? Who signs off on budget? Who needs to be looped in for awareness? Add your channel activation checklist. For a product launch, you might activate: email (three-touch series), social (two weeks of posts across platforms), paid search (three ad groups), content (one blog post, one case study), and PR (one press release, three journalist outreach emails).

When you're starting a new campaign, this Skill helps Claude become your project manager, making sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Competitor intelligence database

This Skill is basically your competitive analysis in a format Claude can use. For each major competitor, document their positioning, their key messages, their target audience, their pricing strategy, their content approach, and their apparent weaknesses.

Include specific examples. Link to their best campaigns. Note their typical promotional calendar (do they always run sales in Q4? Do they launch new features at specific conferences?). Capture their tone and how it differs from yours.

When you're developing positioning for a new feature or writing comparison content, Claude has context about the competitive landscape without you needing to explain it.

Product positioning and messaging

For each product or service you offer, create detailed positioning. What problem does it solve? Who is it for? What makes it different? What are the key features and, more importantly, how do those features translate to benefits?

Include your messaging hierarchy. What's the primary message you want people to remember? What are the three supporting messages? What proof points back up each message? Add your objection handling. What concerns do prospects typically raise, and how do you address them?

Specify your differentiation. Not just "we're better" but specifically how you're different and why that matters. Include customer language. What words do your actual customers use to describe their problems and your solution?

This Skill means Claude can write product descriptions, landing pages, sales emails, or ad copy that's strategically sound and message-consistent.

Making Skills work together

The real leverage comes when you combine Skills for complex projects. Let's look at how this plays out.

Say you're launching a new feature and need a complete go-to-market package. You'd ask Claude to reference your brand voice Skill, your product positioning Skill for this feature, your email marketing Skill, your social media playbook Skill, and your campaign launch Skill.

Claude pulls from all of these to create: a launch timeline with specific deliverables, email sequences written in your voice with your format, social media posts for each platform following your guidelines, a blog post announcement matching your content standards, and product messaging that's consistent across all materials.

Instead of briefing Claude five separate times, you reference your Skills once and get coordinated output. Everything is on-brand, on-message, and follows your processes.

Or imagine you're writing a comparison page against your top competitor. You reference your brand voice Skill, your product positioning Skill, and your competitor intelligence Skill. Claude writes copy that's in your voice, accurately represents your product's strengths, and positions against your competitor's actual approach rather than generic competition.

The anatomy of a Skill that actually works

There's a difference between a Skill you create once and forget, and a Skill that becomes genuinely useful. Here's what separates them.

Specific beats generic every time. "Write engaging content" is generic. "Use questions in the first 50 characters to hook readers, then deliver value in 150-200 words, using second person perspective and active voice" is specific. Claude can execute on specific instructions.

Examples are critical. If you want Claude to write in your brand voice, showing ten examples of your voice teaches it more than a paragraph describing your voice. Include good examples and bad examples. The contrast helps.

Context about when to apply the Skill matters. Your email Skill might say "use this Skill for all email communications, including promotional emails, newsletters, automated sequences, and one-off broadcasts. Do not use this Skill for internal team communications or personal emails from individual team members." That clarity prevents misapplication.

Edge cases and exceptions make Skills robust. Your brand voice might generally avoid humor, but your April Fool's campaign is an exception. Your email structure might be rigid, but your CEO's monthly letter has a different format. Document the exceptions so Claude doesn't apply rules incorrectly.

Decision trees help with complexity. If you have different approaches for different situations, map them out. "If the campaign goal is awareness, prioritize reach and frequency over direct response CTAs. If the goal is conversion, lead with benefits and include strong CTAs in the first 100 words."

Skills for different marketing roles

Your role shapes which Skills are most valuable. A content marketer needs different Skills than a demand gen marketer.

If you're in content marketing, prioritize Skills around your editorial calendar, content frameworks for different formats (blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, ebooks), your research and fact-checking process, your SEO strategy, and your content distribution approach.

For demand generation, build Skills for campaign structure, your lead scoring criteria, your funnel stages and messaging for each stage, your landing page formulas, your paid media guidelines, and your conversion optimization framework.

Social media managers benefit from Skills covering each platform's best practices, your content calendar themes, your engagement protocols, your influencer outreach templates, your user-generated content guidelines, and your social listening response framework.

Product marketers should create Skills for product launch frameworks, competitive positioning, sales enablement content structure, customer research methodologies, product naming and messaging conventions, and pricing and packaging communication guidelines.

Email marketers need Skills for different email types (promotional, transactional, behavioral), your list segmentation strategy, your testing methodology, your deliverability best practices, and your automation workflows.

Updating and maintaining your Skills

Your marketing evolves, so your Skills need to evolve too. Set a quarterly review for your Skills library. What's working? What's outdated? What needs to be added?

After major campaigns, update your Skills with what you learned. Maybe you discovered that your email subject lines perform better when they're questions rather than statements. Add that insight to your email Skill. If a new competitor entered your market, update your competitive intelligence Skill.

When your messaging changes (new positioning, rebrand, product pivot), update affected Skills immediately. Outdated Skills are worse than no Skills because they'll lead Claude to produce off-brand content.

Keep notes as you work. When you find yourself correcting Claude's output in the same way repeatedly, that's a signal your Skill needs clarification. If Claude nails something perfectly, look at what made that work and reinforce it in your Skill.

Common mistakes when building Skills

The biggest mistake is making Skills too vague. "Sound professional" doesn't give Claude much to work with. "Use industry-standard terminology, back up claims with data, maintain a confident but not arrogant tone, and write at a 10th grade reading level" is actionable.

Another mistake is creating Skills that are too rigid. Marketing requires creativity and adaptability. Your Skills should provide guardrails, not handcuffs. Instead of "always use this exact formula," try "typically use this structure, but adapt based on the specific context and goal."

Some people create Skills that are too long. Claude can handle detailed Skills, but if your brand voice Skill is 10,000 words, that's probably overkill. Focus on what's essential and different about your approach. You don't need to document things that are standard practice across all marketing.

The opposite mistake is making Skills too short. A Skill that just says "write in a friendly tone for B2B SaaS buyers" isn't giving Claude enough information to be useful. Find the middle ground between overwhelming detail and insufficient guidance.

Starting your Skills library

Don't try to build ten Skills in your first week. Start with whatever you find yourself explaining to Claude most often. For most marketing teams, that's brand voice, so begin there.

Spend an hour creating a solid brand voice Skill. Use it for a week. Notice what Claude gets right and what it misses. Refine your Skill based on that feedback. Once your brand voice Skill is working well, move on to your next most frequent need.

Maybe that's your email structure. Create that Skill, use it, refine it. Then move to social media guidelines. Then content frameworks. Build your Skills library one piece at a time, making each one solid before adding the next.

Within a month or two, you'll have a collection of Skills that makes your day-to-day work noticeably faster and more consistent. That's the goal. Not to build an elaborate system for its own sake, but to stop repeating yourself and get better output from Claude with less effort.

The ROI is pretty straightforward. If creating a Skill takes you an hour but saves you ten minutes a day, you break even in six days. Everything after that is pure efficiency gain. For a marketing team, that adds up fast.