Max Morrish

The Playbook

I wrote this for anyone doing marketing who wants to get better at one thing today, and for anyone hiring who wants to see how I think before we talk.

Each chapter takes one idea and gives you something to pull apart, because I think you learn how a headline or a funnel works faster by breaking it than by reading about it. Every example uses the same three companies, all of them made up: Kiln, a small-batch coffee roaster; Ledgerline, accounts software for mid-sized contractors; and Northfield Food Bank, a student-run food rescue.

Much of the grounding came from a digital marketing program in 2026; each chapter credits what it draws on.

The five parts as one line of light, each point a chapter. The lit points are chapters you can read now; the faint ones are still coming.

Who

The people you are trying to reach, and who else is competing for them.

  1. Intent rises as people move
  2. One company, several buyers
  3. Know the room

What

The words, the design and the page they meet.

  1. Write the line that earns the next line
  2. Direct the eye
  3. Pages that leak

Where

The channels that carry it to them.

  1. Cold outreach that leads with the wound
  2. Email people open
  3. Organic social: native, tested, repeated
  4. Bought sparks: the economics of "organic"
  5. How the auction spends your money
  6. Search, and now AI search

Whether

How you know it worked, and how you tell someone else.

  1. Measurement you can defend
  2. Reports and decks people act on

How the work gets done

The tools and the standards underneath all of it.

  1. The machine's share and the human's share
  2. Honesty is part of the job