Guide

Claude Code for marketing: getting found after you ship

Team AfterLaunch9 min read

In this article

Claude Code built your product and shipped it. The step after building is a different job: getting found by the people who have the problem you solve, on Google and in the answers ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews give them.

This guide shows how to run that job from Claude Code. Half of it needs nothing but Claude Code: a marketing skill you can write tonight, printed in full below. The other half connects Claude Code to AfterLaunch, so it works from a record of how your product gets found instead of starting cold every session.

Not connecting anything? Go straight to the free skill →

What Claude Code builds, and where it stops

Claude Code is good at the marketing work that lives in your repository. It can read every page of your site, fix a title or a description, add structured data, write a page that answers a question, and open a branch for you to review. Most of what makes a site findable is in the code, and Claude Code is already working in it.

What it cannot do on its own is see outside the terminal or remember between sessions. Three things are missing every time you open it:

What the AI search engines say about your product today, and which pages they read to say it.
What you decided weeks ago, and why.
What shipped, and what it earned.

Marketing skills and plugins for Claude Code give it a method: how to audit a site, how to write a landing page, how to plan a launch. A method is worth having, and the free skill below is one. A record is a different thing. It is measurement kept over weeks, and it is what tells Claude Code which piece of work to do next.

Diagram: a move goes from your Board to Claude Code in one paste. Claude Code asks Shall I take this on, does the work on a branch in your repository, and nothing goes live until you say so. The move is recorded on Shipped with its live address, what it moved stays on the record, and the Board offers the next move. — How a move travels from your Board to your live site and back. A diagram, not a screenshot.

Connect Claude Code to AfterLaunch

It is one paste. Connecting needs a scanned product, so the free scan comes first.

1. Run the free scan

Scan your site at afterlaunch.io. AfterLaunch reads your pages, asks the AI search engines the questions your customers ask, and builds your Board: the growth moves worth doing, ranked, each with the evidence behind its rank.

2. Hand your first move to Claude Code

Open the first move on your Board and press “Connect and hand over to your AI”. Pick Claude Code, and the tile reads “Copied. Paste it into Claude Code”. That copies one piece of text: the connect steps, your first move, then the steps to set up a Claude Code routine that keeps your moves picked up while you are away. Nothing is handed over until Claude Code calls in.

3. Paste it into Claude Code

Paste it as your first message, in the repository of your site. Claude Code adds the AfterLaunch server to itself and asks you to create a key under API access on the Connect your AI page. The key goes in your shell as AFTERLAUNCH_API_KEY, never into the chat. The command it runs reads the key from there:

claude mcp add afterlaunch --transport http https://afterlaunch.io/api/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer $AFTERLAUNCH_API_KEY"

Run claude mcp list in your shell to check the afterlaunch server is connected before you rely on the tools.

4. Say yes to the first move

Claude Code opens your first move, shows you its title and the one line on why it is worth doing, and asks you one question: “Shall I take this on?” On your yes it takes the move and starts work in your repository. Nothing goes live until you say so.

5. Tell it when the work is live

When the change is live, tell Claude Code, and it records the move as shipped with the live address. A change to your site counts as shipped only with that address; without one it stays prepared. The move lands on Shipped, and AfterLaunch keeps what it moved beside it on the record.

To make it stick, add the Growth section to your CLAUDE.md. Claude Code reads that file at the start of every session, so every session after this one reaches for AfterLaunch without another connect step. The section is served at afterlaunch.io/agents/snippet.md, and the full setup, with the gotchas, is in our Claude Code connect guide.

The full connect instructions for Claude Code →

The Growth Moves Shipped page, Moves tab: shipped moves listed by date, filters for All, You and Your AI, and a Reddit reply shown with its live address. — Shipped lists every move recorded as done, by date, with its live address where one was found.

What AfterLaunch does next

From the scan on, AfterLaunch keeps working between your sessions. On every scan it asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews the questions your customers ask, and records who they name, who they link and which pages they read. It audits your site, watches your competitors, and finds the communities and directories where your category is discussed.

The AI Visibility page after a scan: a reading of how many tracked questions name the product, a suggested move beside it, and tiles for tracked questions, cited sources, the trend over scans, rivals ahead and outreach openings. — AI Visibility after a scan: how many of your questions name you, the move it would make next, and where the engines get their answers.

That record is what Claude Code reads when you say afterlaunch in a session. It gets the standup first: what shipped and what it moved, then what is ready, then what is in flight. Then the Board. The research, the ranking and the first draft are AfterLaunch’s. Claude Code’s part is finishing the work in your repository and shipping it with you.

The Board in rows view: a line reading 11 shipped and 50 ready, lanes down the left, and three ranked moves, each with its lane, an estimated time and a Hand to an agent button. — The Board: the moves ready now, ranked, each with its lane and about how long it takes.

One move opened: an X post drafted in the account’s voice, with Post to X, Open in X and Copy for my AI above the draft and a box for an optional note. — One move, opened: the draft AfterLaunch prepared, ready to post yourself or to copy for your own AI to finish.

The free trick: a marketing skill you can write tonight

You do not need AfterLaunch for this. Claude Code loads skills from your repository: a folder with a SKILL.md file in it, which it uses when your request matches the skill’s description. This one checks whether search engines and AI assistants can read your site, then fixes what it can on a branch.

Save it as .claude/skills/findable/SKILL.md in the repository of your site:

---
name: findable
description: Check whether search engines and AI assistants can read this site, and fix what stops them. Use when asked if the site is findable, before a launch, or after a big change to pages.
---

Work in this repository only. Make a branch called findable-fixes before you change anything.

1. robots.txt. Find it, or the code that writes it. List every rule that blocks a search crawler: OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), Claude-SearchBot (Claude search), PerplexityBot (Perplexity) and Googlebot (Google Search). Then list the rules for the training and AI controls: GPTBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended. Do not change any of these rules: show them to me and ask.
2. Sitemap. Check there is one, that robots.txt points to it, and that every public page is in it.
3. Every public page. Check for a unique title under 60 characters, a description under 160, one h1, and main text that is in the HTML the server sends, not only after JavaScript runs.
4. Structured data. Check the home page describes the product as a SoftwareApplication or an Organization, and that the pricing page states its prices as text.
5. Questions. Read the home and pricing pages and write the five questions someone would type into ChatGPT before they had heard of us. For each, name the page that answers it, or say that none does.

Fix what you can on the branch, in small commits. Then give me a table: page | problem | fixed or needs me. Do not push.

Then ask Claude Code whether the site is findable. It runs the skill, and you review the branch like any other.

Or check robots.txt in your browser with the AI Crawlability Checker →

What the skill cannot tell you is what the engines actually answer. That needs the questions asked on each engine, again and again. Our afternoon guide does it by hand with Claude, every prompt included.

How we get products named by ChatGPT, in one afternoon with Claude →

Built in: what AfterLaunch prepares for a Claude Code repository

Connected, the skill above becomes one of many checks that run without you asking. The moves AfterLaunch prepares for a product built with Claude Code, by lane:

Site: fixes to your own pages, each with its evidence. Claude Code makes them in your repository on a branch, and you merge.
AI Visibility: a page for a question the engines answer without naming you, and the pages they cite that name others and not you, with an email drafted for each.
Reach: the directories and communities where your category is discussed, and what to post in each.
Posts for X and LinkedIn, in your voice. Your AfterLaunch key cannot post them to a channel, so you post them yourself.

With a routine in Claude Code, moves get picked up while you are away. Attach your site's repository to this routine. Without it, page moves stop at a draft.

Questions

Can Claude Code do marketing?

Yes, for the work that lives in your repository: pages, titles, structured data, copy, and how search engines and AI assistants read your site. On its own it cannot see what the AI search engines answer about you, or remember what worked last month. That needs a record kept between sessions.

What are marketing skills for Claude Code?

A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file that teaches Claude Code a task, used when your request matches its description. Marketing skills teach methods such as a site audit or a launch plan. The findable skill on this page is one you can copy.

Do I need AfterLaunch to use Claude Code for marketing?

No. The free skill on this page runs with Claude Code alone. AfterLaunch adds the measurement and the memory: what the engines say about you on every scan, what you decided, and what shipped and what it earned.

Does Claude Code publish anything without me?

No. It asks before it takes a move, and nothing goes live until you say so. Posts for X and LinkedIn are drafted for you to post.

See what the engines say about you today.

The free scan reads your site and asks the AI search engines the questions your customers ask. Your Board is waiting at the end, with the first move ready for Claude Code.

Scan my site