You’ve just accepted or started an exciting new role as a Marketing Leader (CMO/Dir/VP) at a high-growth company. Congratulations! And remember the saying: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” – which essentially means first impressions count. As you prepare to onboard and ramp up, one of the most important things is a solid 30-60-90 day plan. This plan will serve as your roadmap for the first few critical months, outlining key focus areas and helping you drive trust and early wins.

Why You Need a Thoughtful 30-60-90 Day Plan 

A well-constructed 30-60-90 day plan is invaluable for several reasons:

1. It gets you up to speed quickly on priorities, expectations, processes, and personnel.
2. It enables you to methodically assess the current state of affairs and uncover gaps or opportunities. 
3. It rallies your new team around shared goals and vision early on. 
4. It demonstrates organization and planning to your new manager and executives. 
5. It holds you accountable to measurable results in a defined timeline. 

In general, a solid 30-60-90 day plan sets you up for success out of the gate in your new leadership role. 

Best Practices in Constructing Your Plan 

When drafting your 30-60-90 day plan, keep the following best practices in mind: 

1. Collaborate with your hiring manager and key executives on priority areas of focus. Use their insights to set the context for your plan. 
2. Structure your plan in 30 day intervals, with specific goals and deliverables for each. 
3. Balance strategic initiatives (ie: new routes-to-market, account-based framework, product-led motion) and tactical execution (ie: audit of DG, agile marketing) to show innovation. 
4. Include a mix of one-time initiatives and ongoing activities that will live on after the 90 days. 
5. Build in milestones and check-ins with stakeholders to report progress and solicit feedback. 
6. Remain agile and flexible; your plan is an ongoing work-in-progress, and it will evolve as you learn more about challenges and opportunities. 

Key Elements to Include 

Now let’s explore some of the essential components to incorporate across your 30-60-90 timeline: 

First 30 Days 

Use this initial sprint to focus heavily on learning, discovery, and establishing credibility with your team: 

• Complete all required HR onboarding and orientation programs.
• Schedule a flurry of 1:1 meetings with key cross-functional leaders to understand their goals and challenges.
• Conduct a current state assessment via stakeholder interviews, data analysis, audits of budgets/processes/tech stack.
• Finalize any open headcount needs on your team.
• Start reviewing existing campaigns, lead gen programs, content assets but resist making big changes prematurely. 
• Get well acquainted with your website, and identify new experiments that will generate quick wins. 
• Begin crafting the broader vision and strategy for your team tied back to company (revenue) goals.

Next 60 Days 

With foundational knowledge gained, utilize this phase to initiate activation, surface early wins and drive momentum through execution: 

• Analyze assessment findings, identify priority gaps and opportunities. Collaborate with the Marketing team. 
• Define success metrics tailored to your function and commit to regular reporting cadence. 
• Start decision making on marketing technology enhancements based on assessment. 
• Develop an integrated marketing campaign plan thru year-end that aligns to company revenue targets. 
• Conduct campaign optimization testing driven by specific hypotheses. 
• Finalize lead gen models that define conversion stages (by account/lead) and shared expectations for sales follow up. 
• Initiate planning for pipeline growth targets and new market expansion. 
• Rally your team around vision, operating principles, and collective priorities 

Next 90 Days 

Having executed quick wins and put foundational building blocks in place, optimize on programs showing traction while continuing to fine-tune and iterating where needed: 

• Monitor campaign success metrics and iterate on underperforming elements. 
• Advance implementation of MarTech tools and new automation to boost productivity. 
• Institutionalize governance models and processes to enable scale. 
• Extend integrated campaign calendar and demand gen strategy for the next planning horizon. 
• Partner with Sales leaders on target account selection, air cover campaigns, and joint effectiveness planning. 
• Develop a comprehensive document summarizing marketing strategy and key initiatives for executive team review.
• Formalize longer-term roadmap for the marketing team aligned back to corporate strategic priorities. 

Putting Your Plan into Action 

You’ll need to balance both strategic thinking and tactical blocking and tackling in your first 90 days in the marketing leader hot seat. Be diligent about carving out the time each week to work against your plan amidst competing priorities. The clarity this plan provides will help ensure you start off positioned for success. 

Use it as your guiding compass while also remaining swift to adapt based on new findings and business realities. Leverage the plan to provide transparency and collaboration with your new manager and sync up frequently on progress. 

Most importantly, approach this initial period with an open mind, ask tons of questions, and absorb as much as possible about the inner workings of the company so you can ease in as smoothly as possible. 

Elevating Impact Through Accountability

As outlined in the attached 30-60-90 plan template, it’s best to hold accountability to Discovery in the first 30 days, Activation in the next 60, and Optimization in the next 90 as you continue to iterate. This cadence of intentional milestones demonstrates strategic orientation while empowering the marketing team through clarity of vision, transparency, and measurable outcomes.

Your obligation as Marketing leader is to ask the right questions, foster trust, spark creativity, and nurture a culture of accountable experimentation. Empowering teams to unlock their full potential at the intersection of left and right brain. The brands that will thrive are those led with conviction to elevate our impact in service of customers, company, and community. Our 30-60-90 plan template sets the stage for the marketing innovation required to propel growth. 

Closing Thoughts

Your first 90 days on the job will fly by lightning fast. An intentional, milestone-driven 30-60-90 plan allows you to hit the ground running as a marketing leader. It enables you to ramp up swiftly, assess opportunities for improvement, and start driving measurable impact. 

While every company and marketing function is unique from one another, adhering to a plan with similar steps above will help ensure your early tenure exceeds all expectations. On behalf of all of us here at Kwanzoo, we wish you tremendous success ramping up in your new Marketing Leadership role. You’ve got this!