New Marketing Leaders: Your 30-60-90 Plan

Picture this: you’ve just landed a new marketing job in a leadership role.

You’ve spent your first week feng shuiing your desk, dressing nicer than you will in the weeks to follow, exchanging customary icebreakers with your new team members, and bookmarking the many online tools your place of work swears by.

Suddenly, it hits you… how are you going to prove results and show your impact?

Not sure of the answer? Never fear. All you really need is a 30/60/90-day marketing plan.

What Is a 30/60/90-Day Marketing Plan?

Although it sounds like a fad diet from the early 2000s, we promise it actually works. 

A 30/60/90-day marketing plan is a way for new marketing leaders like hypothetical (or literal) you to create success for themselves, their teams, and their companies as a whole. 

Its tri-numeric structure refers to different periods of time: 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days. At the end of each one-month period, the expectation is that you will have met or surpassed certain objectives that you set forth to achieve on day 1. In other words, the goal of this plan is to help you accomplish your own goal(s) within your first 90 days on the job. 

Generally speaking, the objectives for each 30-day period follow this specific flow: 

• 1st 30-Day Period (30 Days): Learning Phase, where you’ll learn everything you’ll need to accomplish your ultimate goal
• 2nd 30-Day Period (60 Days): Application Phase, where you’ll apply everything you’ve learned to start working towards your goal
• 3rd 30-Day Period (90 Days): Mastery Phase, where you’ll fine-tune what you’ve applied to reach your goal

What Makes a Good 30/60/90-Day Marketing Plan?

With a plan like this, positive affirmations will only get you so far.

A 30/60/90-day roadmap is about strategy, not wishful thinking. In order to make one that sees you through to the end, a few things need to happen. 

For starters, every 30/60/90-day marketing plan should have: 

• A set goal (or goals!)
• Key objectives to achieve said goal(s)
• Strategic plans to achieve said objectives
• Specific duties for individuals to achieve said plans
• Timelines that keep all the above on track
• Measurable KPIs to analyze all of the above

Take note: the hierarchy of this plan is essential. Without it, everything crumbles.

Next, a good 30/60/90-day marketing plan will set realistic goals. If one is too lofty, unfocused, or irrelevant, it’s going to throw everything off track. 

Instead of welcoming this demise, try drafting a SMART goal. It’s an acronym representing goals that are:

• Specific (you know exactly what your goal is)
• Measurable (you know how to achieve your goal)
• Attainable (it’s not impossible to achieve your goal)
• Relevant (achieving this goal makes sense and has value)
• Time-Based (it can be achieved in a set period)

Lastly, a good 30/60/90-day marketing plan will make it into print—as in, it’ll be written out step-by-step somewhere. Doing so allows you to visualize every action required to achieve your eventual goal completely. There are plenty of free marketing templates on the web, so find one that works the best for your needs. 

How to Make Your 30/60/90-Day Marketing Plan

While planning three months out sounds like a lot of prep, it really doesn’t have to be. Starting your 30/60/90-day marketing plan can be easy when you follow the steps below.

1. Set Your Goals

To kick your 30/60/90-day marketing plan off right, you need to establish what your overall 90-day goals are. What would you like to accomplish in that time?

Remember: you want to pick a goal that’s SMART, one that doesn’t set too many wild expectations.

2. Work Your Way Down

Once you’re 1000% certain you’ve created a SMART goal, start working your way down the second bulleted list we provided in this blog post. You should start first with your objectives to reach your goal, followed by your plans to meet those objectives, and then list every task suggested or implied within those plans. 

After you’ve worked through that structure, make sure you can accomplish everything you’ve conceptualized in 90 days at most. To help you measure your progress and performance, throw in some KPIs to watch out for. 

3. Write It Out

There’s no way to remember every component of a 30/60/90-day marketing plan from recall alone, so publish yours as soon as you plan out the steps above. Additionally, make sure you do that in a way that’s familiar and intuitive to you. Some professionals love a stylized presentation while others live and breathe multi-layer spreadsheets. Regardless of whatever camp you fall into, communicate your plan in a way that just makes sense.

4. Get Peer-Reviewed

Although we’re not saying you have to present your 30/60/90-day plan in front of a panel of judges, we are saying you should get some more eyeballs on it to make sure it’s up to par. Whether you ask your mentors, colleagues, or a self-aware octopus at your local aquarium, don’t be afraid to share what you’ve got planned—you’ll surprise yourself with what they can catch. 

5. Start!

This step is pretty self-explanatory. Start. Just start your plan. Follow the guidelines you’ve made for yourself and carry on.

6. Be Flexible

Here’s the deal: a 30/60/90-day marketing plan is a plan, not a pact. While its success will depend on how committed you are to achieving it, plans go awry all the time—even the most meticulously prepared ones. 

Our best advice? Take a deep breath and go for it. Pivot when you need to and blaze ahead when you don’t. If you apply yourself and make record keeping and reporting a regular part of your workflow, everything will work out—you got this.

Are you still feeling overwhelmed? Contact us us to learn how our team of experts can help your business thrive!