Most new heads of marketing make the same mistake. They arrive wanting to prove they were worth hiring, so they rebrand something, swap an agency or launch a big campaign in week three. Occasionally that's the right call. Usually it's noise, because you don't yet know enough to tell the difference between something that's broken and something that just looks odd from the outside. The first 90 days are about earning the right to change things. Here's how I'd spend them.
Days 1 to 30: learn the business before the marketing
Start outside your own department. Talk to sales, customer service, finance, product and the founder or CEO. Ask everyone the same three questions. What's working? What's broken? What would you do if you had my job?
By the fifth or sixth conversation, patterns show up. The same complaint about lead quality. The same product everyone loves but nobody promotes. The same report that finance doesn't trust.
Then get close to the customer. Read reviews, support tickets and refund reasons. Listen to sales calls if they're recorded. Buy the product yourself, go through checkout on your phone, sign up for the emails, then unsubscribe and see what happens. You'll find more problems in an afternoon of being a customer than in a week of reading strategy decks.
A rough rule of thumb: aim for 15 to 20 proper conversations in the first month, and write your notes up the same day. Don't present opinions yet. People remember the new person who arrived with all the answers, and not fondly.
Get the numbers straight before you touch strategy
A surprising number of marketing teams can't tell you cleanly what a customer costs to acquire and what that customer is worth. Find out where the numbers live, who owns them, and whether finance and marketing agree. Often they don't.
Build a simple one-page view. Spend by channel, revenue or leads by channel, cost per acquisition, conversion rate, repeat rate and margin after marketing costs. It doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be agreed.
Check the tracking while you're there. Broken pixels, duplicated conversions, and ad platforms that between them claim more revenue than the business actually took. If the platforms add up to more than the bank account, you've found your first job.
This matters for a second reason. At day 90 someone will ask what's changed. Without a baseline from day 10, you can't answer honestly.
Understand the team you've inherited
Hold a proper one-to-one with everyone in your first week. Ask what they own, what gets in their way, what they'd change, and what they want to be doing in a year's time. Then map how the team actually works, not how the org chart says it works. Who really owns email? Who does the agency talk to when something goes wrong? Where do decisions stall?
The shape of the team changes how you manage it. At AllDomains I led a team of about 11: six direct reports, a freelance designer and four part-time community moderators. Those are three different working relationships. Direct reports need clear goals and development. A freelancer needs tight briefs and a predictable flow of work. Part-time moderators need simple guidelines and a clear person to escalate to. Manage them all the same way and at least one group will struggle. The same goes for agencies, which need their own kind of attention.
Resist restructuring in month one unless something is plainly failing. Some people underperform because of the setup they were working in, not their ability. Give them a fair go under clearer direction before you decide.
Find two or three early wins, and make them boring
You do need wins. Pick ones that are low risk, quick to deliver and visible to the people who hired you.
Good candidates:
- Fix the tracking so everyone trusts the numbers.
- Switch on a missing abandoned basket or welcome email flow.
- Cut obviously wasted spend, like irrelevant search terms or audiences that never convert.
- Repair a landing page with a broken form or a slow mobile load.
- Simplify the weekly report so the founder actually reads it.
None of these will get you applause on LinkedIn. They will build trust, and trust buys you room for the bigger, riskier decisions later.
What to avoid in the first 30 days: rebrands, agency swaps and new channel launches. Unless the house is genuinely on fire, these can wait until you understand why things are the way they are.
Days 30 to 60: write the plan, including what you'll stop
By week five you should have a view. Write it down in one document of a few pages. What's working, what isn't, the three or four priorities for the next two quarters, what you need in budget, people and tools, and how you'll measure progress.
Include a stop list. Every marketing team has activity that survives purely through habit. The monthly newsletter nobody opens. The social channel with no real audience. The report that takes a day to build and nobody reads. Stopping things frees up time faster than hiring does.
Share the plan as a draft, not a finished piece. Ask finance and the CEO to poke holes in it. A plan the leadership team has agreed to is worth more than a clever plan they haven't.
Be explicit about what you're not doing. Saying no to five reasonable ideas so you can do one properly is most of the job.
Hiring: be clear on the job before the job ad
If the plan shows a gap, you'll probably need to hire. Start early, because a good hire can easily take two to three months from brief to first day.
At AllDomains I hired a marketing manager and led go-to-market for a new product launched under the same holding group. If you're hiring around a launch, my advice is to write the role around the outcome rather than a generic job description. Write down what this person must have delivered by month six. Then work backwards to the skills that requires.
Hire for the stage the business is at. A launch usually needs a capable generalist who can write, brief, run a channel and pick up whatever falls through the gaps. A mature channel that needs optimising might need a specialist. Getting this wrong is expensive and slow to undo.
Two practical tips. Use a short, paid task based on a real problem the business has, not a hypothetical one. And decide what covers the gap until they start, whether that's a freelancer, an agency or AI tools doing the first draft of the research and reporting work. I build my own tools for exactly this kind of work, and they're good at clearing the repetitive tasks so the team can focus on decisions.
Days 60 to 90: set the rhythm that outlasts you
The last month is about making the plan run without you pushing every piece of it.
Set a simple operating rhythm. A weekly team meeting built around the numbers, not status updates. A monthly review with leadership showing progress against the baseline. A quarterly planning session. Keep a testing log so you know what you tried, what happened and what you learned, because six months from now nobody will remember.
Document the basics as you go. Brand guidelines, briefing templates, who owns which channel, how budget gets approved. It feels like admin. It's what lets the team move quickly without checking everything with you.
By day 90 you want five things in place: an agreed baseline, an agreed plan, a couple of early wins delivered, a team that knows what it owns, and any key hires under way. If you've got those, you've done the job well, even if nothing dramatic has happened yet.
FAQ
What should a head of marketing focus on in the first 30 days?
Listening, customers and numbers. Talk to people across the business, get close to real customer feedback, and build a baseline everyone agrees on. Save big opinions and big changes for later.
Should a new head of marketing change agencies straight away?
Usually not. An agency underperforming is often a briefing, tracking or expectations problem rather than a talent problem. Give them clear direction and a fair period to respond, then decide with evidence.
How do you measure success in the first 90 days?
Not by revenue alone, because most of what you change won't show up fully in three months. Measure whether you have trusted numbers, an agreed plan, a few delivered quick wins and a team with clear ownership. Those are the foundations the results come from.
If you're stepping into a marketing leadership role, or hiring someone into one, I'm happy to compare notes. I'm open to Head of Marketing and Head of Growth roles, particularly with DTC and consumer brands, and I take on consulting work too. You can get in touch through the contact link on tomosborne.me.