90-Day Playbook for New CMOs/Heads of Growth

Stepping into a new role as a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or Head of Growth is both an exciting and daunting challenge. With leadership responsibilities and high expectations, your first 90 days can set the tone for long-term success. Whether you’re joining a startup or stepping into an established enterprise, having a structured approach can help you navigate complex environments, build credibility, and deliver visible results. Here’s a 90-day playbook to guide you through this critical period.

Why the First 90 Days Matter

The initial three months in any leadership role are a reset button — an opportunity to assess, align, and act. For a CMO or Head of Growth, the ability to quickly diagnose issues, rally teams, and start showing momentum can determine your trajectory in the organization.

During this time, you are setting the foundation for longer-term initiatives. You’re not expected to “fix” everything in 90 days, but you are expected to bring clarity, formulate a strategic vision, and identify early wins.

Phase 1: Days 1-30 – Assess and Understand

The first 30 days are all about listening, learning, and laying the groundwork for strategic action.

Key Objectives:

• Build relationships: Schedule 1:1s with executives, marketing team members, product and sales leads, and even select customers.
• Audit marketing channels: Review all current marketing programs, campaigns, and technologies in use. What’s working? What’s broken? What’s missing?
• Understand customer journey: Review the customer experience from awareness to conversion. Understand personas, segmentation, and pain points.
• Dive into metrics: Study analytics dashboards, sales pipelines, and KPIs that the company currently tracks. Are they aligned with business goals?

Practical Tips:

• Shadow sales calls and customer success interactions to gather real-world perspectives.
• Run SWOT analysis for the marketing organization.
• Map out current growth loops (referrals, content, virality, paid acquisition) and conversion funnels.

Output: At the end of 30 days, you should have a clear understanding of the current state of the marketing organization, the competitive landscape, and internal alignment challenges.

Phase 2: Days 31-60 – Align and Strategize

This is the phase to start implementing strategic direction and aligning teams around shared goals.

Key Objectives:

• Craft your marketing north star: Based on insights gathered, define 1-2 high-level strategic focuses (e.g., brand repositioning, improving CAC/LTV ratio, scaling paid acquisition).
• Redefine KPIs: Establish key metrics that will be used to measure progress. Make sure they align with business priorities.
• Team recalibration: Evaluate talent gaps, strengths, and areas where reorganization or new hires could make the most impact.
• Create your narrative: Develop a compelling internal narrative that explains where marketing is headed and why.

Practical Tips:

• Hold a marketing offsite or strategy day to get team buy-in.
• Work cross-functionally — partner with Product to influence roadmaps and with Sales to eliminate friction.
• Document and socialize a 12-month vision with 3-month tactical goals.

Output: By day 60, you should have the team aligned around a clear strategic direction and priorities. Confidence in leadership will be building—not from bold promises, but from thoughtful intentionality and crisp communication.

Phase 3: Days 61-90 – Execute and Deliver Early Wins

The final stretch of your first 90 days is when momentum matters most. Stakeholders want to start seeing traction, even if it’s just early indicators of what’s to come.

Key Objectives:

• Launch quick-win initiatives: Identify campaigns or optimizations with a short time-to-impact. Examples might include improving landing pages, reactivating a dormant email list, or launching a low-lift paid search campaign.
• Implement reporting cadences: Begin consistent reporting processes that demonstrate impact. Keep it clear, executive-friendly, and action-oriented.
• Test and learn: Roll out A/B testing frameworks and funnel diagnostics that let you iterate and continuously improve.
• Double down on content: Audit SEO performance, and improve/create cornerstone content pieces tailored to top-of-funnel leads.

Practical Tips:

• Establish a growth experimentation calendar.
• Partner with Finance to show marketing’s direct influence on revenue metrics like CAC, churn, and pipeline velocity.
• Host a 90-day review with stakeholders to recap progress and road ahead.

Output: By day 90, you should have delivered measurable progress, communicated results regularly, and built trust with your team and peers.

Strategies to Focus On During the First 90 Days

Depending on the maturity of your organization, your 90-day plan might involve emphasis on different areas. Here’s a breakdown of common marketing strategy pillars you should evaluate early on:

• Brand and Positioning: Is your messaging resonating with the market? Do people understand what your company stands for?
• Demand Generation: Are you feeding the top of the funnel? Is your CAC too high?
• Product Marketing: Are you clearly articulating product benefits and differentiators?
• Growth Loops: Is your user base growing organically through retention-based virality, referrals, or network effects?
• Analytics and Attribution: Do you have the right data to make informed decisions?

Common Pitfalls for New CMOs and Growth Leaders

You want to be aggressive but not reckless. Here are some traps to avoid:

• Coming in too strong, too fast: Making sweeping changes before understanding context alienates teams and erodes trust.
• Neglecting internal marketing: If the executive team doesn’t understand your roadmap, they won’t back it.
• Ignoring team dynamics: Culture and motivation are often more important than campaign tactics in the early days.
• Chasing metrics without strategy: Rapid performance-focused changes without strategic foundation typically don’t stick.

Final Thoughts: Your 90-Day Sprint Is a Strategic Setup — Not a Finish Line

The goal of the 90-day playbook is not to accomplish everything, but to build a system for sustained growth. It’s about building trust, creating alignment, and showing that you can turn insight into action. Use these three months to become the kind of marketing leader who doesn’t just react to short-term pressure — but drives long-term value with vision and discipline.

Whether you’re taking over after a leadership vacuum or inheriting a thriving team, a structured 90-day playbook gives you a lens to look through chaos and build clarity where it matters most. And remember: leadership is not just about what you do, but about how you bring others along. Good luck!