30-60-90 Day Plan for Marketing Leaders: Template and Examples

What is a 30-60-90 day plan?

It’s a one-page outline of what you’ll do in your first 30, 60 and 90 days in a new role. In an interview it does two jobs: it shows how you think about getting up to speed, and it proves you’ve done real homework on this company.

Hiring managers for marketing leadership roles often ask for one in a later round, sometimes as part of a presentation. Even when they don’t, having one ready gives you something concrete to talk through when they ask “what would you do first?”

What goes in each phase?

Each phase has a different job. The first is about learning, the second about direction, the third about ownership.

Days 1–30: Listen and diagnose. Meet your team, your peers in sales, product and finance, and the agencies. Read the last year of performance data, the brand research and the budget. Talk to customers if you can. The output is a short diagnosis: what’s working, what isn’t, and what you’re not sure about yet.

Days 31–60: Set direction and get early wins. Turn the diagnosis into two or three priorities. Fix one or two visible things that don’t need a big decision, like a broken report, a stalled campaign or a confusing brief to the agency. Agree how you’ll measure progress.

Days 61–90: Make it the team’s plan. Present the strategy and the budget asks. Set goals with each team lead. Put the measures in a regular review so the plan doesn’t live in a slide deck.

How do you write a 30-60-90 day plan?

You write it in five steps, working backward from what the company needs by day 90. An evening is usually enough once your research is done, so it’s more manageable than it looks.

1. Collect what you learned. Notes from each interview, the posting, recent campaigns, results the company has shared, and anything the interviewers said was broken or urgent.
2. Write the day-90 outcome first. One or two sentences on what should be true by then: a strategy the team owns, a fixed funnel, a relaunched channel.
3. Fill days 1–30 with the questions you’d need answered to get there, and the people you’d ask.
4. Fill days 31–60 with two or three priorities and one or two quick wins that don’t need a big decision.
5. Fill days 61–90 with ownership: goals for each team lead, the measures, and the budget asks.

Then cut it to one page. If a line doesn’t connect to something you learned about this company, it probably belongs to a generic plan.

30-60-90 day plan template

Copy this, then replace every line with something specific to the company. A plan full of placeholders like “learn the business” reads as generic. Write the lines the way you’d say them in the room; the plan should sound like you thinking, not like a form.

30-60-90 DAY PLAN — [Your name], [Role] at [Company]

WHAT I KNOW SO FAR
- [One fact about the brand's position, e.g. its share of search vs the main rival]
- [One fact about the audience or channel mix]
- [One open question I'd want to answer first]

DAYS 1–30: LISTEN AND DIAGNOSE
- Meet [team leads, sales lead, product lead, finance partner, agency leads]
- Review [last 12 months of performance, brand tracking, budget by channel]
- Talk to [number] customers and [number] front-line sales or support people
- Output: a one-page diagnosis shared with [manager] by day 30

DAYS 31–60: SET DIRECTION, EARLY WINS
- Priority 1: [e.g. rebuild the always-on creator program around one product line]
- Priority 2: [e.g. fix attribution so paid social and search are judged on the same basis]
- Early win: [one visible fix that needs no big decision]
- Agree measures: [two or three, e.g. share of search, new-customer revenue, CAC]

DAYS 61–90: MAKE IT THE TEAM'S PLAN
- Present strategy and budget asks to [leadership group]
- Set 90-day goals with each team lead
- Start a [monthly] review of the measures
- Output: a plan the team owns, not one I own

HOW YOU'LL KNOW IT'S WORKING
- By day 90: [specific, checkable result]

A worked example for a brand role

Here’s how the first section might read for a VP of Brand at a consumer subscription app, using the kind of facts you’d find in a company brief.

• What I know so far: Branded search is down year on year, but share of search held because rivals fell further. Social engagement per post is far ahead of the category. Ad spend as a share of revenue has dropped two years running.
• Days 1–30: Find out whether the search decline is the category shrinking or the brand losing interest, and which audiences the drop comes from.
• Days 31–60: If it’s the category, the priority is bringing new people in; if it’s the brand, it’s giving lapsed users a reason to come back. Pick one and say why.
• Days 61–90: Agree a test with finance: a measured increase in brand spend in a few markets, judged on share of search and new-user growth.

Notice that every line comes from something you could learn before the interview. That’s what makes it believable.

How to present it in an interview

Talk through it in five minutes, not twenty. Lead with what you learned about the company, because that’s the part that makes the plan yours. Talk it through in your own words rather than reading the page; they want to see how you think, and that comes through in conversation.

• Open with the diagnosis, not the calendar. “Here’s what I see, here’s what I’d want to check.”
• Name what you don’t know. Saying “I’d want to see the brand tracking before committing to this” shows judgment, not weakness.
• Keep the measures few. Two or three numbers you’d actually report on.
• Leave it behind. Send the one-pager in your thank-you email.

If the round is a full presentation, see how to prepare a marketing case study presentation.

Mistakes to avoid

Most weak plans are either generic or overconfident.

• Generic lines. “Build relationships” and “learn the culture” could be in any plan for any job. Name the people and the questions instead.
• Fixing things on day 10. Proposing a rebrand before you’ve met the team reads as not listening. Frame big ideas as hypotheses you’d test.
• Too many priorities. Five priorities in 60 days means none of them get done. Keep two or three.
• No measures. Without a number attached, the plan is a wish list. Add one measure per priority.

FAQ

How long should a 30-60-90 day plan be?

One page, or one slide per phase if they’ve asked for a presentation. Anything longer won’t get read and suggests you can’t prioritize.

Should I bring a 30-60-90 day plan if they didn’t ask for one?

Have one ready and offer it when they ask what you’d do first. Bringing it unprompted to a final round can work well for leadership roles; for an early screen it’s usually too much.

What if I don’t have enough information about the company?

Say so in the plan. Put your open questions in the first section and make days 1–30 about answering them. Interviewers expect gaps; they want to see how you’d fill them, and an honest list of open questions shows exactly that.

Is a 30-60-90 day plan different for a CMO role?

The shape is the same, but a CMO plan spends more time on the leadership team, the board’s expectations and the budget, and less on individual campaigns.

Do you need a 30-60-90 day plan for a non-leadership role?

It helps for any role, kept smaller. A coordinator or specialist plan focuses on learning the tools, owning a first project and one measurable result by day 90, rather than strategy and budgets.