Having been in your shoes as Head of Marketing in an early-stage startup, I understand the excitement and pressure firsthand. That’s why I’ve put together a straightforward marketing manager checklist to help you navigate your first 90 days in the role with confidence.
In this article, I’ll share the steps I’d take if I were starting fresh as a Head of Marketing in an early-stage startup. Remember, startups can be unpredictable, but having a roadmap like the one I’ve outlined below can offer clarity and direction when you need it most.
With my expertise primarily in the B2B sector, this will be the focus of my article.
I. Aligning goals and expectations
Understanding management’s goals and expectations is essential for me. After all, I’m here to drive growth and take the company forward. If our goals aren’t aligned, it is like sailing without a compass – we’ll end up going nowhere fast.
In early meetings with management, I’ll focus on understanding:
- The company’s mission, vision and business model
- Short-term and long-term business goals
- Opportunities and challenges – what is working for us and what needs attention
- My role in the organization and their expectations on me
- Marketing budget
- OKRs or KPIs to measure marketing performance
Later, I’ll revisit them with deeper insights to discuss feasibility and suggest any necessary adjustments.
II. Understanding the products
In B2B marketing, product knowledge is power. Therefore, I’ll take the time to immerse myself in the intricacies of what I’m selling:
- Try out the product myself
- Have open conversations with technical and sales leads to understand the product’s strengths and weaknesses
This firsthand knowledge will serve as the foundation for my marketing efforts.
III. Auditing marketing activities
Now I will dive deep into assessing our current marketing efforts. This involves a comprehensive review of our online presence and outreach strategies.
1. Understanding customers
As a customer-first marketer, I center all our marketing activities around the needs and preferences of our audience. It is not about us, it is about them.
Here is my checklist for understanding our customers:
- Customer segmentation: identifying and targeting the top three customer segments
- Building buyer ICPs and Personas for each segment: their characteristics, preferences, motivations, and objections
- Identifying the buying group: who’s involved in the decision-making process
- Mapping the buyer journey and touchpoints: how customers interact with our brand throughout their purchasing process
- Defining value proposition and Unique Selling Points (USPs): to communicate the benefits and unique features of our products/services
Ideally, I’ll conduct in-depth interviews with 5-10 customers, but this is often difficult for practical reasons. In such cases, I’ll first seek insights from customer-facing teams (sales, customer support, etc) and talk to customers in industry events to round out my understanding.
2. Auditing marketing activities
The fact is a Head of Marketing is typically brought on board after a company has been established for some time and is looking to expand. While management may claim there has been no prior marketing activity, often there are existing efforts such as websites, social media posts, and customer emails – albeit not optimized.
Here is my checklist for a marketing audit:
- Marketing funnels and buyer journey:
- Identify current marketing channels and their purposes (e.g., brand awareness, lead generation, retention)
- Assess existing materials and planned assets
- Determine which channels and materials yield the most leads and revenue
- Marketing processes audit:
- Evaluate demand/lead generation and capture processes
- Assess lead qualification/disqualification systems
- Review lead segmentation and lifecycle stage management
- Examine results tracking and measurements
- Evaluate methods for measuring customer satisfaction and improving retention
- Identify opportunities for automation to streamline processes and increase efficiency
- Opportunities, challenges and bottlenecks:
- Assess current challenges and potential growth opportunities
- Learn from past campaign successes and failures
- Evaluate collaboration between marketing and sales teams, identifying areas for improvement
- Existing marketing team evaluation (if any)
- Understand the expectations that current marketing team members have of me
- Evaluate the skill set of the team using a skills matrix and identify career expectations
3. Deal & revenue analysis
Analyzing deals and revenue is crucial for understanding the financial impact of marketing efforts and shaping future strategies.
Here is a breakdown of deal and revenue analysis:
- Customer lifetime value (CLV) and acquisition cost (CAC)
- Revenue by customer tiers and geography: to identify lucrative markets and customer segments.
- Revenue pattern analysis:
Analyze overall revenue trends and patterns, including cross-selling and upselling revenues, to uncover opportunities for growth.
Identify common patterns among top customers and lost customers to inform future targeting and retention strategies. - Repeat purchase analysis:
Analyze why customers make repeat purchases or why they do not, identifying factors that influence customer loyalty and retention. - Deal performance analysis:
Examine the largest won deals, fastest won deals, and largest lost deals to understand what contributes to successful deals and areas for improvement. - Disqualification criteria:
Identify criteria for disqualifying potential deals to ensure resources are allocated efficiently towards high-value opportunities.
4. Sales team analysis
The goal of this audit is to grasp their pain points, expectations and insights, leveraging their close interactions with customers and unique insights and enhancing synergy.
- Identify challenges and bottlenecks in prospecting and sales processes
- Determine the type of content and support desired from marketing
- Assess the current collaboration between marketing and sales, including expectations and opportunities for improvement
- Enhance analysis based on revenue and deal data
- Establish and coordinate pipeline review meetings for ongoing alignment and improvement
5. Collecting insights from other departments
Marketing doesn’t just collaborate closely with sales but also with other departments, particularly in a startup setting.
I will seek insights from different departments regarding products, customers, goals, plans, pain points, and opportunities where marketing can provide support and add value.
IV. Setting clear goals and priorities
After gathering and analyzing inputs, I’ll set clear goals and priorities to guide our marketing efforts effectively.
Here is how I’ll approach:
- Setting clear goals: Align marketing goals with the company’s overall objectives and other departments’ plans. I emphasize on creating SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) – This prevents the common pitfall of setting vague goals that hinder progress.
- Deciding on the marketing approach: Depending on our products and markets, I’ll choose the most suitable marketing approach:
- Demand generation: Focuses on creating awareness and interest in our products or services among a targeted audience. Ideal for introducing new products, entering new markets, or targeting prospects who may not actively seek our solution.
- Lead generation: Aims to attract and convert prospects into potential customers through various tactics like content marketing, social media, and email campaigns. Suitable for converting brand-aware prospects into customers or increasing the number of prospects in the sales pipeline.
- Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Targets a specific set of high-value accounts with personalized campaigns tailored to their needs. Effective for targeting accounts with long sales cycles or complex decision-making processes.
This decision has an impact on all marketing activities and cooperation between marketing and sales. It is therefore a major topic that requires the involvement of management and the sales team. However, using a suitable marketing approach significantly increases the company’s growth.
- Prioritizing initiatives: Focus on initiatives that provide short-term wins and long-term strategic impact. Using the rule of 3, I’ll narrow down to three key aspects:
- Solving current urgent problems or bottlenecks
- Developing a strategy and plan aligned with the marketing approach
- Building/improving tracking & analytics and automation processes to measure campaign effectively, enhance efficiency and optimize resource allocation.
V. Developing a marketing strategy and action plan
Depending on the chosen marketing approach (demand gen, lead gen or ABM), I’ll formulate our marketing strategy and plan accordingly. However, since the specifics vary based on the chosen approach, I’ll keep this section more generalized.
1. Strategy & tactics
The expected outcome of this step is identifying key messages, value propositions and channels to effectively engage our target audience.
Regarding channels, I’ll prioritize those that are already generating revenue and optimize them for maximum impact. I will then explore promising new channels but with caution as the budget is usually limited. Optimizing the website is usually a must for me. The website isn’t just a digital storefront; it is our brand’s digital hub. It is where potential customers come to learn about us, our products and why they should choose us. Events can be expensive, but they are often worth it, especially in a niche market. So attending events is also an option for me.
2. Action plans
Here I’ll break down our plan into clear steps with defined timelines, budgets, and responsibilities. If our team lacks certain skills, I’ll bring in new hires or collaborate with freelancers/agencies. It’s about assembling a strong team and delegating tasks effectively, ensuring we stay focused and efficient as we bring our strategy to life.
3. Launching initial marketing campaigns
Now, onto execution! Without context, it’s not easy for me to go into detail, but I’ll keep these points in mind:
- Run pilot campaigns to evaluate effectiveness
- Continuously monitor, test and improve
- Ensure conversion tracking and analytics are set up
- Create dashboards to track and report on results
- Regular retrospective meetings
- Actively communicate successes and learnings
- Foster collaboration with the sales team
In the end, I will try to identify evergreen content and processes for long-term success.
VI. Seeking feedback
Marketing can be complicated and unpredictable where losing sight of the big picture or overlooking details can happen. That’s why feedback is so important. Here is how:
- Ask customers, stakeholders, and team members for feedback to continuously improve our marketing efforts
- Stay agile and adjust our strategies based on what we learn along the way
Final thoughts: Startups are full of ups and downs. Through it all, I’ve found that sticking to this marketing manager checklist helps maintain direction and confidence. Without it, it’s easy to lose focus and trust.
The most challenging part for me is convincing startup leaders that success doesn’t happen overnight. They want rapid growth in a very limited time, so setting realistic expectations upfront is key. Make sure you achieve them before you get down to work.
Reference: “The first 90 days of a new B2B CMO: 16 Checklist”, Fullfunnel