New Marketing Job Checklist First 90 Days (+ Notion Template)

Starting a new marketing role is equal parts exciting and overwhelming. You’re trying to make impact and grow the company fast — but without a clear structure, it’s easy to get stuck in reactive mode and in doing RAMs (aka random acts of marketing :D).

I wish I had this new marketing job checklist for the first 90 Days when I started my role as a founding marketer at magier, setting up our marketing basically from scratch.

So, I really hope this help you have the structure and guidelines you'll need to approach onboarding strategically and not miss any crucial steps to make your marketing strategy work its magic.

This guide breaks down exactly what to focus on in your first 90 days, so you can:

• Build trust with your team and leadership
• Audit and understand the existing marketing setup
• Set a strong foundation for long-term results

If you want to follow along with a ready-made version of this plan, we’ve created a free 90-Day Marketer Onboarding Checklist in Notion with all the steps, tools, and templates you’ll need to succeed.

Free Notion Template

New Marketing Job Checklist

Get your step-by-step breakdown of the first three months in your new marketing role and get ready to use templates like the SWOT analysis, LinkedIn Content Calendar, Positioning doc & more.

Get the Checklist

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New Marketing Job Checklist - What Can You Expect?

This comprehensive checklist breaks down your first three months in a new marketing role into clear, actionable phases.

I'll guide you through essential activities month by month, helping you transition from understanding and auditing to strategic planning and execution. Let's dive into what each month could look like and why. And if you'd like the full step by step checklist with build-in templates, do check out the free Notion template.

Month 1: Listen, Learn, and Audit

The first month is all about gathering knowledge, context, and relationships. It sets the tone for everything you do later. Go deep before you go fast.

Get to Know the Team

Relationships are the foundation of influence. Spend time getting to know your teammates across departments: marketing, sales, product, support, and leadership. Your goal isn’t just small talk — it’s to understand how each function sees marketing, where they think opportunities or blockers lie, and what their expectations are. This input will directly inform your prioritization later.

Make it easy for people to talk: set up short 15–20 minute chats with a few open-ended prompts like:

“What’s one thing you think marketing could be doing better?” or “What’s one thing you wish we’d never stop doing?”

Internal Comms & Brand Presence

You can’t market externally if you’re disconnected internally. Join all relevant Slack channels, ask for access to Notion pages, and review documentation. Look for how information flows, how decisions are made, and where gaps in communication might exist.

Meanwhile, clean up your LinkedIn profile and consider sharing a short post introducing your new role. This helps position you as a proactive, reflective marketer — and invites others to connect, inside and outside the company.

Run a Full Digital Audit

This is where you assess the marketing engine you’ve inherited. Break it down by channels:

• Website: Is it clear, fast, mobile-optimized, and aligned with your positioning?
• Blog: What content performs? What feels outdated? What’s missing?
• Paid Ads: Are they running? Are they effective? What’s the CPC, CTR, CAC?
• Newsletters: What's the open rate, CTR, unsub rate? Who’s the list made of?
• Organic: Are social channels active and relevant? Does the content match your voice?
• Brand Assets: Consistent visuals? Clear tone of voice? Gaps in brand library?

Be honest in your documentation. Flag issues, capture screenshots, and assign rough severity levels. This will evolve into your action plan.

Align with the Founders

Understanding leadership’s view of marketing is crucial. Ask about their past experiences with marketing — what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what they want to see next. Get clarity on:

• Company mission & vision
• Key company goals for the next 6–12 months
• How they define success for your role

Even a 30-minute call can save you months of misalignment.

Shadow Customer Support

Customer insights are priceless — and too often overlooked. Shadowing a support rep or spending a day reading through support tickets helps you:

• Hear the real language customers use
• Understand top recurring issues
• Spot moments where marketing could step in to educate, prevent, or delight

Document your takeaways and share them with your team. This positions you as someone who listens first, creates second.

If you want to try using Notion for tracking your first 90 days and documenting everything, but have never used it before, here are some guides and tutorials you can check out.

And if you haven't duplicated the 90-Day-Marketer checklist yet, here's the full guide with a video tutorial for you.

Free Notion Template

New Marketing Job Checklist

Get your step-by-step breakdown of the first three months in your new marketing role.

Get the Checklist

‍

Month 2: Analyze and Strategize

You’ve gathered the data. Now it’s time to interpret it — and design a direction.

Situational Analysis

Look at metrics, but don’t stop there. Dive into qualitative insights. Run a SWOT and TOWS analysis. Interview 10–20 ideal customers if possible. Ask them about their buying journey, what tools they considered, what questions they had, and what finally led them to your company.

Map the full customer journey from awareness to retention. Where are you losing people? Where could marketing reduce friction or boost value?

These insights will help you prioritize work based not on assumptions — but on evidence.

Craft the Strategy

This doesn’t need to be a polished presentation. It needs to be a document that gives you (and others) clarity. At a minimum, include:

• Target audiences and their main jobs-to-be-done
• Key messages and positioning pillars
• Priority channels for acquisition, conversion, retention
• Metrics you’ll track and what success looks like

Use an ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) framework to score potential tactics and initiatives. Share a short version of this doc with leadership for input and alignment.

Also, sketch out your next 90 days: what initiatives will you launch? How will you allocate your budget and time?

Seek External Input

Book a GrowthMentor call or talk to a mentor in any other way. Outside perspectives often surface blind spots and challenge assumptions in ways your internal team can’t. What's great about GrowthMentor is that with a simple subscription you can book mentorship calls with experts in many different areas of marketing, depending on the current challenge you're facing.

Month 3: Execute Smartly, Track Relentlessly

Now’s the time to move — but carefully. Execution in Month 3 should validate your strategy, not exhaust your capacity.

Launch Strategic Initiatives

Pick one or two high-leverage plays:

• A landing page revamp to improve conversion rates
• A simple, well-positioned lead magnet to build your email list
• A test campaign on LinkedIn Ads to attract ICP leads

Build, launch, measure. Share learnings — even if something doesn't go to plan. No one expects you to have it all figured out when you've only just started. All you have is theories, and some research. You need to execute to actually find the winning formula. Transparency builds trust.

Tighten Your Ops

• Set up a UTM tracking system across all links
• Build dashboards or reports to visualize results
• Create internal templates for recurring tasks (e.g. briefs, content calendars)
• Document internal processes and update onboarding docs if needed

Don’t wait until “someday” to do this — Month 3 is the ideal time to formalize your marketing stack.

Set and Share OKRs

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are your lighthouse. Define them clearly and align them to the broader business goals. Check in weekly, share monthly. Adjust if needed. OKRs are not a promise — they’re a tool for learning.

Month 3+: Build for Scale

Now you’re out of survival mode. It’s time to look ahead and future-proof your workflows.

Quality of Life Improvements

• Build a brand style guide and content playbook
• Create a knowledge base or Notion wiki for future marketers
• Identify which parts of content creation can be automated or outsourced
• Plan a team photoshoot to refresh headshots and media kits
• Clean up outdated sales decks, case studies, or pitch collateral

These are not just “nice to have.” They make it easier to scale consistently, onboard new team members, and produce higher-quality work, faster.

Final Thoughts

Your first 90 days set the tone — not just for your own success, but for how marketing is perceived inside the company. If you take the time to understand before you execute, you’ll build trust and compound results.

Think like a product manager: diagnose, prioritize, execute, reflect.

Need help turning strategy into branded, on-point execution?

Magier’s design subscription gives you access to a full-stack design team —perfect if you're a marketer who needs to move fast, and create on-brand assets for multiple channels without compromising on quality.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if I’m not the first marketer at the company?

This guide still applies. You may want to skip steps that have already been covered by the existing team or adapt them to your specific focus area (e.g. growth, brand, content). Even in established teams, it’s helpful to revisit audits and align on strategy so you have a better understanding of the company.

Can I use this checklist if I’ve already started the job?

Absolutely. The checklist works retroactively as well. You can use it to fill in gaps from the first few weeks, document what you’ve already done, and clarify your next steps.

How long should I spend on the full digital audit?

You can't expect to do it all in a few days. It depends on how intensely you'll go at it, but probably it would take you a month or 2 to do it thoroughly in addition to all the other tasks you'll have as a marketer in your new role. If you're on a team, you may divide the channels and complete it faster. Don't rush – it’s the backbone of your strategy. But of course, you can also combine it with execution after you get some clarity and gather some research already. It can be tricky to find time for 1-2 months of research if you work at a dynamic startup especially.

How do I adapt this to a B2B or SaaS company?

The steps in this guide are role- and model-agnostic, but you can emphasize tactics and channels relevant to your ICP. For example, prioritize customer interviews, lifecycle marketing, and LinkedIn over brand awareness or influencer partnerships.

Should I share my 90-day strategy with leadership?

I suggest to do so, yes. If they gave you a list of expectations, too, you can tweak it after doing your audit and share it with them again to align. Even a 1-page summary helps align expectations and opens the door for feedback. It’s not just about approval — it’s about clarity.

Can I assign parts of the checklist to others?

If you're on a larger team, yes. The Notion version includes fields to assign responsibilities and set deadlines for collaborative onboarding.