5 ways to wow in your first 90 days as a marketing leader

The first 90 days in a new marketing leadership role usually feel like a mash-up of excitement, pressure, wild inbox velocity, and trying not to lose your badge on day two. But here’s the good news: this window is also your greatest advantage.

It’s the one moment in your career when you have both fresh eyes and full permission to ask the hard questions. It's also when your CEO, CFO, CRO, and team are most eager to hear your perspective.

To help you make the most of it, here are five high-impact ways to “wow” early — informed by data, best practice, and the lived experience of Optimizely CMO, Tara Corey.

Pro tip: Pair this with a coffee, not cortisol.

1) Immerse yourself in the business (and build executive trust fast)

Before you fix anything, you need to understand everything. Your first 30 days should feel like a documentary series called “Behind the Strategy”.

Line up conversations with:

• Your CEO: What bets are they making? What keeps them up at night?
• Your CFO: How do they measure efficiency, growth, and marketing’s contribution?
• Your CRO: Where are deals getting stuck? What does “qualified” really mean?
• Product leadership: What’s differentiated? What’s misunderstood? What’s coming soon?

These aren’t meet-and-greets — they’re alignment accelerators. They position you not just as the new marketing leader, but as a strategic counterpart.

2) Audit your team, processes, and tech stack (so you know what you’re really working with)

Marketing orgs often look shiny on the outside and a 3 year old's spaghetti dinner on the inside. So before you start driving change, get clear on:

Team and skills

• Who owns what?
• Where are the strengths?
• Where are the gaps?
• Who is operating as the unofficial “glue” (and burning out quietly)?

Processes and workflows

• How long does a campaign take to ship?
• How many approvals does one email require?
• Is content consistent or “interpretive art”?

Tech stack

Every new marketing leader discovers at least one of the following:

• A platform no one uses
• A platform everyone uses incorrectly
• A platform that was added “temporarily” 3 years ago

This is your moment to simplify, consolidate, and introduce tools that support speed, consistency, and scale. Marketing tech stacks have the potential to get pretty out-of-control, so take a stance early.

Check out our whitepaper with MartechTribe, Composable by Design: Building an Agentic Content Ecosystem.

3) Deliver quick wins that show you're here to make an impact

Yes, you’re doing deep discovery. But quick wins build momentum — and political capital.

Even small improvements can make you look like a hero, such as:

• Fixing lead routing (hello, faster follow-up and happier sales)
• Refreshing outdated messaging on high-traffic pages
• Improving reporting so executives actually trust the numbers
• Adding AI workflows that shave days off content creation
• Tidying up campaign templates you can tell are driving people crazy

These quick but visible wins tell your org: “I get it. I’m on it. And we’re moving forward.”

4) Build alignment with sales and product (your make-or-break relationships)

The most successful marketing leaders don’t operate in silos. Instead, they build alignment like their bonus depends on it. And boy, does it play off well long-term.

Marketing ↔ sales (otherwise known as smarketing)

• Agree on definitions of MQL, SQL, and SAL (for real this time)
• Finalize SLAs around follow-up and routing
• Commit to shared pipeline goals and shared dashboards

Marketing ↔ product

• Connect customer feedback to product decisions
• Sync roadmaps with campaign planning
• Adopt a shared messaging framework so “how we talk about the product” doesn’t vary by department

Marketing ↔ finance

• Align on budgets
• Show how marketing influences efficiency
• Prove long-term value, not just last-touch attribution

When these three relationships work, everything gets easier and a whole lot smoother. 🤝

5) Define success metrics, then build the narrative that aligns the whole company

Once you understand the business, the team, and the motion, it’s time to clarify what success looks like.

This is where you shift from onboarding to leadership.

Set the KPIs that actually matter

Think beyond vanity metrics. Focus on:

• Marketing-influenced pipeline
• Win rate lift
• Channel mix efficiency
• Content output and activation
• Full-funnel conversion health

Build a narrative that unites your org

Your brand story, positioning, and messaging aren’t just external assets — they’re internal alignment tools.

Clear narrative = clearer strategy = faster impact.

6 tick-offs to make sure your branding is landing? Here's our brand consistency checklist.

A quick 30-60-90 roadmap to keep you focused

30 days: Listen, learn, audit, ask brave questions
60 days: Deliver quick wins, streamline workflows, align cross-functionally
90 days: Define your strategy, build your narrative, set your KPIs, and launch something meaningful

Want help accelerating your first 90 days?

Optimizely One is an end-to-end platform built especially for marketers, helping new marketing leaders:

• Understand what’s working (and what’s not) fast
• Scale content with AI (Optimizely Opal) that actually knows your brand
• Build consistency across teams and channels
• Unlock better collaboration across sales, product, and marketing

Whether your new company is evaluating fresh tech or revisiting previous favorites, we’d love to support your growth.