What should a new CMO do in the first 90 days?

As a new CMO, you spend your first 90 days on three things. Month one: a baseline of leads, pipeline and channel costs, without changing anything. Month two: pruning Google Ads based on CRM data and starting content on your buyers’ questions. Month three: measuring, adjusting and showing your first results to the CEO.

You started on Monday. The CEO is already asking when more leads will come in, and sales is counting on the inquiries from Google Ads. This playbook is part of our guide to reducing your dependence on Google Ads. If you want a sharp marketing strategy that ends in pipeline, start here.

What does a new CMO do about the lead flow in the first 90 days?

You build the lead flow in three blocks of 30 days. Each block ends with a decision, not a presentation.

In the first weeks, talk to sales above all. Ask which questions buyers ask before they book a demo. Those questions later become your content. Also work out how many leads you need to hit the revenue target, so your goal is a number and not a feeling.

If you then need a rhythm for experiments, our 90-day growth roadmap helps. This article is about the lead flow itself.

What baseline does a new CMO set before changing anything?

Record where things stand today, before you touch a single campaign. Without a baseline, nobody can see after 90 days what you changed.

1. Leads and pipeline per channel, from your CRM, based on the deal’s first source. If deals aren’t recorded by source, read how to import offline conversions.
2. Cost per won customer per channel, including management and production. That gives you your CAC payback.
3. Organic clicks and impressions. Google recommends selecting the last 16 months in the Search Console performance report. That way you see seasonality and don’t panic later over a normal dip. Also read how to analyze Search Console data.
4. The share of pipeline from paid channels. That’s your dependence, in one percentage.
5. The GA4 data retention setting. That setting only affects explorations and funnel reports, not the standard reports. If it’s set to 2 months, change it to 14.

Should a new marketing manager keep Google Ads or scale it back right away?

Keep it, but not unchanged. Scaling back before you have the baseline means losing leads without knowing which ones. Prune in month two based on your CRM.

That pruning pays off in software. A median click costs about 22 dollars, across 106 Benelux software search terms we pulled from Google Ads data on 28 September 2026. For “HR software” in the Netherlands it’s 58 dollars, for “crm software” in Belgium 26 dollars. Those amounts are in dollars, as the source reports them.

How big the gap between paid and owned traffic can be, we saw at Kaizo. In September 2025, organic traffic converted 38 times better to key events than paid: 4.6% versus 0.12%. Key events are intent signals, not demo bookings.

If you’re unsure about a campaign, read when to pause Google Ads. If the budget really has to come down, follow the playbook for a halved ad budget.

What kind of agency should a new CMO bring in first?

The agency that fills the gap you can’t fill yourself. Look at your baseline, not at the channel that sounds loudest on LinkedIn.

All engagements run for at least three months, with no setup fee. Take one agency per gap, not three at once. In your first quarter, you don’t have time to manage three partners.

As the first marketer: write yourself or hire an agency?

Write what only you know yourself, and outsource the volume. You know the conversations with sales and customers. An agency delivers the consistency you won’t manage alongside everything else.

The reason to start early is how new pages behave. In our Search Console data from six sites, a new page peaks in week 1. It then drops in weeks 2 to 8, and then it breaks through. On customerimpact.be, the level from week 9 onward was about three times higher than in weeks 2 to 8. One of the six sites did stay flat.

Volume makes the difference. Hedgehog Company started with 18 test articles in English and Dutch: 2,314 impressions and 24 clicks in 19 days. A month later, 77 articles were live, with 6,701 impressions and 42 clicks. 77 of the 153 URLs ranked in the top 10 on average. A click on “carbon accounting software” costs about 72 dollars in the UK. Run that trade-off for your own keywords in the click-or-article calculator.

At Hedgehog, on 28 September 2026, Google showed an AI Overview 31 times on the specific question of 41 new articles. Hedgehog was cited as a source 23 times. Those articles were less than two months old. On the broader head term, it was only 1 out of 18 times. Read more about outsourcing content marketing.

When we’re not the right choice

If you don’t yet know who your ideal customer is, no agency will help: work out your positioning with sales first. If you need new pipeline within six weeks, content is too slow and you should first make your existing campaigns more efficient. If you’re mainly looking for someone to lead your team, a fractional growth lead is a better fit. And if you sell to consumers through a webshop, you’re better off with an e-commerce specialist.

Frequently asked questions

I’m the first marketer at a software company. Where do I start?

With your five most recent won customers. Ask how they found you and which question they googled first. Then record your baseline and aim your first pages at exactly those questions. You only choose channels after that.

What does a new CMO do with a marketing agency that’s already in place?

Hold it to the same baseline as yourself for the first 30 days. Ask which campaigns produce deals in your CRM. If the agency can’t show that, you know where to start in month two.

When do you see the first results from new content?

A first peak in week 1, then a dip until about week 8. Only from week 9 do you see whether a page breaks through. Also read how long SEO takes.

What do you report to the CEO after 90 days?

Five numbers, next to your baseline. Pipeline per channel, cost per won customer and the share from paid channels. Plus organic clicks on buying questions and your CAC payback. Also show what you are deliberately not judging yet.