Marketing
Digital marketing for businesses: a plan for the first 90 days
Create a practical 90-day digital marketing plan. Prioritise offers, measurement, landing pages, and channels, and decide what to continue.
Digital marketing becomes difficult to manage when every channel gets a little attention but none has a clear purpose. A more manageable starting point is to choose one offer, one priority customer group, and one important action you want to make easier.
This 90-day plan is a suggestion for businesses that want to generate relevant enquiries and build a better basis for decision-making. It is not a promise of results within three months. If you have a long sales cycle, early signals and the quality of follow-up become especially important.
Day 1–14: find the obstacle and set up measurement
Bring together the person responsible for marketing and the person who responds to customer enquiries. Review a selection of recent enquiries: What did the customer want, where did they come from, was the assignment a good fit, and what happened next? If the history is incomplete, start simple tracking now. Distinguish between a received enquiry, a relevant opportunity, a proposal, and a won assignment.
At the same time, review the website from the customer's perspective. Is the service easy to understand? Does the customer reach the right page? Does the phone link and the form work on mobile? Send a tagged test enquiry and check that it reaches the right recipient. Clarify who follows up, including during absences.
In Google Analytics, events that matter significantly to the business can be marked as key events. Choose a confirmed business action, such as a submitted enquiry, and distinguish it from supporting signals like a page view or scroll. Document exactly what triggers the count.
Days 15–30: make one offer easier to buy
Choose the service you are best positioned to deliver and sell right now. Write a page that explains who the offer is for, what the customer gets, what affects the price, and what happens after they get in touch. Use questions from the sales process as your starting point. Clear limitations can save time for both parties.
Then create a simple content plan around the biggest barriers to a decision. A service business might, for example, need one page about what is included in the agreement, one about how a site visit works, and one about what affects the cost. This is a planning example, not a client case study. Each page should help the customer move forward to a relevant offer.
Ask a colleague who did not write the page to find answers to three common customer questions. Note where they become unsure. Fix the unclear points before you increase traffic.
Days 31–60: test one channel with a clear purpose
Choose a channel based on where the customer is in the decision process. If people are already searching for the specific service, search ads may be relevant. If the need must be explained or you want to be considered over time, expert content and distribution to a relevant target audience may be important parts of the work.
Give the test a clear question: Can this combination of target audience, offer and page generate relevant conversations? Agree on a budget limit, an owner, and which findings should lead to adjustments. Do not start more new tests than you can realistically follow up.
New advertising channels, such as ChatGPT Ads, can be considered as a limited test if the offer and target audience are a good fit. Compare the quality of the enquiries and the total cost with other activities. Novelty alone is not a sufficient basis for a decision.
| Period | Main task | Specific deliverable |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1–14 | Understand demand and validate measurement | A definition of a relevant enquiry and a tested contact flow. |
| Days 15–30 | Improve the offer and website | One prioritised service page with a clear next step. |
| Day 31–60 | Run a limited test | A campaign or distribution plan with an agreed budget limit. |
| Day 61–90 | Assess quality and choose a direction | A decision on what to continue, change and stop. |
Days 61–90: use sales conversations to improve marketing
Review the numbers together with those who have spoken to customers. Many clicks and few enquiries may be a reason to examine relevance, the offer and the page. Many enquiries that are not a fit may indicate that the message is too broad. Relevant enquiries that do not lead to offers may show that follow-up or qualification needs work.
Use Search Console to examine which searches and pages generate visibility and clicks in Google. The reports can be filtered by page, country and date, among other things. Look for alignment between the searches you are found for and the services you want to sell. The numbers show search behaviour; they do not by themselves tell you whether the customer was profitable.
Assess actions based on how much information you have. A handful of enquiries does not provide a stable picture of profitability. Write down what the findings suggest, what you still do not know, and which next test could clarify it.
Keep the report small enough to use
A useful monthly report should make it easier to choose the next action. Start with costs, relevant enquiries, offers and sales where possible to track them. Add channel data to explain the development. Avoid mixing ad spend with total marketing costs without clearly marking the difference.
Example calculation: If an activity costs NOK 20,000 including labour and ad spend and generates 10 qualified enquiries, the cost is NOK 2,000 per qualified enquiry. The amounts are assumptions used to illustrate the method. Whether the cost is justifiable depends on how many become customers and the contribution from those sales.
- What did we spend, and which costs are included?
- How many relevant enquiries and offers did we receive?
- What does sales say about quality and common objections?
- What did we change, and what did we learn?
- What will we do next month, and who is responsible?
Assign responsibilities before the plan starts
The plan needs an internal owner who can clarify the offer, gather specialist knowledge and approve materials. It also needs someone who records the outcome of enquiries. Without these contributions, marketing has to be managed with an incomplete picture of what happens after the click.
Media Access offers digital strategy, SEO, advertising and web development, among other services. We can start with one specific challenge and clarify which parts of the plan you want help with. Feel free to send the link to your website and tell us which service you want more enquiries about.
Questions and answers
How much should a company spend on digital marketing?
Start with available capacity, what a customer is worth to the business, and what you need to learn. Separate ad spend from labour, content production and tools. There is no single percentage or monthly price that suits everyone.
Should we start with SEO or advertising?
Look at existing demand, the quality of the website and the time horizon. A limited ad test can provide insight into an offer, while good content and technical work can build organic visibility over time. Prioritise what solves the clearest obstacle.
Are 90 days enough to know whether the marketing is working?
It can be enough to validate the contact flow, improve an offer and gain the first insights. Longer sales cycles and small data volumes require more time before you can reliably assess commercial impact.
Sources and further reading
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