Marketing strategy in 90 days: The decisions behind growth

“We need a new campaign.” A sentence that can set a lot of work in motion. A new idea, a different format, additional channels. But the decisive question is already there in the brief: What change should all this bring about?

Perhaps more people need to consider the brand in the first place. Perhaps the offer lacks a compelling difference. Perhaps demand exists, but buying feels complicated or risky. Similar briefs can conceal very different tasks.

Strategic marketing connects an understanding of why customers choose with a reasoned decision about where the business should invest. That takes observation, creative imagination and a willingness to test assumptions.

90 days is a useful time frame for organising this work: sharpen a diagnosis, formulate a strategic bet and put the first changes into practice. The following six decisions help structure that process. The schedule at the end turns them into a practical plan.

The 90-day perspective and several strategic prompts draw on Joanna Wiebe’s video “I’ll Show You How To Think Like a Marketing Genius”. We develop those ideas for the interplay of brand strategy, creativity and delivery, adding further sources and examples of our own.

1. Which problem deserves our attention now?

When revenue falls short of expectations, possible actions quickly multiply. More reach. A new shop. A different offer. Another sales channel. Any of them might make sense. Which comes first depends on what is currently limiting growth.

Eliyahu Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints offers a useful starting point: consider the goals and constraints of the whole system to focus improvement efforts. An introduction from TOCICO.

For marketing, we draw this practical implication: before working on an individual metric, investigate its connection to the business goal. High abandonment rates might point to unsuitable visitors, missing information or technical problems. The same metric can have different causes.

A fictional example: A provider of technical solutions receives many product enquiries, but few turn into projects. Sales and marketing discover that prospects regularly hesitate when the conversation reaches implementation. The potential bottleneck is how to make a change while operations continue.

One response could be a clearly defined initial engagement, with prerequisites, responsibilities and an understandable process. Whether that change actually helps still needs to be established.

A sound diagnosis separates three things: What do we observe? How do we explain it? What would disprove that explanation? Quantify the significance of the problem as far as the data allows. This helps everyone involved understand why the task deserves priority.

2. What progress do customers want to make — and what holds them back?

An attractive solution can remain unpurchased for a long time. Between interest and decision lie habits, uncertainty and the question of whether people can manage the change in their own lives.

Jobs to Be Done considers the progress people want to make in a specific situation. Functional, social and emotional motivations belong together. Christensen Institute: Jobs to Be Done.

A case described by the institute makes this tangible. Bob Moesta investigated why prospects viewed new condominiums near Detroit but rarely bought them. Their existing dining tables kept coming up in conversations. The tables represented family and memories; uncertainty about what would happen to familiar possessions made moving harder. The developer adjusted the offer, including larger dining areas, moving support and storage. The documented housing case.

For your own work, this suggests four questions: What makes the current situation unsatisfactory? What attracts people to the new solution? What worries them? And what keeps them with the familiar?

Discuss specific buying journeys: the initial trigger, alternatives considered, the final hesitation and the moment of decision. Include purchases that were lost or postponed. A small round of interviews provides starting points; how widespread a motivation is needs further investigation.

For our fictional provider, the task might become making the transition predictable. That affects positioning as well as scope, project evidence and advice. Understanding customers can change the offer itself.

3. Which assumption will we back with time and budget?

Insights become strategic when they lead to a choice. Start by looking at existing successes: which customer relationship, content or offer already works particularly well?

Examine unusually good results in context. Was the customer’s situation different? Was there a special occasion, a stronger offer or support from sales? An outlier is a reason to investigate. Whether its pattern can be repeated is the next question.

Three possibilities follow: expand something proven, improve an existing solution or try something new. The balance depends on potential, effort and uncertainty. Even when day-to-day activity works well, a limited new experiment can make sense.

A strategic bet makes the underlying assumption explicit. In our example, it might read:

“We suspect that suitable prospects overestimate the effort required for implementation. We will therefore test a clearly described initial engagement with transparent prerequisites. We will examine whether more of these prospects begin a qualified project conversation and how those conversations subsequently develop.”

Dollar Shave Club illustrates how far this kind of thinking can reach. In its 2016 description of the business, Unilever highlighted the subscription model, direct customer access and proprietary technology. The approach connected the offer, distribution and customer relationship. Unilever’s 2016 presentation.

There is another part to the story. In its 2021 annual report, Unilever stated that Dollar Shave Club had not met expectations, mainly because of changes in the economics of the direct-to-consumer model. Unilever’s 2021 annual report.

Our conclusion: a convincing strategic bet needs conditions under which it can work, and criteria for when to reassess it. Agree the scope, budget, owners and review date together.

4. Which idea gives the brand a recognisable direction?

A hypothesis explains which behaviour you want to change. The creative task is to turn it into an idea that interests people and that they can connect with your brand.

Snickers offers an illustrative example. “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” turns hunger into stories about changed behaviour. With “Hungry Skies”, the brand applied that idea to air travel in 2024. Mars described an execution spanning advertising and airport touchpoints. Mars on the “Hungry Skies” campaign.

This illustrates what a strong central idea can do: open up different stories built on the same thought. New situations create new executions while the connection to the brand remains recognisable.

Three checks can help assess your own idea:

• Relevance: Does it address a situation or tension customers recognise?
• Credibility: Can the brand deliver on the promise through its offer and experience?
• Creative range: Can it generate different kinds of content and experiences?

Our fictional provider might take the position: “Progress must be possible while operations continue.” That can inform clear language, specific project stories and a phased initial engagement. The position becomes credible when the business actually delivers on it.

This connection is central to our understanding of Creative Engineering: strategic decisions, creative ideas and technical delivery are developed together. If a brand promises an easy starting point, designing that starting point and making it work are part of the task.

5. What effect do we expect — and over what period?

A campaign can spark interest, build recognition or convert existing demand into purchases. These tasks require different time frames and measures.

Les Binet and Peter Field’s work examines the relationship between long-term brand building and short-term activation. Their research also considers how the appropriate mix changes with the brand and its context. A universal budget ratio cannot simply be applied to an individual business without further assessment. The IPA’s research overview.

Plan explicitly what contribution an activity should make. This includes giving brand work an appropriate observation period. A decision based on short-term enquiries answers only part of the question about its effect.

Clicks, video views and form starts can also be useful. What matters is which question they answer. More enquiries help, for example, when their quality and the team’s ability to handle them keep pace.

Set baselines and evaluation criteria before the trial. Use a control where it is suitable and volume permits. With small samples, conversations and usability tests help narrow down explanations. An observed increase alone does not establish an incremental effect from the activity.

6. Which next decision can we take responsibly?

At the end of a working cycle, you need a recommendation that connects observations and judgement transparently. It should explain what changed, which explanation is plausible and where uncertainty remains.

In the fictional example, that recommendation might be: “We will extend the initial offer to a second product group. Conversations so far suggest that prerequisites are better understood. It is too early to draw conclusions about the close rate, so we will limit the next expansion and review again after a full sales cycle.”

Record the other options you examined and the reasons for your choice. The decision remains understandable even if circumstances change later.

Each trial also creates knowledge for the next task. Document the starting situation, assumption, execution, observations and limits to transferability. The next brief will have a better foundation.

AI can help structure approved interview notes, suggest patterns for investigation and develop different creative approaches. The quality benefit emerges when that support leads to better-prepared decisions and more carefully assessed ideas. We take responsibility for concept and quality.

Turning this into a 90-day working plan

The six decisions can be translated into a shared working rhythm. This plan is a proposal: tasks can overlap, and initial tests should begin once the question, execution and measurement are sufficiently prepared.

A useful outcome after 90 days is a set of initial changes put into practice and a reasoned decision about what comes next. Whether a business effect is already measurable also depends on buying cycles and data volume. The long-term work on brand and demand continues.

Which strategic decision would move your marketing forward now?

At Davies Meyer, we connect customer understanding and brand strategy with creativity, content, UX, technology and data. Together with your team, we sharpen the task, develop the right idea and establish the conditions for assessing its effect.

Discuss your marketing strategy and next steps

Further reading: Brand differentiation: Why customers choose you and Creative Engine: How good advertising becomes scalable.