How to Activate Your Marketing Strategy: A Checklist for the First 90 Days

marketing planning session

From Strategy to Execution (Part One of Two-Part Series)

Creating a marketing strategy is a lot of work. After hours of research, brainstorms, and approvals, you finally have a blueprint for your brand’s future. Then comes the real test: getting it off the page and into motion.

For small to mid-size businesses, especially those with lean marketing teams, this is a very real problem. A strategy that doesn’t translate into real-world action and impact your bottom line is just a pretty document.

At Green Apple Strategy, we believe the true test of a marketing plan isn’t in its creation. It’s in its activation. We’ve helped dozens of small and mid-size businesses create marketing strategies that stick. We’ve put together this practical checklist of must-do activities to set your strategy in motion during the first three months. 

Your Marketing Strategy Activation Checklist 

Our 90-day checklist is a list of 10 essential activities to help you activate your marketing strategy:  

1. Host a Strategy Kickoff with Key Stakeholders

Don’t just email your plan out and hope everyone reads it. Bring people together. Walk through your goals, highlight the “why” behind your approach, and confirm how your marketing strategy will support broader business priorities.
Pro tip: keep it collaborative. Ask sales, operations, or leadership where they see marketing having the biggest impact this quarter.

2. Clarify Roles and Responsibilities

Nothing derails execution faster than the “who’s doing what?” question. Before you launch anything, make sure every task has a clear owner to prevent confusion and inaction. Even if your marketing team is just one or two people, clarify where outside partners, freelancers, or leadership will need to be brought in.

3. Establish Your Execution Engine

Don’t let the details derail you. Set up a project management system for your marketing campaigns. You can use a tool like Airtable, Basecamp, Asana, or Trello to track tasks, assign deadlines, and manage communication. A solid system for the daily grind ensures your plan keeps moving forward.

4. Create a 90-day Roadmap

Annual plans can feel overwhelming, so separate yours into bite-sized quarterly milestones. What needs to happen this quarter to set you up for long-term success? Breaking your plan into 90-day sprints will make it more achievable and keep your team motivated.

5. Launch Your First Campaign

Early wins build confidence and buy-in. Identify one initiative that can generate noticeable results quickly and allow you to present meaningful marketing results to your leadership team. It could be a customer re-engagement email series or a social campaign tied to an upcoming event. When leadership sees progress fast, it builds trust in the bigger plan.

6. Align Content with the Buyer’s Journey

Don’t just churn out random blogs. Map your content calendar to the actual questions prospects ask at each stage of the buying cycle. That way, your first wave of content can support sales conversations directly.

7. Sync Marketing with Sales and Operations

Marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Building alignment between sales and marketing upfront saves frustration and ensures your efforts translate into measurable business results. 

The best campaigns only succeed when they align with the people responsible for selling your products and delivering your services. Use the first 90 days to check in with sales and operations. Does your sales team have updated collateral and messaging? Can operations deliver on the promises marketing is making? 

8. Set Up Measurement Systems 

You can’t prove impact without tracking results. First, determine what metrics matter most to your C-level leaders (hint: leadership cares about revenue, retention, and reputation). Next, make sure you have dashboards and reports in place so you can measure progress and adjust quickly.

9. Refine and Optimize Your Plan 

Based on the data and feedback you’ve gathered, make a few key adjustments. Maybe a specific channel is over-performing and deserves more budget. Maybe a certain type of content is working better than you thought. By refining your plan, you ensure you’re making smart, data-driven decisions that will help your business grow.

10. Plan for Your Next Pivot 

Markets shift. New ideas emerge. A new product might get fast-tracked. Your plan needs to be flexible. Hold a strategy session to review your progress and plan to pivot if needed. Flexibility ensures you can adapt without a complete derailment.

Still in the Marketing Planning Phase? We’ve Got Your Back.

If you’re still in the process of building your marketing strategy, don’t worry—we’ve got a few resources that can help you lay the groundwork. These guides are perfect for getting your plan in shape before you move into the activation phase.

Wrapping It Up: From Strategy to Momentum

A strong marketing strategy is the foundation for growth, but it only changes things if you put it into motion. The first 90 days set the tone for how your plan will perform for the rest of the year. By focusing on alignment, clarity, and consistent execution, you’ll create the momentum needed to see real results.

At Green Apple, we believe the first 90 days are a critical window for turning plans into action. If you’d like a partner to help you build a roadmap for growth and activate your strategy, our team is here to guide you every step of the way. 

Contact us today to learn more about our strategic planning services. 

5 Questions to Evaluate & Enhance Your Content Marketing

video editor working on a laptop

When Green Apple launched back in 2012, content marketing was a buzzy new trend. The goal was simple: crank out content to generate leads. Fast forward to today, and the content marketing game has completely changed.

The challenge for many marketers, especially those on a small team, is figuring out if all that effort is actually worth it. Are you just writing into the void? Or is your content a valuable asset that’s making a real impact on your bottom line? You’re not alone if you’re asking these questions.

At Green Apple Strategy, we’ve been helping clients navigate these content challenges for years. We believe a strong content strategy can be one of your most powerful tools for bridging the gap between marketing and sales. A successful strategy starts by asking a few key questions to make sure your inbound marketing is actually worth the effort.

Here are five questions to help you tighten the link between content marketing and sales, along with some practical tips we’ve learned from working alongside our clients. 

5 Questions to Evaluate and Enhance Your Content Marketing

1. What are the biggest gaps in your current sales and marketing process?

Everything you do with content should enhance your sales and marketing process. Are leads going cold after a meeting? Does your sales team need better resources to close deals? Taking time to identify these gaps will help you find ways to use content marketing to overcome them. 

Ready to find your biggest gaps? Check out our free guide on how to identify and fix the broken parts of your sales funnel.

2. What questions do people have in different stages of the buying cycle?

The entire goal of content marketing is to address your prospective customers’ questions at the appropriate time. You must think through the journey a prospective customer takes from learning about your brand to becoming a loyal customer. What questions are they asking throughout that process? What problem are they trying to solve? Knowing the answer to these questions is essential. Your potential customers may be searching on Google, asking ChatGPT, or exploring social media to find these answers. The more often your content appears on different platforms, the better chance you have of connecting with your audience.  

Once you know their questions, you need to meet them where they are. Learn how to connect with your audience through omni-channel communication.

3. What type of content can you create to answer those questions and give your prospects confidence in your company?

Knowing what questions your prospective customers are asking is only half the equation. Today, choosing the right format is an equally important part of getting the most out of your content. For example, new prospective buyers might be looking for helpful videos on social media or infographics. Prospective clients who are exploring your business might need a detailed case study or a product spec sheet to make a decision.

Creating the right content starts with knowing your customer. Our recent blog post can help you turn customer personas into impactful marketing strategies.

4. How can you help your sales team promote your content marketing resources?

Your content is a powerful tool for your sales team. By encouraging your team to use your content resources, you’re able to kill two birds with one stone. You can generate new leads and equip your sales team with resources to convert. It doesn’t have to be complicated. There are dozens of ways your sales and marketing teams can collaborate, like providing a list of resources in a shared document, creating email scripts with links to case studies, or sharing social media posts they can use.

Looking for a way to empower your sales team with better assets? Here are five effective ways to equip your sales team with content marketing.

5. How can you give people a reason to stay interested in your business, even if they’re not ready to buy?

Your content should always demonstrate an understanding of your audience’s needs and challenges. Don’t just think about what you want to tell prospects. Think about what they want to know. Your goal is to become a trusted voice that they turn to for information, not just another brand trying to sell them something.

One of the best ways to stay top of mind is with a newsletter. Check out our recent article on how to start (and scale) a newsletter to keep your prospects warm.

Work Smarter, Not Harder: How to Maximize Your Content Marketing 

We know what it’s like to be a marketing team that’s under a lot of pressure. You’re juggling a dozen different tasks, and the idea of adding more to your plate can feel overwhelming. At Green Apple, we believe the key to success for smaller teams isn’t necessarily about working harder—it’s about working smarter. 

Here are some of the ways we help our clients maximize their efforts and drive better results, even if they’re a small team or working with constrained budgets:

  • Repurpose Your Content: You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. We help clients get the most out of their content by thinking more strategically. You can extract short video clips for social media, create an infographic with key stats, or pull compelling quotes for email marketing. This helps you get more out of every piece of content you create without a ton of extra work.
  • Focus on Quality Over Quantity: You don’t have to post every day to be effective. It’s better to produce one high-quality, in-depth resource a month than to post low-quality content daily. Quality builds authority and trust with your audience. We work with our clients to identify their most valuable content needs and focus their energy there.
  • Leverage AI Strategically: AI is a powerful tool, not a replacement for human creativity. We help our clients use AI tools to brainstorm ideas, summarize research, or draft outlines. This saves time and resources. But we never skip the human touch. The best content still comes from people who understand your brand’s unique voice and your audience’s needs.
  • Maximize the Power of Visual Content: In 2025, creating content that catches your audience’s attention requires a combination of strategy, creativity, and adaptability. We help clients think through how to create visuals that stand out. This includes everything from custom photography and video to engaging infographics and social-first graphics.
  • Write for the Future of Content: The rules of content are changing. Today, we write not only for people but also for the future of search, including Large Language Models (LLMs) and other AI tools. We work with clients to structure their content for clarity and authority, ensuring their valuable insights are discoverable and cited by AI-powered search engines.

Ready to Align Your Content Marketing with Your Overall Business Goals?

At Green Apple Strategy, we help companies create marketing strategies that actually support their larger business objectives, not just fill a calendar. Whether you’re looking to stand out in a competitive industry or build out sales resources and toolkits, we specialize in finding the best way to make sure your marketing efforts resonate with your audience and align with your business objectives.

Learn more about our strategic planning services or start a conversation with our team.