The hard part after a course is picking what to change first, because a long list of tactics rarely gets done. We’d build a ninety day plan around one business goal, a few supporting tasks, the people responsible and the evidence you’ll review.
The free marketing course from Trojan Digital Marketing ends with planning lessons, and this article turns them into a working plan. Bring your course notes to us: the first strategy call is free, and during business hours we aim to reply within five minutes. If you are still organizing your study, start with the small business marketing learning guide and choose the decision your plan needs to support.
Choose an outcome you can define clearly
“Grow the business” is a direction, not a measurement. Define the type of progress you want to observe. A service business might want more suitable consultation requests, while a store might focus on inquiries about a particular product line. Decide what counts as a suitable inquiry before collecting results.
In this illustrative example, a home organizing business wants inquiries from homeowners seeking a complete room organizing project within its actual service area. An unrelated sales email would not count. A request for a service the business does not offer would be recorded separately. These definitions help keep the review honest.
Make a baseline before choosing a target
Record what the business currently knows about the relevant customer journey. Where do inquiries arrive? Which page explains the service? Who responds, and what information do they need? If you do not have reliable counts, the first task may be establishing a simple way to record them.
A target should reflect the business’s capacity and available evidence. We’d skip the percentage target in the first month. We hold our own published numbers to a simple rule: a number needs proof, and the smaller claim wins. When the baseline is uncertain, define a first stage goal such as capturing consistent inquiry information and confirming that the contact path works.
Use the first month to make the foundation usable
For the home organizing example, the first phase could include clarifying the service page, checking the inquiry form, and agreeing on a follow up process. These tasks are closely connected: a clearer page helps people assess fit, the form collects useful details, and the response process keeps a valid inquiry moving.
Assign an owner and completion check to each task. “Review the website” is too broad. “Confirm that the organizing service page states the real service area and links to a tested inquiry form” can be verified. Keep an investigation task separate when you do not yet know whether something is broken.
Use the second month for one useful content project
- Service A
- Planned coverage: fit and next step.
- Service B
- Planned coverage: proof and next step.
- Service C
- Planned coverage: fit and proof.
Choose a customer question that repeatedly appears before a purchase. In the example, prospects might ask what happens during a room organizing session and what they need to prepare. A practical article or short demonstration can answer that question and link to the relevant service.
Create the content from actual experience, reviewed facts and accurate examples. We’d rather see one article that answers a real customer question than four written to fill a calendar. Google’s SEO Starter Guide provides a useful foundation for making content understandable and discoverable. The business still needs to supply the knowledge that makes its own explanation worth reading.
| Phase | Primary work | Evidence to keep |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1 to 30 | Clarify the offer and test the contact journey | Published page, form test, inquiry definition |
| Days 31 to 60 | Create one useful decision support asset | Reviewed article or video, internal links, publication date |
| Days 61 to 90 | Review response and improve the next constraint | Consistent inquiry notes, observed questions, agreed follow up work |
Use the final month to review what happened
Examine whether the work was completed and whether the evidence answers the business question. A published article is an output. A suitable inquiry is an outcome. Both belong in the review, but counting them separately prevents the team from treating activity as proof of customer impact.
If search performance is part of the plan, use consistent periods and filters. Google explains clicks and impressions in its Search Console performance guidance. Keep those observations distinct from contact form submissions and sales, which come from different systems.
Protect the plan from becoming a wish list
New ideas will appear while you work. Place them in a later list instead of automatically adding them to the current commitment. A new social channel, a complete redesign, and an email sequence might each be worthwhile, but together they can overwhelm a small team before the original customer journey works.
- Keep one primary outcome visible at the top of the plan.
- Give each action an owner, dependency, and completion check.
- Record assumptions that could change the scope.
- Hold a brief recurring review to resolve blockers.
- Change the plan when evidence warrants it, and record why.
Before approving a new tactic, ask whether you can explain how it supports the outcome. Our marketing knowledge self check guide offers practical scenarios for that decision. The existing article How Do I Create a Marketing Strategy? can help connect the quarterly work to a wider direction.
When follow up or office work such as invoice preparation and call intake keeps slipping, look at the scope of our AI automation services. We’d only automate a process after your team agrees how it should run by hand. Your completed plan should let anyone involved answer what happens next, who owns it, and how you will know the work is useful.
