How to Turn Your First 90 Days of Marketing Data into a Growth Plan

Alright, let's be direct. You've launched. You spent the last 90 days throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. You ran some Google Ads, posted on LinkedIn, maybe even sponsored a newsletter. Your dashboard is a chaotic mix of clicks, impressions, and a handful of sign-ups. You're drowning in data but starving for a single, actionable insight.

I’ve been there. In the early days, marketing feels like a dark art. But it’s not. It’s an engineering problem. You have inputs (time, money, content), a system (your marketing channels and product), and outputs (activated users, revenue). The first 90 days aren’t about winning. They’re about instrumenting the system so you can start learning.

That pile of messy data is your first real asset. It contains the signals that will tell you where to dig for gold and which holes to abandon. This guide is the playbook for turning that raw data into your first real growth plan. No fluff, just a process to find what works and do more of it.

Stop Chasing Vanity Metrics: Define Your North Star

Before you look at a single chart, you need to recalibrate your definition of success. Traffic, social media followers, and even raw sign-up numbers are mostly vanity. They feel good, but they don't pay the bills and they don't correlate with a sustainable business. You need a North Star Metric (NSM) that is tied directly to the value your product delivers.

From Sign-ups to Activation: Finding Your True Metric

A sign-up is a whisper of interest. An activated user is someone who has experienced the 'aha!' moment—the core value proposition of your SaaS. They've done the one thing that makes them likely to stick around. Your job is to define what that is.

Ask yourself this question: What is the key action a user takes that proves they've received the core value of our product?

Here are some real-world examples for B2B SaaS:

For a collaboration tool like Miro:
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Creating and sharing a board with a teammate.
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For a developer tool like Vercel:
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Successfully deploying a project.
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For an analytics tool like Mixpanel:
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Creating their first insightful report.
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For a CRM like HubSpot:

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Importing contacts and logging their first activity.

This isn't about completing an onboarding checklist. It's about value delivery. This “activation metric” is the primary success signal you’ll be hunting for in your data. Every marketing activity should be judged by its ability to generate activated users, not just sign-ups.

The Pirate Metrics Framework (AARRR) for Early-Stage SaaS

Dave McClure's Pirate Metrics (AARRR) is a simple funnel that helps you focus. It stands for:

Acquisition: How do users find you? (e.g., Google, LinkedIn)
Activation: Do they have a great first experience? (Your NSM)
Retention: Do they keep coming back?
Referral: Do they tell others?
Revenue: How do you make money?

For your first 90 days of data, you are almost exclusively focused on the first two: Acquisition and Activation. You can't worry about Retention if no one is activating. You can't worry about Revenue if the product isn't sticky enough to retain users. Focus. Your goal is to find the channels that acquire users who actually activate.

The 90-Day Data Audit: What to Collect and Where to Find It

Now that you know what you’re looking for (activated users), let's talk about where to find the data. You don't need a dozen complicated tools. You need a few core sources of truth.

Your Core Data Stack (The Non-Negotiables)

If you don't have these three set up, stop reading and do it now.

Google Analytics (GA4): This tells you how people find your website and what they do once they're there. For the first 90 days, you care about two primary reports:
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Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition
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to see which channels are sending you visitors, and
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Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens
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to see which pages are getting the most attention.
Product Analytics (Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog, or your own DB): This is your window into what happens after the sign-up. This is where you track your activation metric. You must be tracking key events like:
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SignUp
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,
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OnboardingStepCompleted
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,
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CoreActionTaken
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(e.g.,
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ProjectCreated
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), and
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TeamMemberInvited
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. Without this, you're flying blind on product value.
Your CRM (even if it's just a spreadsheet): For B2B, not all leads are created equal. Your CRM tracks the journey from lead to customer. At a minimum, you should be tracking: Lead Source, Job Title, Company Size, Demo Booked (Y/N), and Closed-Won (Y/N). This helps you understand who your ideal customer profile (ICP) is, not just who you think it is.

Tying It All Together: The Customer Journey Map

Don't let these tools live in silos. Map out the ideal customer journey and identify which tool tracks each step. It should look something like this:

Awareness: A developer sees your ad on Reddit. (Ad Platform Data)
Acquisition: They click the ad and land on your blog post about a technical problem. (Google Analytics)
Activation: They read the post, click a CTA, sign up for a free trial (Google Analytics Goal / Product Analytics Event), and successfully deploy their first app (Product Analytics Event). This is the win.
Revenue: A week later, after their team has joined, they upgrade to a paid plan. (Stripe / CRM Data)

Visualizing this path helps you see where the data handoffs occur and where users are getting lost.

Analyzing the Signals: From Raw Data to Actionable Insights

With your data sources organized, it's time to become a detective. Your goal is to find patterns that suggest what's working and what's failing miserably.

Segment, Segment, Segment

Looking at overall averages is a rookie mistake. An average conversion rate of 2% is meaningless because it blends high-performing pockets with total failures. The gold is in the segments.

Start by breaking down your core funnel—

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Visitors -> Sign-ups -> Activated Users

—by different dimensions:

By Channel: Compare Organic Search vs. Google Ads vs. Direct vs. Social.
By Landing Page: Compare your homepage vs. a feature page vs. a blog post.
By Persona/ICP: Compare sign-ups from
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engineers at startups
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vs.
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PMs at enterprises
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.

You're looking for outliers. You might find that your overall sign-up to activation rate is a dismal 10%. But when you segment by channel, you discover that users coming from organic search for

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"how to solve X problem"

activate at 40%, while users from your generic LinkedIn posts activate at 1%.

That's not just data; that's a bright, flashing sign telling you exactly where to focus your energy.

Uncovering Your Winning Channels (and Killing the Losers)

Now, let's get ruthless. Rank every marketing channel not by the volume of traffic it sends, but by its efficiency at creating an activated user. If you're spending money, calculate your Cost per Activation. If you're spending time (e.g., on manual outreach or content), assign a rough value to your time to make the comparison fair.

Here's a simple analysis you can build in a spreadsheet:

| Channel | Spend/Effort | Sign-ups | Activated Users | Cost per Activation | |---|---|---|---|---| | Google Ads Campaign A | $2,000 | 100 | 4 | $500 | | SEO/Content | $500 (freelancer) | 40 | 15 | $33 | | Founder LinkedIn Posts | $0 (10 hrs) | 30 | 10 | ~$50 (your time value) | | Cold Email Outreach | $0 (20 hrs) | 15 | 1 | ~$1000 (your time value) |

The insight here is brutally clear: Google Ads is burning cash for uncommitted users. Cold email is a time sink. The real leverage is in SEO/Content and your personal LinkedIn presence. Your next move is obvious: pause the expensive ad campaign and re-allocate that budget and time toward creating more high-intent content.

Finding the Friction: Where Are Users Dropping Off?

Your second critical analysis is the user funnel, from the first touch to activation. This is where you find the 'leaks' in your product and marketing.

Map it out with real numbers:

Visitors to Landing Page: 5,000
Clicked 'Sign Up': 500 (10% CVR)
Completed Sign-Up Form: 250 (50% drop-off)
Completed Onboarding Step 1: 125 (50% drop-off)
Became Activated User: 25 (80% drop-off)

In this example, you have two massive fires to put out. Why did half the people who started the sign-up process abandon it? Is your form too long? Does it ask for a credit card? Then, an even bigger fire: why did 80% of users who started onboarding fail to activate? Is your UI confusing? Is there a critical bug? Is the value proposition not immediately clear?

This analysis moves the conversation from "we need more traffic" to "we need to fix our broken onboarding flow." The latter is a much higher-leverage activity.

Building Your Next 90-Day Growth Plan

Analysis is worthless without action. Now you'll translate these insights into a simple, focused growth plan for the next 90 days. We'll use the 'Double Down, Optimize, Experiment' framework.

The 'Double Down, Optimize, Experiment' Framework

This framework allocates your most valuable resource—founder focus—effectively.

Double Down (70% of Effort): This is your core focus. Take the winning channels and segments you identified and pour gas on them. Based on our table above, this means: "We will publish two blog posts per week targeting high-intent keywords, as this is our most efficient channel for acquiring activated users."
Optimize (20% of Effort): This is about fixing the leaks. Based on the funnel analysis, this means: "We will A/B test a simplified sign-up form to reduce drop-off, and we will add an interactive product tour to our onboarding to improve the completion rate."
Experiment (10% of Effort): This is where you test new ideas. Keep the budget and scope small. The goal is learning, not immediate results. Example: "We will run a small, $500 test campaign on Quora targeting questions related to our problem space to see if it can be a new acquisition channel."

Setting Realistic Goals and KPIs

Your plan needs specific, measurable goals. Don't just say "improve onboarding." Say:

Double Down Goal: Increase activated users from SEO/Content from 15 per month to 50 per month by Q3.
Optimize Goal: Increase the onboarding completion rate from 20% to 40% by the end of next month.
Experiment Goal: Achieve a Cost per Activation under $100 from our Quora test campaign.

These are clear, falsifiable hypotheses. You will know at the end of the next 90 days whether you succeeded or failed, providing you with even more data for the next iteration.

Who Executes This? The Founder's Dilemma

As a technical founder, your highest and best use is working on the product. But this growth work needs to get done. You have a few options:

DIY: You can execute the plan yourself. It's the cheapest in terms of cash but the most expensive in terms of your time and focus.
Hire: You can hire a junior marketer. This gives you a dedicated resource, but they will require significant direction and management.
Automate & Build: You can lean into your technical strengths and use a suite of tools and platforms to automate as much as possible. For founders who want to maintain control and a hands-on approach, a self-service platform like the one we're developing at AgentWeb's builder can provide the infrastructure to run these plays yourself.
Delegate to an Expert: For many founders, the opportunity cost of being distracted from the product is simply too high. This is where a done-for-you service that handles the entire growth loop can be a force multiplier. An AI-powered agency like AgentWeb can plug in and execute a data-driven plan for you, turning insights into scalable results without pulling you away from your core mission.

When evaluating these options, it's crucial to compare not just the sticker price but the total cost of ownership, including your own time. You can see how we structure our engagements on our pricing page to get a baseline for expert-led execution.

Your first 90 days of marketing weren't a failure. They were a successful, if expensive, data-gathering exercise. You've paid for the tuition; now it's time to learn the lesson. Use this framework to read the signals, form a hypothesis, and build a growth machine, one 90-day sprint at a time.

Ready to put your marketing on autopilot? Book a call with Harsha to walk through your current marketing workflow and see how AgentWeb can help you scale.

How to Turn Your First 90 Days of Marketing Data into a Growth Plan