Your First 90-Day GTM Plan: A Week-by-Week Guide for Startups

Introduction: From Idea to Impact

Launching a startup is a whirlwind of innovation, passion, and, let's be honest, a healthy dose of chaos. You've built an incredible product or service, but the critical question looms: how do you get it into the hands of the right customers? The answer lies in a robust, well-executed Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy. It’s the strategic roadmap that aligns your product, marketing, and sales efforts to achieve market penetration and significant traction.

Many startups falter not because their product is poor, but because their launch is disorganized. A GTM plan transforms a launch from a hopeful shot in the dark into a calculated, data-informed campaign. But where do you start? The first 90 days are the most critical period. This timeframe is long enough to test hypotheses, gather data, and show meaningful progress to founders and investors, yet short enough to remain agile and pivot when necessary.

At AgentWeb, we see how AI is revolutionizing this process, but the fundamentals remain the same. This week-by-week guide will walk you through crafting and executing your first 90-day GTM plan, setting the stage for long-term, sustainable growth.

Phase 1: The Foundation (Month 1 - Weeks 1-4)

The first month is all about deep thinking, research, and preparation. You're laying the groundwork for everything that follows. Rushing this phase is a common and costly mistake. Diligence here pays dividends for the entire quarter and beyond.

Week 1: Deep Dive and Definition

Your first week is dedicated to achieving crystal clarity on two fronts: who you're selling to and what you're selling them. It’s time to move beyond assumptions and into specifics.

Finalize Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): Who is the perfect customer for your product? Go deeper than basic demographics. Define their firmographics (for B2B), psychographics, daily challenges, and professional goals. What tools do they already use? What communities are they a part of? A sharp ICP prevents you from wasting resources trying to be everything to everyone.
Flesh out Buyer Personas: Within your ICP, create 1-2 detailed buyer personas. Give them names, job titles, and stories. Map out their primary pain points and how your product directly alleviates them. Use the 'Jobs to be Done' framework: what 'job' is your customer 'hiring' your product to do? This shifts your focus from features to outcomes.
Solidify Your Core Messaging & Value Proposition: Based on your personas' pain points, craft a clear, concise value proposition. Complete this sentence: "We help [Your Persona] achieve [Primary Outcome] by [How Your Product Works], unlike [Primary Alternative]." This becomes the bedrock of your website copy, ad creative, and sales pitches.

Week 2: Competitive and Market Analysis

You don't operate in a vacuum. Understanding the landscape you're entering is crucial for differentiating your startup. This week is about strategic intelligence gathering.

Map Your Competitors: Identify 3-5 direct competitors (those who solve the same problem for the same audience) and a few indirect competitors (those who solve the same problem in a different way). Analyze their websites, pricing, social media presence, and content marketing.
Conduct a SWOT Analysis: Perform a simple but powerful Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats analysis for your own startup. Be brutally honest. Where are you vulnerable? What market gaps can you exploit? This strategic exercise will inform your positioning.
Identify Your Unique Differentiator: Based on your competitive analysis, what makes you truly different? Is it your pricing model, a unique feature, superior customer service, or a specific niche you serve better than anyone else? This isn't just a feature; it’s the core reason a customer should choose you. Make this differentiator the star of your messaging.

Week 3: Channel Selection and Strategy

Now that you know who you're talking to and what you're saying, you need to decide where you're going to say it. The goal is focus, not ubiquity. Spreading yourself too thin across dozens of channels is a recipe for burnout with minimal impact.

Choose 1-2 Primary Channels: Based on your ICP and persona research, where do your ideal customers spend their time online? Are they business professionals on LinkedIn? Creatives on Instagram? Developers on Reddit or Hacker News? Tech leaders listening to specific podcasts? Pick the one or two channels with the highest concentration of your target audience and commit to mastering them first.
Outline Your Content Strategy: For each chosen channel, define what type of content you will create. Will you write in-depth blog posts for SEO? Create short-form videos for TikTok or Reels? Host webinars for LinkedIn? Start a newsletter? Plan a content mix that provides value, builds authority, and gently guides users towards your product.
Set Initial KPIs: How will you measure success on these channels? Don't just track vanity metrics like likes. Focus on leading indicators like website clicks, email sign-ups, demo requests, or free trial starts. Set realistic, measurable goals for the first 30-60 days.

Week 4: Tech Stack and Asset Preparation

It's time to build your GTM engine. This week is about setting up the necessary tools and creating the foundational marketing assets that will power your launch.

Configure Your Core Tech Stack: You don't need a dozen expensive tools. Start lean. Set up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to track website behavior. Choose a CRM (like HubSpot's free tier) to manage leads and customer interactions. Select a social media scheduling tool (like Buffer or Later) to maintain consistency.
Build Your Minimum Viable Funnel: Create the essential assets needed to convert a visitor into a lead. This typically includes a high-converting landing page with a clear call-to-action (CTA), a thank-you page, and a simple email follow-up sequence.
Develop Foundational Content: Write your first 2-3 blog posts based on your content strategy. Create your social media profiles and populate them with initial content. Finalize your lead magnet—a valuable resource (e.g., a checklist, template, or short e-book) that you offer in exchange for an email address. This is your first step in building a valuable owned audience.

Phase 2: Activation and Engagement (Month 2 - Weeks 5-8)

With your foundation in place, month two is all about execution. You'll start pushing your message out, engaging with your first users, and gathering critical real-world feedback. This is where your strategy meets reality.

Week 5: The Soft Launch and Initial Outreach

The goal of this week is not to make a huge splash, but to create ripples. It's about testing your systems and messaging with a small, controlled audience before going big.

Publish and Promote: Start publishing the content you prepared on your chosen channels. Don't just post and pray. Share it with your personal network and in relevant online communities where you've already started to build a presence.
Begin Manual, High-Touch Outreach: Identify 10-20 companies or individuals who perfectly match your ICP. Reach out to them personally via email or LinkedIn. Don't pitch them. Instead, offer value, ask for their expert feedback on the problem you're solving, and build a genuine relationship. The insights from these initial conversations are pure gold.
Drive Test Traffic: Send a small, controlled amount of traffic to your landing page. This could be from your personal network, a small targeted ad campaign, or friendly beta testers. The goal is to ensure your analytics are firing correctly and the user flow is smooth.

Week 6: Content Cadence and Community Building

Consistency is the engine of early-stage marketing. This week is about establishing a rhythm and moving from broadcasting your message to building a community around it.

Establish Your Publishing Cadence: Commit to a regular schedule for your content. Whether it's one blog post a week, three social media updates, or a bi-weekly newsletter, stick to it. An audience learns to anticipate and trust a consistent presence.
Engage, Don't Just Broadcast: Spend as much time engaging as you do creating. Respond to every comment. Ask questions in your posts. Participate in conversations within your target communities (Slack groups, subreddits, LinkedIn groups). Your goal is to become a known, helpful voice.
Nurture Your Email List: As people download your lead magnet, make sure they receive your automated welcome email sequence. Keep it simple: welcome them, re-iterate your value proposition, and offer another piece of valuable content or insight.

Week 7: Gathering Feedback and First Iterations

Your GTM plan is a hypothesis. This week is about collecting the data to prove or disprove it. Now that you have some early users and engagement, it's time to listen, learn, and adapt.

Analyze Early Data: Dive into your GA4 and social media analytics. What content is getting the most engagement and clicks? Where are visitors to your landing page dropping off? Are people signing up for your email list? Look for patterns, no matter how small.
Conduct Customer Interviews: Talk to your first few users or trial sign-ups. Schedule 15-30 minute calls. Ask open-ended questions: "What prompted you to sign up?" "Was anything confusing about the process?" "How does this compare to how you currently solve this problem?" This qualitative feedback is invaluable for refining your messaging and product.
Iterate on Your Core Assets: Based on both quantitative data and qualitative feedback, make your first changes. Tweak the headline on your landing page. Clarify a confusing point in your onboarding. Adjust your content plan to create more of what's resonating.

Week 8: Amplification and Partnership Exploration

With initial validation and a more refined message, it's time to start thinking about how to amplify your reach beyond your own efforts.

Double Down on What Works: Identify the single best-performing piece of content or channel from the past few weeks. How can you repurpose or amplify it? Turn a successful blog post into a video or a Twitter thread. Put a small ad budget behind your most engaging social post.
Identify Potential Partners: Create a list of non-competing companies, influencers, or content creators who serve your ICP. Who has the attention and trust of your target audience? Look for podcasts, newsletters, and blogs that your ideal customer consumes.
Initiate Partnership Outreach: Begin reaching out to your shortlist of potential partners. Don't ask for a promotion right away. Start by building a relationship. Compliment their work, share their content, and offer to collaborate in a way that provides value to their audience, such as co-hosting a webinar or writing a guest post.

Phase 3: Scaling and Optimization (Month 3 - Weeks 9-12)

Month three is about transitioning from manual effort to intelligent scaling. You've found some initial traction; now it's time to use data to build a repeatable, scalable growth engine.

Week 9: Data Analysis and Performance Review

This week is a strategic pause. Before you pour fuel on the fire, you need to be certain which fire is burning brightest. This requires a deep, objective look at your performance over the past 60 days.

Conduct a Full Funnel Review: Map out your entire customer journey, from first touchpoint to conversion. Use your analytics to identify the conversion rate at each stage. Where are the biggest leaks in your funnel?
Calculate Key GTM Metrics: Establish baseline numbers for your most important metrics. What is your current Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) on your primary channel? What is the conversion rate from website visitor to lead? What is the engagement rate on your content? These numbers are your new benchmark.
Identify Your Most Valuable Channels and Content: Based on hard data, which channel has delivered the most qualified leads? Which blog post or lead magnet has generated the most sign-ups? The 80/20 rule almost always applies; find the 20% of your efforts that are driving 80% of the results.

Week 10: Optimizing the Funnel

With clear insights from your data review, this week is dedicated to making targeted improvements to your marketing funnel to increase efficiency and conversion rates.

A/B Test Core Assets: Don't guess, test. Use a tool like Google Optimize or features within your landing page builder to run an A/B test. Start with the most impactful element: your landing page headline. Test your primary CTA button text or color. Even small wins here compound over time.
Refine Your Nurture Sequences: Look at the open and click-through rates of your email welcome series. Can you improve the subject lines? Is there a point in the sequence where engagement drops off? Add more value-driven content to build trust before you make a hard ask.
Optimize Top Content for SEO: Take your best-performing blog posts and optimize them for search engines. Do keyword research to find relevant terms, improve your on-page SEO (title tags, meta descriptions, headers), and look for internal linking opportunities. This turns a short-term content win into a long-term organic traffic asset.

Week 11: Scaling Your Wins

Now it’s time to press the accelerator, but in a controlled, intelligent way. This week is about allocating more resources to the strategies, channels, and content that you have proven to be effective.

Increase Budget on Proven Channels: If your small LinkedIn ad campaign showed a positive return on investment, it's time to scale the budget. Double down on what the data tells you is working. This is the essence of performance marketing.
Systematize Content Creation: Create templates and processes around your most successful content formats. If short-form videos are working, create a simple script template and a repeatable production process. This increases output without sacrificing quality.
Formalize a Partnership Playbook: If you had success with a guest post or webinar collaboration, document the process. Create an outreach template and a simple proposal you can use to approach more partners, turning a one-off success into a scalable channel.

Week 12: The 90-Day Review and Next Plan

The final week is for reflection and future planning. You’ve completed a full GTM cycle. The goal is to consolidate your learnings and build a smarter plan for the next 90 days.

Document Everything: Create a comprehensive “Q1 GTM Review” presentation. Document your initial goals, your final results, key metrics (CAC, conversion rates), major wins, unexpected failures, and most importantly, your key learnings.
Celebrate Wins and Learn from Losses: Acknowledge the progress you've made. Getting a product off the ground and generating initial traction is a massive achievement. Be equally honest about what didn't work. These 'failures' are simply data points that will make your next plan stronger.
Outline Your Next 90-Day Plan: The cycle begins anew, but you are no longer starting from scratch. You have data, insights, and a proven process. Set new, more ambitious goals. Will you focus on expanding to a second channel? Optimizing for customer retention? Launching a major new feature? Your next 90-day plan should be a direct evolution of your first.

Beyond 90 Days: The AI-Powered GTM

Executing this 90-day plan manually provides an incredible education in your market. But as you grow, speed and intelligence become your greatest competitive advantages. This is where artificial intelligence, the core of what we do at AgentWeb, transforms your GTM strategy from a linear process into an exponential growth curve.

AI can supercharge every phase of your plan. AI-powered tools can analyze vast datasets to uncover deeper insights into your ICP, identify competitor strategies in real-time, and suggest untapped content opportunities. In the activation phase, AI can optimize ad spend across channels automatically, personalizing messaging for different audience segments at a scale no human team can match. And in the optimization phase, predictive analytics can forecast which leads are most likely to convert, allowing your sales team to focus their efforts where they'll have the most impact.

Conclusion: Your Launchpad for Growth

A 90-day GTM plan is not a static document to be written and forgotten. It is a living, breathing framework for disciplined action, rapid learning, and agile adaptation. By breaking down the monumental task of launching a startup into this week-by-week guide, you can create focus, build momentum, and lay a data-driven foundation for success.

Remember the cycle: build the foundation, activate and engage, then optimize and scale. Each 90-day period will make you smarter, faster, and more effective. You've built an amazing product; now go build the GTM engine that will share it with the world.

Ready to accelerate your journey? AgentWeb helps ambitious startups like yours leverage the power of AI to build and execute GTM plans that don't just find customers—they build empires.