A 90-day marketing plan for a Portuguese SME

Choose one commercial priority

A 90-day plan works when marketing is tied to one business decision, not every possible objective.

A workable quarterly priority is specific: qualified enquiries for one service, repeat purchases from recent customers or demand in a defined region. It has a baseline, a desired direction and a clear constraint. Awareness, leads, e-commerce revenue, recruitment and a rebrand do not belong in one quarterly promise.

Portugal’s economy is dominated by SMEs under the European definition, but their resources and operating models vary widely. The European Commission defines an SME using employee count and financial thresholds; a microbusiness and a 200-person manufacturer should not share the same channel plan simply because both are SMEs.^[1]

• Commercial outcome
• Priority audience
• Geography and language
• Budget and team capacity
• Decision owner

Days 1–30: establish the baseline

The first month should make current performance and measurement limitations visible.

Map how demand currently arrives: organic search, referrals, paid media, marketplaces, partners, direct sales and repeat customers. Record volumes, quality and cost where reliable. The 2025 European advertising benchmark shows continued growth across digital formats, but market growth is not a reason for every SME to add every channel.^[2]

Identify the few actions that represent genuine progress. Google Analytics defines a key event as an action important to the success of the business. For a service firm it may be a qualified form completion; for e-commerce it may be a purchase or a meaningful step toward one.^[3]

Create a measurement contract

A measurement contract states what each metric means, where it comes from and who uses it.

Document event names, lead stages, revenue definitions, exclusions and reporting frequency. Standardise campaign parameters before launch. Google’s Analytics documentation recommends consistent UTM parameters so campaign traffic can be identified without fragmenting source data.^[4]

Separate leading indicators from business outcomes. Click-through rate can diagnose a message; it is not revenue. Cost per lead can support a decision only when lead quality is defined and sales outcomes are fed back into the review.

• Metric and plain-language definition
• Data source and owner
• Update frequency
• Known limitations
• Decision the metric supports

Days 31–60: run two focused tests

Use the middle month for one acquisition test and one retention or conversion test.

Write each test as a decision: for this audience, will this message and offer produce more qualified action than the current version within a defined budget and period? Change as few important variables as practical.

Platform experiments can split traffic between a control and treatment to compare performance over time. Google Ads supports campaign experiments for several campaign types, but small samples can still produce noisy results. Record sample size, duration and external events before declaring a winner.^[5]

Days 61–90: consolidate what earned its place

The final month turns test results into operating decisions.

Continue an activity when it produces a useful commercial signal and the team can deliver it consistently. Adjust when the mechanism appears sound but the message, audience or journey is weak. Stop when the economics, evidence or operational burden do not justify another cycle.

Document the conclusion and the confidence level. A failed test can be valuable if it closes an option and improves the next hypothesis. A positive platform result may still need confirmation against sales quality, margin or repeat behaviour.

Use a scorecard small enough to discuss weekly

A useful scorecard helps the team decide; it does not reproduce every available dashboard.

Choose five to eight measures across demand, conversion, economics and delivery. Include a short commentary explaining what changed and what action follows. A weekly meeting should end with owners and decisions, not a tour of charts.

At day 90, compare the result with the original baseline, list what remains uncertain and commit resources for the next cycle. Move only validated work into the operating plan. Keep unproven ideas in a prioritised backlog rather than presenting them as strategy.