The guide for new HR tech execs who don't want to torch what's already working
What to Do in Your First 30 Days as a CMO of an HR Tech Co
The 100-day messaging reset playbook for new executives who want to get it right
If you just landed a CMO, CRO, or CEO role at an HR tech company, the pressure to make your mark immediately is real. The board wants velocity. Your LinkedIn announcement got hundreds of likes. And every instinct is telling you to move fast. Here's what 20 years and 200+ HR tech client engagements have taught us: the executives who blow it aren't the ones who lack vision. They're the ones who act before they've actually listened. This playbook is the forensic listening guide, the internal alignment framework, and the market-facing rollout plan you need to not become a cautionary tale.
Three versions of this movie
All of them end badly. None of them needed to.
Here’s what we’ve watched play out across the HR tech space, over and over: the new CEO walks in, decides everything needs to change, and within 30 days the website sounds like a different company… because it was rewritten by someone who doesn’t know the customers yet. The market doesn’t say “wow, they’ve evolved.” The market says, “are they okay?”
Then there’s the new CMO who came in planning to fire the incumbent agency, only to discover it was the only thing keeping the marketing machine from stalling. Or the founding team that thought they needed a logo when what they actually needed was positioning and category ownership.
The pattern is the same everywhere: new leadership creates opportunity and risk, and the companies that manage the transition deliberately (not quickly) are the ones that win. This playbook is how you do that.
but that's not all
What every new HR tech executive actually needs
The forensic listening framework
Stop nodding at people and then doing what you were going to do anyway. This section gives you the exact questions to ask customers (not the hand-selected happy ones), the marketing machine audit that reveals what’s held together by institutional knowledge, and the competitive lens that shows where your company has been accidentally ceding ground.
The internal alignment playbook
(this is where most resets die)
Here’s the part everyone skips: rolling out new positioning externally before your own team can articulate it in their own words. Sales keeps saying the old thing. SDRs fumble the new language on calls. Your market gets mixed signals, which is worse than the old signal. This section tells you how to fix that, in layers, in the right order.
The 100-day reset framework
Days 1-30. Days 30-60. Days 60-100. Each phase has a name, a purpose, and a very specific list of things you should not do yet. Whether you’re the new exec, the board that just installed one, or the marketing leader trying to protect the machine while the boss gets up to speed: this is the playbook you needed on Day 1.
from maren hogan
Why this guide exists
I've been marketing HR tech companies for 20 years. In that time, I've watched more leadership transitions than I can count, and most of them follow the same pattern: new exec walks in, decides everything needs to change, and the market starts asking if the company is okay. I wrote this guide because leadership transitions are inflection points, not crises. The question isn't whether change will happen. It's whether the change will be coherent enough for the market to follow along. This is the playbook for getting that right.
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ABOUT RED BRANCH MEDIA
Red Branch Media is the anti-agency agency, and yes, that distinction matters. We’ve worked with more than 200 B2B tech companies over 15+ years, with an 89% client retention rate that we’ll just let speak for itself. We specialize in comprehensive, integrated marketing for HR tech, FinTech, and B2B SaaS. Maren Hogan has been marketing HR tech companies for 20 years and has very strong opinions about what new executives should and absolutely should not do in their first 100 days. (She also has strong opinions about signature cocktails at logo reveal parties. They’re never worth it.) No long contracts, no proprietary systems holding your data hostage. Just smart, strategic marketing that actually moves the needle.