Day-to-day, a fractional CMO sets marketing strategy and priorities, sits in on key planning and budget decisions, manages or directs the channel leads and agencies doing the execution, and owns the reporting that ties marketing activity back to pipeline or revenue. It's a leadership role, not an execution one — they're rarely the person building the ad campaign themselves.
At Kando, that also often means translating founder-level ambiguity — 'we need more growth' — into a concrete plan the rest of the team can execute against.