What does a fractional CMO actually do for an outdoor brand?

A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who works inside your organization part-time, usually about two days a week, to set the strategy and direct the people who carry it out. For an outdoor or adventure brand, that means someone who can look at the community you’ve built, the events you run, the content you post, and the partnerships you manage, and connect all of it to where the business is actually trying to go.

That’s the whole job in one sentence. Here’s the thing, though: most founders I talk to don’t need more marketing. They need someone to make the marketing they already have go somewhere.

Why do outdoor brands end up needing one?

Because the good ones grow faster than their marketing does.

You built a program people love. A guiding service, a gear brand, a festival, a nonprofit that gets kids outside. The community showed up. Then the marketing started: a website, some posts, a booth at the show every year, a newsletter when someone remembers. Each piece made sense on its own.

Somewhere around the $2M to $15M mark, that collection of activities stops adding up. The website says what you did three years ago. The team is posting without a plan. You have fourteen campaign ideas and no way to pick three. And when a board member asks what the marketing strategy is, you start talking, and talking, and realize you’re describing a to-do list.

That’s not a talent problem. It’s a seat that nobody is sitting in.

What does the fractional CMO actually do all day?

Three things, roughly in this order.

See the whole picture. Before any recommendation, I get inside the business: audience, positioning, offers, customer journey, channels, team, and goals. Not just marketing. The relationship between the brand, the customer experience, sales, and the people doing the work. Most problems that look like marketing problems are really a disconnect somewhere in that system.

Connect the dots. Agencies tend to sell one piece of the puzzle: a website, a campaign, a content calendar. The fractional CMO’s job is to decide how the pieces fit and which ones matter right now. That means saying no to eleven of your fourteen campaign ideas, and being able to explain why.

Make things move. Strategy that stays in a deck is decoration. Two days a week is enough to lead the team, set priorities, build the systems and metrics, and keep the work moving between conversations. It’s not enough to become the person who does everything, which is the point.

What does the first 90 days look like?

At Cazdin, the first 90 days run in three phases.

Weeks 1 to 4: Diagnose + Clarify. Interviews, audits, and a lot of questions nobody has asked you yet. We find what’s working, what’s disconnected, and where the biggest opportunities are hiding.

Weeks 5 to 8: Build the Strategy. We turn that into a focused plan: clear priorities, positioning and messaging, audience strategy, campaigns, partnerships, and a roadmap tied to the growth goals you actually have.

Weeks 9 to 12: Launch + Refine. We put it in motion. I work alongside your team to launch the highest-priority initiatives, set up the right systems and metrics, and build a sustainable rhythm for testing and learning.

After that, we shift to a quarterly cadence: prioritize, test, measure, learn, refine. Same seat, less firefighting.

Who is this not for?

I’d rather save you a call. A fractional CMO is the wrong hire if you just need someone to post on social media, if the business hasn’t figured out what it sells or who it serves yet, or if you want a strategy deck and plan to figure out the rest yourself.

It’s the right hire if you’ve built something worth building, your marketing has become scattered or dependent on you, and you’re ready to get intentional about what’s next.

If that’s you, let’s talk. One conversation, no pitch deck, and you’ll leave with a clearer read on your marketing either way.