So, you’ve got a website, a blog section and spreadsheet bursting with keywords. You have a vague sense that “content” is what you need to be doing and have secured some budget. Maybe you’ve even got a freelance copywriter or two knocking out posts about industry trends.
But your traffic isn’t climbing. Your leads aren’t converting. Your content isn’t delivering what you hoped.
Does this sound like your business?
Most SEO content strategies fail. Not because content doesn’t work, but because businesses don’t take the time to define what “working” really means. They create content before defining what it’s there to achieve. The lack of clear destination is the cause of so much wastage and failure.
At 42group, we’ve been creating, fixing and scaling content strategies for over a decade. And we’ve seen the same problems crop up time and again. If your content strategy isn’t performing, here’s what’s likely going wrong. We’ll also show you what you can do to fix it.
You’re not starting with your audience
Let’s get something straight: Google doesn’t buy your product. People do.
This seems obvious, but too many companies start with SEO and not sales.
Far too many content strategies are built around search engine data with no meaningful insight into the people doing the searching. That’s often because content is packaged up as part of a digital marketing solution.
Of course, keyword research is essential, but if it’s not underpinned by a clear understanding of your audience’s pain points, priorities and problems, your content will fail.
Let’s take an example from a SaaS company. A keyword like “enterprise CRM tools” sounds like a great opportunity, right? But, unless you understand what your audience actually needs (including which features they care about, what they’re trying to solve, and how they evaluate vendors) you’ll produce generic content that gets clicks but not conversions.
This sort of generic content almost always misses the mark. It’s far better to embrace the niche and provide real value to a smaller audience than be far too general for a larger one.
It’s a truism, but te best content strategies really do start with people. That means listening (in person, on socials and other conversations). Start talking to your sales team, mining customer support logs, conducting interviews.
When you’re looking for audience engagement, spending time on Reddit threads and LinkedIn comments is often where the gold nuggets are.
You’re searching for truth and understanding what your audience actually wants to know, not just what the algorithm tells you they’re searching for.
This sounds time consuming and expensive, but it’s actually cheaper then wasting tens of thousands of pounds on junk content.
You’re creating “me too” content
It’s never been easier to copy what’s already out there. With a bit of research and a few AI prompts, you can generate a junk blog post that looks exactly like the top ten results on Google. It’s easy to create something with the same subheadings, same structure, same bland, SEO-friendly language.
And that’s the problem.
Search results are full of derivative, cookie-cutter content because everyone’s following the same playbook.
But the “best practices” promoted by SEO agencies will limit your growth.
If your content looks, sounds and feels like everything else in your sector, you’re not standing out, you’re imitating. Copycat content will never rank higher than the original, so why bother?
Our tip: Great content strategists don’t start by asking, “What’s ranking?” They ask, “What’s missing?”
Where are the gaps in the conversation? What hasn’t been said? What insight can you offer that your competitors can’t?
Saying something original on anything, from healthcare research to kitchen radiators is hard. But it’s worth the effort. You might want to consider publishing original research, sharing behind-the-scenes processes, or offering a strong point of view on where your industry is headed.
Creating original content needs a leadership that’s not going to settle for the same tired ideas, and instead committing to saying something worth hearing.
You don’t have a clear plan for distribution
This one’s simple. If you publish a blog and no one reads it, did it even exist?
Too many businesses treat publication as the finish line. Hit publish, share it once on LinkedIn, and wait for the traffic to roll in.
Problem is, with a million or more pages published each day (a number that’s always going to go up), it doesn’t.
A clear idea of distribution needs to be integral to into your content strategy from the very start. You need to know where your audience is, how they consume content, and how your team can get it in front of them.
That might include social media, email newsletters, digital PR, internal sales enablement, conferences, direct mail and more.
You also need to think about repurposing. Could that blog become a carousel for LinkedIn? A talking point in your next webinar? A slide in your sales deck? A three-part email sequence?
The most effective strategies make every piece of content work harder. Each piece of pillar content can be repackaged, repurposed and reused multiple times. Work smarter, not harder.
Want a model to follow? Ahrefs repurposes every high-performing post into multiple formats – and it works.
Your content isn’t tied to business goals
The KPIs your SEO agency suggests aren’t going to be linked to sales.
Before engaging a contractor, freelancer or supplier, ask yourself: What are you trying to achieve with your content? Awareness? Leads? Revenue? Thought leadership? SEO visibility?
If you don’t have a clear answer, there’s no way your content can ever deliver.
One of the most common reasons content strategies fail is a lack of alignment between business objectives and content outputs. Blogs become a tick-box exercise (we need to publish X by Y) rather than used as a strategic tool to drive outcomes.
If your goal is to generate leads, your content needs to support that journey. That might mean writing high-intent landing pages, creating middle-of-funnel case studies, or producing content that builds trust and nudges readers toward conversion.
If your goal is to build brand authority, you’ll need content that takes a clear position, offers expert insight and reflects your company’s unique voice and values.
Without strategic alignment, content becomes noise.
You’re not measuring what matters
Traffic is nice and rankings are great. But neither tells you whether your content is moving the needle and delivering business outcomes.
Too many strategies rely on vanity metrics: impressions, clicks, pageviews. These can be useful indicators, but they’re not providing the full picture. If your content is generating traffic but not contributing to pipeline, you’ve got a performance gap.
Effective content strategies define success early — and build the measurement framework to track it. That might mean setting goals around:
- Conversions (form fills, demo requests, downloads)
- Time on page and scroll depth
- Assisted conversions and pipeline influence
- SEO KPIs like backlinks, SERP position, or CTR
Tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, Matomo, or even simple UTM tracking can help you get insights into performance in simple and accessible dashboards.
But the tools are secondary. What matters is clarity. You need to know what success looks like and create a (content-based) plan to get there.
What great content strategies get right
The best content strategies are the ones that consistently deliver business results.
They’re all grounded in deep audience insight, focused on outcomes and (in most cases) created by content experts not SEOs or salespeople.
They balance stock content (the universals of your industry) and flow content (news, updates, and timely insights). Distribution is planned from day one, with content integrated part of the wider marketing and commercial strategy. It’s playing a defined and direct role in business growth.
Want examples?
- Intercom: Product education meets thought leadership
- Buffer: Transparent, values-driven brand building
- Animalz: Behind-the-scenes strategy from a B2B SaaS specialist
These are a few examples of strong, strategically driven content with a clear commercial imperative. We’d love to hear about your favourites.
Need help fixing your content strategy?
At 42group, we create content strategies that cut through the noise. These are strategies built on research, shaped by insight, and aligned with your goals. We won’t give you a cookie-cutter template. We’ll work with you to understand your audience, define your objectives, and deliver a strategy that drives results.
