Content & conversion
Your weakest area
Content & conversion
You scored lowest here. That usually means content is going out, or should be, and nobody can say what it is supposed to accomplish.
What it looks like when it’s broken
It usually sounds like one of these.
Sometimes nothing is going out at all. Sometimes plenty is going out and none of it lands. Either way, the content is not connected to anything the business is trying to achieve.
Why it happens
In the simplest terms, there is no content strategy. Content gets made on an ad hoc basis instead of being planned around the goals for the year. That shows up in a few ways.
Posting ad hoc
Ideas come from whatever feels urgent this week, with no connection to what the company is trying to achieve this year.
No tracking
Content goes out, but nothing is set up to attribute results to it, so nobody knows what is working.
Weak execution
Posting on holidays, or sending the newsletter on a day your audience is rarely online.
No specific job MOST COMMON
Every piece of content should serve a purpose. Posting just to put something out there misses the mark.
That last one is the one I see most often. Not all content is created equal. Different pieces serve different purposes, and content without a job rarely does one.
What good looks like
Without a plan
Content goes out when someone has time, on whatever channel is convenient, for whoever happens to see it.
With a plan
A regular cadence where every piece has a specific goal and goes out on the right channel, at the right time, for the right audience.
Here is what that looks like in practice. A piece written for people already considering working with you probably does not belong on social media, where most of the people who see it have never heard of you. It belongs in front of the people who are ready for it.
The first move
Build a content plan around one main goal for the year.
Decide what your content is for. More email subscribers? More leads? More conversions from the audience you already have? Whatever the goal, build the plan from the data you already have: your ideal customer profile and personas, where they are in the buying journey, and the best channel to reach them, whether that is social media, email, or your website.
One goal. The right person. The right channel.
How you’ll know it’s working
You have a set of content KPIs tied to the goal you chose, and you can watch them improve over time.
For example: if the goal is to grow your email list with an engaged audience that eventually buys, you should see quality contacts joining the list and a share of them becoming customers.
What this looked like for one client
I worked with a company where content was the entire sales team. It had to do the thought leadership and the brand recognition, and it also had to sell.
So we made a plan. An email nurture campaign became the sales plan. We attributed every piece of content and tracked what worked and what did not. We built a lead scoring system based on which content people viewed, and which pieces made someone more likely to buy.
From there we optimized the engine. We brought in influencers who fit the target audience to create content that spoke to buyers like a peer would. And we made more video, because video made someone about 30% more likely to purchase.
Targeted content drove the engagement lift on a new product launch, and lead scoring cut five days off the buying decision.
Where this sits
Content is where the rest of the system becomes visible. When it has no plan behind it, six other areas feel it.
Dashed areas are not directly affected by this one.
Content created without a strategy may not line up with the company’s goals. At best it contributes nothing. At worst it works against them.
Good content is built around the customer journey. Without a plan, nobody knows what the path from marketing to sales actually feels like, or whether it needs work.
With no content KPIs, the only numbers left are vanity metrics that have no real bearing on revenue.
Without a steady plan, getting subject matter experts to contribute regularly feels like pulling teeth for everyone involved.
If nobody tracks how content performs, you cannot tell which topics resonate with your audience, or what to make more and less of.
AI can help a lot with content. Without a strategy and guardrails, it produces generic output that resonates with no one.
Give your content a job and those six get easier to manage. Leave it ad hoc and you are producing more of what already is not working.
Want help running the content itself?
If you already know content is the gap and you need it going out every month, SME-Led Content is built for exactly this. We interview your subject matter experts and turn what they know into articles, newsletters, and LinkedIn posts, planned around one goal and reported against it every month.
Your weakest area is where to start. It is not the whole picture.
The Scorecard rates eight areas because they fail together. You scored lowest here, but there are often others already under strain. Worth reading the neighbors before you decide where to spend the next quarter.
Click any highlighted area to read it.
- Goals & prioritiesRead →
- Audience & positioningRead →
- Content & conversion · You are here
- CRM & handoffsRead →
- Reporting & attributionRead →
- People & ownershipRead →
- Tools & dataRead →
- AI useRead →
Want someone to look at the whole system?
The Scorecard tells you where it hurts. A Diagnostic tells you why, and what order to fix it in. I look at your setup properly and give you a sequenced plan rather than eight separate problems.