10 Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Isn’t Working + How to Fix It

Content marketing should be the engine that drives organic traffic, engagement, and long-term success for your clients. Yet, so many agencies struggle to get results.

If you’ve ever scratched your head wondering why your content marketing isn’t working, you’re not alone.

While running my own agency for 10+ years and mentoring countless others, I’ve pinpointed several common reasons agencies fail to deliver results through content marketing.

In this post, I’ll dive into those reasons and show you how to overcome them with my secret weapon: BrandWell.

Let’s revive your content and breathe life back into your marketing. It’s time to ditch those crickets and bring on the results.

Table Of Contents:

• Traditional Content Marketing Doesn’t Work Anymore
• 10 Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Isn’t Working
  • 1. Lack of Strategy
  • 2. Lack of Budget
  • 3. Poor Content Quality
  • 4. Your Content is Too Sales-y
  • 5. Poor Content Planning
  • 6. You’re Not Promoting Enough
  • 7. Lack of Consistency
  • 8. You’re Neglecting SEO (Specifically Modern SEO)
  • 9. Your Client is Competing in a Tough Niche
  • 10. Your Client is Expecting Instant Results
• How BrandWell Can Make Your Content Marketing Work

Traditional Content Marketing Doesn’t Work Anymore

Remember when everyone claimed content marketing was the key to unlocking unprecedented brand growth? While the digital landscape was ripe for content creation in the early 2000s, the strategies that yielded success 20 years ago are now gasping for air in an oversaturated market.

Traditional content marketing, heavily reliant on outdated SEO practices, has hit its peak. The days of churning out keyword-stuffed articles and watching the leads pour in are long gone.

With today’s content overload, evolving search engine algorithms, and changing consumer behavior, clinging to traditional content marketing strategies will only leave you trailing behind.

So why is your client not getting any results in 2024?

10 Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Isn’t Working

Here are 10 common reasons why your content marketing isn’t working plus my recommendations on how to fix it.

1. Lack of Strategy

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 63% of brands using content marketing do not have a documented strategy — meaning they are essentially creating content without a clear plan or direction. That’s like going on a road trip with no map, no set destination, and no purpose.

Many agencies simply create random blog posts or videos, hoping something will stick, but without clear goals or audience insights, the content misses the mark.

Stop wasting your time on content efforts that won’t move the needle.

Solution: Start with a content strategy that’s grounded in data. AI tools like SparkToro can help you analyze audience behavior, competitive landscapes, and SEO trends to craft a strategy that aligns with your client’s goals. Whether you need blog posts, social content, or videos, this analysis provides insights into what works and why.

To create a results-driven content marketing strategy, follow these three steps:

1. Define your goals: Ask your client: “What do you want to achieve? Get more leads? Expand brand awareness?” Setting goals makes sure your content has a clear direction.
2. Pinpoint Your Audience: The better you understand WHO you’re creating for, the better your content will resonate. Putting in the work to get to know your audience will make them more likely to turn into leads and fans.
3. Map the Buyer’s Journey: Where are your client’s potential customers right now in their decision-making? Are they just discovering a problem your client’s product solves? Or comparing it to competitors? Each stage requires a different type of content. For example, an in-depth guide might be great for someone just starting their journey. If they’re ready to make a purchase decision, a case study or other form of social proof can help nudge them into buying.

2. Lack of Budget

A content marketing budget is more than just money spent on writers. It includes research, content production, promotion, and software. Too often, agencies either underspend or allocate resources unevenly.

Solution: With an all-in-one growth marketing engine like BrandWell, you can streamline content creation without cutting corners. From just one subscription you’ll get everything you need — real-time insights on your client’s brand/website, research-backed content that ranks and generates traffic and revenue, and relevant links from real brands.

If a limited budget is what’s holding you back, then it’s time to embrace automation. What a team of writers, SEO experts, and content strategists used to do can now run on autopilot, thanks to BrandWell. 🤖

3. Poor Content Quality

It’s easy to pump out lots of content, but if the quality is lacking, it won’t appeal to your audience. Many agencies settle for subpar content, either because they’re stretched too thin or trying to save on costs.

High-quality content should accomplish four things: engage, educate, entertain, and convert. Ask yourself, is this what MY content does?

Here are four common signs of low-quality content:

• High Bounce Rates: If your content is the first interaction you have with a potential customer and visitors quickly leave, it indicates a lack of interest. People may have clicked, thinking your content would provide a solution but ended up back on the search page. Your content didn’t convince them enough to stick around.
• Low Time Spent: A lower average time on the page indicates people aren’t finding what they hoped to. If someone is interested in your content, they will go deeper into your site to get additional questions answered.
• Lack of Engagement: People trust their friends, family, and other creators over brands. Think about how YOU make decisions. If friends have had a good experience and share it, it builds trust and authority because we crave third-party affirmation. If your content is shared by only a few, it means people don’t see enough value in spreading your message. They may view it as less than adequate and don’t want to put their reputation on the line by sharing it.
• Stagnant or Declining Traffic: You’ve put in the work of creating great content but it’s just sitting on the SERP. A major sign of low-quality content is that organic search traffic is not growing. What’s the point of writing all this awesome content if Google isn’t going to show it to the masses?

Solution: You can easily solve your content quality issues with BrandWell. You see, BrandWell doesn’t merely churn out generic content — they’re engaging, informative, and most of all, they reflect your client’s tone, voice, and ideals. Just look at the example below and see how good BrandWell’s output is:

Want to really elevate your content game in today’s digital era? Learn 15 content hacking strategies for sustainable brand growth.

4. Your Content is Too Sales-y

There’s nothing worse than content that screams “buy from us” at every turn. Content marketing is about educating, entertaining, and engaging — not a direct sales pitch. Yet, some agencies still publish overly promotional content.

Solution: Let BrandWell help you strike the right balance. BrandWell is trained to create content that appeals to emotions without being overly pushy. It might even provide suggestions on how to turn sales content into helpful, reader-first material that builds trust and authority. Take a look at these recommendations from BrandWell’s in-app, real-time content optimization audit:

5. Poor Content Planning

Content needs to be structured around a well-thought-out plan. Many agencies produce content without any overarching themes, goals, or alignment with the client’s sales funnel.

Solution: BrandWell makes content planning easier. Run a keyword search and map out your topics right inside the BrandWell content calendar. You can even build topic clusters in just one click!

6. You’re Not Promoting Enough

Great content won’t perform if no one sees it. Many agencies neglect the promotion side, assuming organic traffic will come. But without the right promotion strategy, even the best content gets lost.

Don’t let all that amazing content get lost in the noise. Give it a little push and actively engage with your audience.

Solution: Although BrandWell doesn’t automate content promotion yet (social suite coming soon!), it can help you create short-form content that soft-sells your blog posts. BrandWell has 40+ AI Agents trained to write for specific platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and even Reddit.

Right now, BrandWell writes almost ALL of my LinkedIn posts. Here’s one example:

Here are three methods I use to extend my content’s reach:

1. Promote on a Mix of Channels: Share across social media, email newsletters, and industry communities. Did you know that, on average, businesses promote on 14-16 platforms? That’s a lot! And with platforms constantly changing, we have to pivot constantly.
2. Connect With Influencers: Influencers are amazing because their job relies on providing content their followers care about, so don’t overlook the benefits. Think of influencers as your extended marketing team.
3. Pay for Visibility (yes really): In a crowded space, it is helpful to put some budget behind your content. Paid social media marketing gives it a boost. However, I wouldn’t recommend going that route unless you have a clear plan. Paid clicks could drain your budget quickly with nothing to show for it in the end.

7. Lack of Consistency

One of the most common reasons content marketing fails is inconsistency. Clients and their audiences need regular touchpoints to stay engaged, but many agencies fail to maintain a consistent posting schedule.

Solution: BrandWell can automate much of your content production process from keyword research and blog outlining to writing and publishing the actual article. This allows you to produce content for your clients like clockwork — no sick days, no time off. With BrandWell, you can schedule and automate posts so your content pipeline never dries up. Plus, it can help repurpose existing content into new formats, keeping things fresh.

8. You’re Neglecting SEO (Specifically Modern SEO)

Ignoring SEO is a major misstep. If your content isn’t optimized for search engines, it won’t be discovered by the right people. Unfortunately, many agencies are still sticking to tired old SEO strategies instead of keeping up with Google’s search updates, particularly how it prefers helpful content with E-E-A-T.

Solution: SEO can be complex, but BrandWell simplifies it. Backed by a powerful stack of three LLMs, it can automatically optimize your content for search engine algorithms without sacrificing user experience. BrandWell integrates SEO best practices directly into the content creation process so every piece is built to rank from the start.

9. Your Client is Competing in a Tough Niche

In saturated markets, it’s hard to stand out. Many agencies struggle to differentiate their content, especially when their client is competing against larger companies with more resources.

Solution: AI tools like Ahrefs and Semrush can help you analyze competitors and find gaps in their strategies. They provide insights into what the competition is doing so you can create content that goes deeper into under-served topics. You can also run a topic report inside BrandWell to analyze content from your top 50 competitors.

Learn how to master SEO competitor analysis in this detailed 5-step guide.

10. Your Client is Expecting Instant Results

Content marketing is a long game. Too often, agencies (and their clients) expect overnight results. But content needs time to build authority, attract links, and gain traffic.

Solution: Set realistic expectations with your clients and use AI to track performance over time. Monitor progress and showcase the long-term impact of your content strategy. Tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics allow you to adjust your tactics based on real-time data, ensuring your content continues to improve.

Now is the time to unlock the power of an AI-driven, all-in-one content marketing platform like BrandWell. If you’re starting a content marketing plan, you can ask BrandWell’s AIMEE chatbot to help you organize your thoughts and create a detailed, documented content strategy for your client.

For existing brands, BrandWell will analyze your client’s entire website, build a comprehensive brand graph, and identify what’s missing so you can cover deeper authoritative topics to help boost their brand positioning. Included in this analysis is a full optimization audit of all existing content, identifying which pieces need to be improved or rewritten. You get all these insights just by entering your client’s URL.

Watch this tutorial to find out how easy it is to audit your clients’ websites and build a winning strategy:

How BrandWell Can Make Your Content Marketing Work

Although BrandWell started as a long-form AI SEO writer, it has evolved into a complete and powerful content marketing tool that helps your clients build authority and traffic, taking their websites all the way to the top of Google.

If your content marketing isn’t working due to any of the reasons I listed above, here’s how BrandWell can help:

• Improved Productivity: BrandWell supercharges your workflows. You don’t need to manually find keywords, create outlines, write from scratch, or search for images. Focus on strategy and things that only YOU can do. Read about how one of our clients increased content production by 25x with BrandWell.
• Long-Form Content That’s Optimized for Humans and Bots: BrandWell can auto-generate a full month of blog content for your clients. Create in-depth, research-backed, SEO-optimized articles with internal and external links — all automated for you. And they’re written in an engaging tone of voice so there’s no need for all those endless rewrites. Plus, if you opt-in to our Brand Publisher Network, you’ll automatically get backlinks from relevant brands.
• Plagiarism Scan and AI Detection: Maybe your content marketing is not working because your client’s website is littered with generic or duplicate content. BrandWell’s proprietary plagiarism checker, AI content detector, and AI image detector will ensure that your content is 100% original and sounds humanlike.
• Content Repurposing: If you’re not planning to create various formats of your content, your audience will miss the hard work you put in. Now, in seconds, you can repurpose that content for additional distribution and engage followers across other platforms.
• Engaging, Short-Form Marketing Copy: Speaking of other platforms, BrandWell can also create other types of content beyond blog articles. Its AIMEE chatbot and AI agents can help you write sales emails, ad copy, landing pages, video scripts, social media posts, and even non-fiction ebooks. Watch how BrandWell created a full 8,000-word ebook in just 25 minutes.

Learn more about the full features of BrandWell and why it’s the perfect solution if your content marketing is not working:

As you reflect on why your content marketing isn’t working, try to address these common pitfalls to turn your agency into a well-oiled machine. Whether it’s ensuring quality, promoting content effectively, or optimizing for SEO, BrandWell makes the process smoother, faster, and more effective.

Content marketing is evolving, and with the right approach, you can ensure it works for your clients every time.

Let’s stop making the same mistakes. It’s time to embrace a smarter way of doing content marketing!