You’re about to head into a meeting with your boss to discuss the results of your content strategy. While you’ve got a variety of assets published with solid views, the conversion numbers aren’t spectacular. The lead pipeline and sales you were hoping for haven’t materialized. You’re nervous about what your CMO is going to say.

Will the meeting turn into a berating session? Should you pull the pieces you’ve already published or try to revamp them? Perhaps your team hasn’t learned all the ins and outs of using AI to assist with creating assets. Although these are common questions to ponder when you’re faced with a failing content strategy, they don’t help diagnose the problem.

You need actionable steps to get at the why. And this “why” can vary depending on your brand, audience and current content. The following four steps will help you uncover the reason(s) your current strategy isn’t converting.

1. Find Out If Your Brand Is AI Visible

SEO isn’t enough anymore. Your brand also needs to have AI visibility . If you’re not familiar with AEO or answer engine optimization, it’s time to brush up on how it can impact content strategy. AEO ensures your content is formatted so AI tools cite your brand in answers to user prompts. Besides citations and brand mentions, the goal is to also have AI tools extract portions of your content as part of the generated answers.

While you shouldn’t abandon SEO practices entirely, knowing your brand’s AI visibility score is critical because the way people find content has changed. There’s been a shift toward relying on AI overviews and answers from AI tools for research. Potential customers are more likely to rely on content generated by AI before they click on links in the search results or visit company websites.

If your brand and its content aren’t a part of AI tools’ answers, chances are you’re not getting discovered. Without visibility, brand awareness remains low. And awareness is the initial step to conversion. To check your AI visibility score, you can use paid or free auditing software. You can also run manual checks by picking certain prompts, running them and seeing how many times your content is cited, mentioned or extracted.

2. Determine If Your Messaging Is Clear

It’s a difficult pill to swallow, but maybe there’s a disconnect between what your content is saying and what your brand mission is. Ask whether you’re creating content for the sake of creating content. The goal isn’t to drive vanity metrics. It’s to speak to and engage your target audience .

Sometimes brands publish content on a trending topic in hopes it will go viral or increase viewership. But it’s not impressions that drive sales. If you’re trying to appeal to everyone, you’ll end up engaging with no one. Before you create a content asset, determine if it’s aligned with what your brand stands for.

For instance, why would a regional wireless company publish a blog post about how to look good on a Zoom call? There may be a connection there between your thought leadership strategy and brand mission. However, on the surface, there doesn’t seem to be much of one unless you’re driving home the angle of ensuring you have a steady internet connection via the company’s services. Audit your current assets and determine whether there’s brand alignment.

3. Ask Who You’re Targeting

When it comes to content strategy and conversions, the spray and pray approach rarely works. With this method, you’re posting everywhere in hopes of reaching someone, anyone. But like unclear messaging, not having an audience targeting strategy means you’re usually wasting your time.

You don’t have to post on every social media platform and online publication. It may not even make sense for your brand to create every possible digital asset , such as podcasts, YouTube videos, blogs, gated content and so on. It’s better to determine where your target audience is online (and offline). Ask what types of content they consume regularly and start with the channels that have the potential to produce the highest results.

You may find it’s best to limit social media posting to Facebook. Maybe your audience(s) are a bit more dynamic, so you post on Facebook and Instagram. Your website captures leads through email newsletter signups, allowing you to drive additional blog and specific landing page traffic. Direct mail may work as well. It goes back to the basics of advertising strategy: put your message where your audience is.

4. Look At Consistency And Calls To Action

Are you posting once in a while without measuring each piece’s performance against KPIs? Better yet, have you determined what your KPIs are? Sometimes brands start posting random blogs and articles to gauge interest. There’s nothing wrong with this in the beginning, but you want to know what you’re hoping to measure or gain.

Maybe you’re trying to figure out your audience’s content preferences. Start with how you’re going to measure this and adjust your content depending on the results. Say one of your KPIs is the percentage of clicks to your website. Rank each piece’s performance using the click-through rate and then go back to re-optimize pieces with lower scores. Don’t be afraid to unpublish assets that continue to fall below acceptable benchmarks.

Another area where content can fall short is the call to action. Are there calls to action in the piece? How many are there and where are they placed? In addition, is the wording enticing and clear enough? If you’re not sure of what language and placement works best with your audience, run A/B tests. Track the outcomes of these tests so you can replicate what resonates.

Arriving At The Diagnosis

You may not be able to diagnose why your content strategy isn’t converting overnight. It’ll take due diligence and a willingness to troubleshoot no matter where the steps take you. You might find yourself having to start over once you think you’ve found the answer and that there’s more than one diagnosis. But once you determine what’s not working and why, you can refocus your efforts on what does.