Why Your Blog Isn't Bringing You Leads

A client once told me they had to have a blog. “It’s for marketing,” they said. So I wrote them a bunch of well-researched, relevant posts — and they never promoted a single one.

No social shares. No emails. No repurposing it into other formats.

It was worse than that though: they had nowhere for leads to go after reading. No CTAs. No conversion path. Just a lonely blog, rotting in a forgotten subfolder.

This is checkbox marketing: doing the thing so you can say you did the thing.

A blog? Check. A monthly newsletter? Check. Some SEO? Kinda? Check. But without a strategy connecting the dots — or even trying to make the dots matter — those activities are just noise.

Checkbox marketing happens when:

• You prioritize output over outcomes

• You copy what others do without understanding why it works

• You value speed or consistency more than usefulness

• You don’t have clear goals tied to customer behavior

The core problem? Most companies don't map their marketing to the actual customer journey.

They aren’t thinking, What would help a stranger become curious? What would make them trust us enough to take a next step?  What's the next step we want them to take anyway?

Instead, they're just publishing content and hoping someone, somewhere, cares enough to click. Shouting into the void.

So instead of asking “Did we post something this week?”, ask:

• What’s the next step I want a potential buyer to take?

• Have I made it clear and compelling to take that step?

• Does this piece of content establish our credibility, educate around the problem, or otherwise move someone meaningfully closer to a sale?

Checkbox marketing feels productive. But it’s performative. Worse, it burns time and budget with little to show for it. The alternative isn’t “do more” — it’s do smarter.

Focus on the flow between each step in the customer journey and how they connect, not just the disconnected pieces you've heard you need.