Why content strategies fail

How to make sure you don’t get stuck in sign-off purgatory

Author

David Broderick
May 29, 2025

In partnership with

Does anyone know how to delete a page from the internet?

Because I just read an article by Rosanna Campbell that my clients CAN NOT see

It makes the shit I send them look like it was scribbled in crayon 🫠

And it’s got it all:

→ An amazing topic (which Stephanie Trovato came up with 🙌)

→ A banger intro (“𝘐 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘐’𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘭𝘦” = 10/10 opening line 😗👌)

→ A Samuel Beckett quote

Plus, stick everyone Rosanna quotes in this bad boy side-by-side and you’re looking at the Mount Rushmore of content marketing.

Here are the very best bits of Rosanna Campbell's article on Why Content Strategies Fail for Relato.

Let’s go 👇

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🎯 One sentence summary

Rosie walks us through the six most common reasons why content strategies fail – and what some of the smartest content marketers around say we can do to overcome them

💬 One important quote

Avoiding content strategy failure starts by taking ownership of what you can control—whether that’s building processes to avoid “too many cooks,” proactively securing leadership buy-in, or making a business case for audience research.

If there’s one thing that all my sources told me, it’s that we have more power than we think.

🗝️ One key takeaway

Stop me if you think you've heard this one before:

You think your articles is good to go…

But Cuthbert from accounting has other ideas

He’s got thoughts on your use of the Oxford comma (and no, he does not know how to use tracked changes)

Then Pat from sales pipes up with a “why dis not gated?”

Then the CEO says her son never uses Google, so can you turn your 3,000-word article on compliance management for mid-sized enterprises into a TikTok instead?

💀

Rosanna reckons the RACI matrix can rescue us from this particular hell

It’s a framework that makes clear:

→ Who is 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 for the content (usually the creator)

→ Who is 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 (aka the decider)

→ Who needs to be 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗱 (other teams, such as product or legal)

→ Who needs to be 𝗜𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱

Get these roles formalised before you launch your content strategy to make sure it doesn’t get stuck in sign-off purgatory 🪦

Check out Rosie’s full article to learn how to make sure your next content strategy doesn’t fall flat on its face

TOFU Community Manager