The Real Reason Your Content Isn’t Working: Marketing Strategy Before Content Creation

If you’ve ever thought, “I just need to post more content,” this is the episode that will shift everything.

In this conversation, Ruthie pulls back the curtain on what actually happens inside a Cornerstone Strategy—and why content is never the first step.

Because the truth is: most founders don’t have a content problem. They have a sequencing problem.

Before a single post is written, there are critical decisions that shape whether your marketing actually works:

• What your message needs to do
• Who it’s speaking to
• Where it’s showing up
• And how it fits into your real life and capacity

You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at how we guide clients through expansion seasons, build aligned marketing ecosystems, and create strategies that reduce the mental load—not add to it.

If your marketing feels heavy, inconsistent, or unclear… this is where to start.

Join the next Marketing Mixer, a virtual networking event for mom founders. 

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and follow along over on Instagram!
@ruthie.sterrett
@theconsistencycorner

Transcript

Ruthie Sterrett (00:04.002)

Welcome back to the Consistency Corner podcast. I'm Ruthie, founder of the Consistency Corner and marketing strategist. And here we talk about reducing the mental load of marketing so your growth doesn't require more hustle, more noise, or more of your energy. This month, I've been pulling back the curtain a little bit. And today we are gonna talk about the behind the scenes of what happens in a cornerstone strategy with one of our retainer clients, which is our signature process of

coming up with your marketing strategy. And often what we think, or what founders are thinking is that they need more content, or they need better content, or they need a content calendar. And while content is the vehicle that gets our message out into the world, first we have to know what our message is, what we want the message to do, where we're putting the message, and who we are talking to.

and when are we talking about it and how often are we talking about it? So before we dive into content, there's actually a lot more that goes on behind the scenes in terms of decisions that we need to make. So with our clients, our one-on-one clients, we don't deliver any content in the first four to six weeks. We actually spend that entire time building out your strategy. And here's the thing, I feel like the word strategy,

gets thrown around the internet and you might be thinking like, what the heck does that even mean? Like what is, what are you being a strategy? Well, it's kind of like I said, it's what are our goals? How are we getting there? Who are we talking to? What do we want them to do? What containers, types of content are we using? Where are we showing up? What channels? How frequently and how are we measuring success?

And let's make it even more complicated and say, how do we fit that into your already full business and life? Because here's the thing about marketing strategy. Every single marketing strategy can work. They just all take time, money, energy, and none of us have unlimited of any of that. So I'm gonna take you behind the scenes of a recent cornerstone client or retainer client that we took through the cornerstone process.

Ruthie Sterrett (02:29.686)

and talk a little bit about why does it take four to six weeks. So my client came to me in expansion season. And what that means is she had an established business that already had clients. She was kind of at her capacity in terms of number of clients she could take on or was approaching capacity. But she had this idea for a new offer that she wanted to put out there that was actually gonna be serving a different audience. So she's a service provider.

and she was creating a workshop, a coaching container for other service providers in her industry. So she'd been serving her clients, now she was gonna shift and also serve this new audience of other service providers. So this new brand is like, you know, rolling around in her brain, she's got all these ideas, she's got a folder full of Google documents that are collecting digital dust, she's worked with a coach.

She knows what she should do, but she's like, I can't do all of this by myself. And so she came to the consistency corner and before we could build a content calendar, what we had to do is say, okay, number one, let's get your brand out of your brain and on paper. Because not only do you have this existing brand, but we're building this secondary brand that is now speaking to a new audience with a new offer.

And all of that is living in your brain. And so if somebody else is gonna come in and help you create content, whether that is an internal team member, a contractor like us, or a AI tool, we gotta get those details out of your brain and on paper, right? And for her, because we were building a new brand, or maybe we call it a sub-brand, we needed to figure out what was the bridge.

between those two, the new brand and the existing brand and her personal brand and how the needle threaded through all three. So we had to get really clear on the offers, the audience, the expansion path and her confidence as the thought leader and founder behind all of this before we could just dive in to content. So a lot of people think like I have a content problem or I just need somebody to do.

Ruthie Sterrett (04:45.88)

four posts a week for me, or I just need somebody to get content off my plate. But there's actually a sequencing problem behind the scenes that's not being addressed. So before we created one piece of content, before we wrote a content calendar, we really clarified what are her long-term and short-term goals? Because then we could look at, over the next 12 months, what do we need to do in terms of projects? What is the messaging that we need to breadcrumb?

for the audiences or what is happening in the industry during certain times of the year that we need to be talking about. We evaluated current performance and platforms and channels and what's already working. And then we really figured out again, what's the through line between this new thing and where we're expanding and the existing thing so that as she expands, it doesn't feel like a weird pivot.

or something coming out of left field of like, wait, what is she doing right now? Because what we don't wanna do is confuse the existing audience and make them think like, she doesn't do this thing anymore that I used to hire her for, now she only does this. Because no, she's expanding, she's not pivoting, she's doing both. So during that process, we're making strategic decisions about channels before mapping content. And when I say channels, I mean like,

Where are we showing up? And yes, you might be thinking like, okay, Instagram, LinkedIn, threads, Facebook, TikTok, like which social media platforms or channels, but we were also talking about blogs and emails and long form content such as, or mean, a blog is a long form content, but other long form content pieces such as podcasts, whether it's guesting or starting her own. We talked about YouTube videos. We talked about Pinterest.

We talked about ads and really evaluated based upon her goals, her budget and her bandwidth, which channels make sense right now in this next six months. We can always add in more, but we want to make sure that we're getting consistent with the main ones first.

Ruthie Sterrett (07:02.134)

So content doesn't just come together if your goals are vague. If you're ignoring the market context, that's a whole nother piece that I forgot to even talk about. We do a market analysis where we look at your not only competitors, but we look at comparable brands that are maybe like adjacent to you. Like they're not a competitor, but there's somebody that your audience might follow also that help them in a similar way that you, but not the same, right?

So we look at market context, we look at what they're saying, we look at trends, we look at content volume, we look at the brand and what its core mission is, and then we're able to make some strategic decisions around channels. And once we can make strategic decisions around channels that honor the boundaries of our energy,

that give each channel a job and clearly define its positioning, then we can start getting into the nitty-gritty of how much content do we need in each channel? How much content do we have the capacity to actually create? Whether that's you on your own, your team, our team helping you out, what does that look like?

So in the next episode, we are gonna talk about what happens after we've gone through that whole strategic foundation process, we've chosen our channels, and now we are ready to write a content calendar. Because now that you've got the background and you understand all this decision making goes into creating a content calendar, we're gonna dive into that process next, because there's quite a few decisions that go into creating a content calendar. But the reason that we are strategic,

and intentional about all of these decisions is not to be annoying, is not to put more work on your plate, but so that all the dots connect. Because marketing is an ecosystem. It's a three dimensional puzzle. And so each piece of content is like a puzzle piece. And so we need to understand which side of the puzzle it goes on, which channel it's fitting into, and how that impacts this channel over here and this other piece of content over here.

Ruthie Sterrett (09:17.708)

and how all of those things are moving you towards those business goals that we have set out. So join us in the next episode. We're gonna talk more about content calendar creation. And if you are in an expansion season, come say hello on Instagram. Just send me a DM. I love a good voice memo. I love chatting in the DMs. Let me know what questions you had after listening to this episode. And if you're...

Knowing that this might resonate with a fellow founder who's carrying a lot because this is a lot of stuff to carry up in our brains, right? This is the mental load of marketing. Share it with her. Let her know that she's doing a great job. We've got to cheer each other on and let her know that she's not alone. And I'm definitely cheering her on. I'm cheering you on. I'm always in your corner and I appreciate you being here and we'll see you in the next episode.