How Small Businesses Can Win at Content Marketing

In a digital world saturated with content, small business owners often struggle to make their voices heard. Lacy Boggs, director of The Content Direction Agency, has spent over a decade helping businesses craft strategic content that builds trust and engagement beyond just launches. From her early days as a freelance writer to leading a thriving agency and adapting to the rise of AI, Lacy shares her insights on creating content that truly connects with audiences. In this interview, she discusses the challenges small businesses face, the importance of thought leadership, and how to create content that stands out in an ever-changing market.

The Inspiration Behind The Content Direction Agency

SBS – What inspired you to start The Content Direction Agency? How did you discover the need for a different approach to content marketing for small businesses?

Lacy – In 2012 I hung out my “digital shingle” as a freelance content writer and called myself the “Ghostblogger” after having my daughter and leaving the magazine industry. I got my first clients, and it quickly became clear that they wanted more than just writing from me; they were also interested in content strategy. So, I started taking online courses and learning everything I could about content marketing and content strategy.

A few years later, in 2014, I decided to rebrand myself, and my brand designer advised me to brand for the business I wanted in five years, so I named the website and brand The Content Direction Agency, even though it was still just me at the time. Turns out, she was right; within just a few months, I had more work than I could handle and I was bringing on my first contract writer to help me.

The Content Direction Agency was always focused on helping micro business owners and solopreneurs with their content strategy and production for two reasons: 1) their needs and therefore their content strategy are different than larger businesses and 2) most agencies are out of their reach in terms of investment — but they still need support.

We operated successfully for nearly a decade, making nearly six figures a month and employing four writers and myself at our peak. In 2023, the market shifted dramatically with the widespread adoption of large language model AI. Overnight, our leads pipeline dried up and clients who had been with us for nine years or more took their content needs “in-house.” I ended up having to let my writers go, close the agency, and pivot to taking several in-house fractional CMO jobs.

In 2024, my fractional CMO positions ended at roughly the same time, and I was faced with the need for another pivot. I asked myself: What can I do that AI can’t do? — and the answer is that I could show people how to become thought leaders in their space and beat AI at its own game, which is where we’re at today with my signature Thought Leader Lab program.

For now, I’ve kept the Content Direction Agency name, because that’s how I’m known, but we no longer serve clients with done-for-you content at an agency scale.

Content Challenges for Small Businesses

SBS – What would you say is the biggest challenge that small business owners face when it comes to content marketing?

Lacy – Very small businesses online — micro businesses, solopreneurs, and those with just a couple of folks on their team — face unique challenges when it comes to content marketing because they don’t have the resources to compete with larger businesses who might be able to pay a team to create their content marketing. So many micro business owners I know say that their number one wish is to outsource their content creation — but they can’t afford the kind of support that would create high-quality content.

(Fun fact: most large corporations have dozens of full-time people on their social media teams alone creating content all day, every day.)

So, they look for ways to simplify or find shortcuts to creating content — things like content prompts, templates, or AI. Those things certainly make the content creation process go faster, but they rarely get the results we want.

Because small businesses have to do most or all of our marketing ourselves, we also tend to struggle with a feast or famine cycle: when we have lots of work, we neglect our content creation, but then when the work dries up, we suddenly have more time and urgently create a ton of content to try to catch up.

As micro business owners and solopreneurs, we desperately need a way to create better content that attracts better clients consistently. I believe the way to do that is to cultivate your thought leadership into a strong vision that you communicate in a memorable way in order to turn casual content consumers into bought-in clients and customers.

Strategic Content vs. Regular Content

SBS – How do you define “strategic content” and how does it differ from regular content creation?

Lacy – So, as I mentioned above, small business owners are overworked and under-resourced when it comes to marketing — yet they’re putting most of their energy into the wrong types of content.

Most business owners are spending a disproportionate amount of marketing time and effort on messages that will disappear quickly (and deliver little ROI). We’ve been taught, told, and conditioned to believe that the only way (or the best? way) to reach our audience and clients is via social media.

But social media requires near constant input of time, energy, and money.

They say the internet is forever, but our messages disappear in minutes or hours from the algorithmic stream of consciousness, never to be seen again, and marketing that way is EXHAUSTING.

That’s why I’m so convinced today that strategic content is a strong, evergreen marketing asset that clearly and persuasively explains who you are and what you do is valuable and VITAL for small business owners online.

Because clarity converts better than cleverness, and buy in is more valuable than an opt in, having a marketing asset that CLEARLY positions you as a thought leader and as the logical choice for your favorite customers is the fastest way to stand out in a saturated and noisy market.

Factors for Content Marketing Success

SBS – What are the top three things small businesses should consider before starting a content marketing campaign?

Lacy – What is the ROI? Really consider how much time, energy, and money you’re going to expend on creating the content for the campaign — and how much return you will see on that investment. Remember that something like an email sequence or a search engine optimized essay or video will continue to deliver traffic and leads for potentially years after you create it, while social media content is gone sometimes in minutes. Obviously, we don’t know the exact ROI before we do something, but we can make an educated guess.

What is the goal? This seems basic, but way too often I see small business owners say something like, “I’m going to start a podcast!” — but they haven’t considered why they think starting a podcast is a good choice. (For example, many people will say they want to start a podcast to get more leads for their business, when in fact, podcasts are one of the least efficient and effective ways to get leads for most businesses.)

How will I measure success? Another big mistake I see small businesses make is that they don’t track any kind of metrics around their marketing, so they just have to go with their gut to say if something was successful or not. Choose at least one hard number to track per campaign — and make sure you’re looking at the right thing. For example, if your end goal is to drive more sales, then your metric should be… sales! Not views, or engagement, or likes, or anything like that.

Aligning Content with Your Core Values

SBS – How do you help businesses align their content strategy with their core values and big ideas?

Lacy – I LOVE this question! I’m a very big proponent of ethical marketing, and I have never and will never propose a marketing tactic to a client that they are uncomfortable with. If your values don’t align with a particular tactic, there are always other ways to achieve a goal.

That said, the biggest and best way to align your content strategy with your core values and big ideas is to make sure that those values and ideas are front and center in your content! Talk about them and why they’re so important to you and your business. In my experience, lots of companies have strong opinions and ideas that they never talk about — yet those are the very things that will set them apart in a noisy industry.

Don’t worry about alienating people in your audience over your values or ideas. Small businesses don’t need to appeal to everyone, and in fact, you are almost always better off appealing to a segment of the population and letting everyone else self-select out of your audience. Concentrate on speaking to your favorite people and those who align with you. The rest will work itself out.

Why Brand Voice Matters

SBS – How important is it for small businesses to have a clear brand voice in their content marketing strategy?

Lacy – As I mentioned above, we can’t compete with bigger businesses on reach or resources, so we must use the power of our ideas and our voice to put us into our own niche — a category of one.

A brand voice is a powerful way to stand out in a crowded market. I can’t tell you how many times over the past decade I’ve had people recognize me because of my brand and my brand voice.

The more recognizable you are, the more memorable you are, the more people will talk about you, come back to you, and refer you to their friends.

Content that sounds the same as everybody else gets lost in the noise.

How to Measure Content Success

SBS – How do you measure the success of content strategies for your clients?

Lacy – The biggest metric of success is sales: did the content strategy result in more leads and sales for that business?

Beyond that, we like to measure engagement, and I often describe engagement as being on a spectrum from most passive to most engaged. On social media for example, a “view” would be the most passive end of the engagement spectrum, while a comment or a share would be at the most engaged end. For email, open rate is the most passive, and actual replies or sales would be the most engaged. Actions that indicate more engagement should be weighted more heavily.

In practice I often recommend that my clients use a very simple five-star rating system. I encourage them to list their content pieces in a simple spreadsheet or database, and then once a week go back and mark each one with between 1–5 stars. It’s not necessarily a scientific process, but I generally say a five-star piece of content would be one that got at least one sales inquiry or made a sale.

When you get into that habit, you can start to see patterns in what types of content get the best engagement from your audience, and start to do more of that.

Content Marketing Myths

SBS – What are some common misconceptions about content marketing for small businesses?

Lacy – I’d say that the biggest misconception is that more is better. More content, more channels, etc. That’s very rarely the case for small businesses. I usually recommend that a small business commit to just one or two channels and do those well — and one of those should be a channel they “own” like email or a website. (Videos on YouTube and podcasts are a grey area.)

Instead of trying to be everywhere, find ONE content marketing channel you enjoy and can commit to, and then do it very well. As you grow, you can add more, but trying to do more at the micro business or solopreneur stage will just burn you out or take your attention away from more important things.

Best Content Formats for Engagement

SBS – What content formats do you recommend most for small businesses looking to engage their audience effectively?

Lacy – There’s no one size fits all answer. Some people like to talk, so they’ll do better with podcasts or videos. Others prefer to write, so they’ll do better with blogs and emails. The trick is to find the center of the Venn diagram between what you like to do and what your audience likes to consume.

I do suggest that every small business should have at least one piece of long-form content that can be used as a marketing asset that explains exactly who they are, what they do, and why their solution is the best for their people — because this will help position you as a thought leader and help you stand out in your market. I call this a “Value Bomb” and it can be in a written format, a video, a private podcast or even some combination of media.

Tailoring Content by Industry

SBS – How do you tailor your strategies for businesses in different industries?

Lacy – I’ve always considered myself and my agency “industry agnostic,” because we work with all different industries, but the main difference is in asking: who are your ideal clients, where are they hanging out, and how do they like to consume content?

But even this might look different for two different businesses in the same industry. One business looking to reach busy moms might decide that short podcasts are the way to go because she can listen while doing the dishes or picking up kids in the car. However, another business that serves busy moms might find that long, in-depth emails work just as well because she can read them on her phone while rocking the kids to sleep at night.

It’s all about finding the right fit for the business and the customers.

SEO vs. Authentic Content

SBS – How do you ensure that your clients’ content is optimized for search engines and algorithms while still being authentic?

Lacy – I have very strong opinions about “writing for SEO” — the biggest being that it’s often not as helpful as you think it will be! The same is true for trying to game an algorithm on social media; as soon as you figure out the rules, they change the game.

My approach is that you should always write for humans first; then you can optimize things like keyword placement for the search engines. But the goal always has to be to solve a problem for a human first and foremost.

I’ll give you an example: While I worked as a CMO, one of the companies I worked for had a contract with an SEO company to help them improve their rankings. The SEO company churned out a long list of articles for us to write, but a lot of these articles were aimed at clients, industries, and questions that my client didn’t even serve. Why would we want to rank for an article answering a question for people who weren’t our customers? I never got a clear answer from the SEO company.

That’s because SEO companies often serve just one metric: search traffic. If they improve how many visitors you get to your website, they call that a win. But if it’s the wrong people, no amount of visitors will improve your sales.

That’s why it’s so vital that we consider the end goal, write for humans first, and worry more about quality of traffic than quantity of traffic.

In a nuts and bolts answer to your question: We work with Love At First Search with our clients to ensure they are creating content that’s both search engine friendly and beneficial to their business and their customers.

Future of Content Marketing

SBS – In your opinion, what is the future of content marketing for small businesses (especially with AI)?

Lacy – I have a love/hate relationship with AI. Obviously, it changed the very nature of my business and nearly put us out of business. I also have a lot of ethical problems with stealing content without consent to train the models, and the environmental impacts of AI that we’ve only begun to understand.

Of course, AI also democratizes things in interesting ways. I think it’s a useful tool for brainstorming and iterating ideas quickly, though I would never suggest letting it do your content creation for you.

All that said, I think the main opportunity that will arise from the introduction of AI in content marketing is that thought leaders will be able to stand out even more than before. If your competitors are all talking about the same things, in the same “AI voice,” then your unique ideas, hot takes, and brand voice will stand out even more than before. That’s a boon for those of us willing to put in the work.

Top Content Tip for Small Businesses

SBS – What is one piece of content marketing advice you would give to every small business owner, no matter their industry?

Lacy – Own your big ideas. Don’t be afraid to differentiate yourself in your content by taking a bold stance, disagreeing with the status quo, or making your audience really think. The right people will find you and love you for it.