When Marketing Feels Gross: How to Use Cornerstone Blog Content to Market Your Small Business Ethically

“I know I need to make sales, but marketing feels like selling out!” 

Sound familiar? 

Ethical business owners, service providers, creative professionals, and people who run heart-led or values-driven businesses say this kind of thing to me all. the. time.  And you know what? I get it. I’ve been where you are. 

Fun fact: I’ve had my own business for over six years at the time of writing this post, and until less than a year ago I would have said I hated marketing. 

When I thought of marketing, I thought of the sleaziest tactics imaginable: high-pressure car salesmen or false scarcity (“ONLY 10 LEFT!” when you know damn well there’s a warehouse full). That salesperson whose number I had to block because they would. not. leave. me. alone (even though their product was completely wrong for me!) Products designed exclusively to solve problems that never existed until some advertising executive decided it would be more profitable if they did. 

The irony, of course, is that I’ve been assisting my clients with their marketing the entire time I’ve been working as a copywriter, and I never felt gross about that. But connecting it to my own business somehow didn’t compute. 

Then my business started struggling (thanks, AI!) I realised that relying on my long-term clients (much as I love them) and referrals alone was no longer serving me. It was time to have a stern word with myself and get over my hang-ups around marketing. 

The reality is that businesses, entrepreneurs, and service providers need to attract clients and make sales to stay afloat. But for many of us, underhanded or spammy marketing tactics can feel at odds with our ethics and vision. 

This is the success vs. soul dilemma. 

It can feel like a no-win situation. 

For many of the business owners and providers I’ve spoken to, this manifests in one of three ways: 

1. They rarely or never do any marketing at all. At best, this leaves them vulnerable, as they’re relying 100% on referrals or people somehow finding them organically to build their pipeline. At worst, it totally tanks their business.
   
2. They market their products or services in the ways they think they’re supposed to, but they feel yucky about it. They feel like a sellout or like they’re not living in accordance with their values. This makes them fall out of love with their business or vocation.
   
3. They market, but it’s so tentative, halfhearted, or inconsistent that it doesn’t get them any results (i.e. clients or sales.) 

We’ve all seen marketing at its most predatory and unethical. As a result, a lot of people believe–tacitly or explicitly–that as soon as they start actively promoting their products or services, they’re a sellout. 

But what if you could have success AND soul? 

What if you could make sales and get clients without feeling like you’ve sacrificed your values? 

What if you could stand proudly in your beliefs AND make money? 

You can. 

I’m going to show you how to use your blog to share authentic, heartfelt, genuinely helpful content that gets you real results without spamming or hard-selling, without feeling gross about it, and without sacrificing the values that are at the heart of your business or service.

Ready to learn how? Read on. 

Understanding Content Marketing: A Strategy and a Reframe 

The answer to the success vs. soul dilemma is actually pretty straightforward (not always easy to implement, but simple in principle.) 

The answer is ethical content marketing.

First, What is Content Marketing and Why Does It Work? 

Content marketing is a pretty broad term, but also a largely self-explanatory one. 

It involves using content to attract customers to your business or organisation, build a relationship with them, encourage them to buy, and keep them returning again and again. Content can take many forms and appear in many formats. Most businesses will use several types of content. 

If you’ve ever done any of the following to grow your business or attract customers, you have engaged in content marketing:

• Blog posts
• Social media content
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• E-books
• Whitepapers
• Downloadable resources
• Email newsletters
• Print newsletters or magazines
• …and more!

Good content is informative, educational, and engaging. It builds trust and it enhances the connection between business and audience. Every piece you put out should teach, entertain, or both.

The beauty of content marketing is that it’s infinitely flexible and scalable. It works for the world’s biggest brands, and it works for tiny one-person operations (like me, hello!) 

Whether you love writing but the idea of appearing on video makes you want to run and hide, or you’re a whizz at LinkedIn but hate TikTok, you can choose the content marketing channels that align with your strengths and business goals. It can be adapted for different industries, different campaigns, and different stages of the customer journey.

Why Content Marketing is Amazing for Ethical Businesses and Service Providers 

Content marketing is ideal for ethical businesses and values-led service providers because it allows you to:

• Share what matters to you, putting your values front and centre 
• Show how you live your values beyond lip-service 
• Connect with those who share your values 
• Build a relationship based on trust rather than a quick sale 
• Start making people’s lives better long before they buy from you
• Get away from the trend cycle and create messaging that sticks 

When you start producing genuinely helpful content, it’s easy to start reframing marketing in your mind. 

You’re not being annoying. You’re not spamming people. Instead, you’re connecting with those who really want or need what you’re offering, and you’re doing it by helping them out with no strings attached. 

This mindset shift completely altered not only how I feel about my own marketing, but how I show up and write for my clients. 

It’s why I ultimately created my cornerstone content package offer, in which I build you a foundational blog of longform, evergreen posts on which every aspect of your ongoing content marketing efforts can rest. 

Cornerstone content refers to the most important, in-depth, and authoritative material on your site. It tends to be evergreen (i.e. relevant for a long period of time), longform (i.e. at least 1500 words, often much longer), and—crucially—built around a subject that’s highly relevant to your ideal customers.

The Anatomy of a Piece of Ethical Longform Marketing Content 

I believe that longform cornerstone content posted on your blog is the best foundation for your content marketing strategy because: 

1. It is a platform you own (so you’re not at the mercy of social media platforms’ rules and algorithms) 
2. It provides you with material you can use again and again in social media campaigns, email marketing, and more 
3. Quality blog content builds domain authority over time, showing search engines that your site is a trusted resource and improving your search performance 
4. Others might link out to your content, helping you to build valuable backlinks and grow your audience 
5. Long, detailed articles allow you to show your prospective clients what you know and what you can do for them 

However, while this post is written from the perspective of talking about longform cornerstone blog content, because that’s what I create for my clients and advocate for as a starting point, you can apply this framework to your social media posts, email marketing, and even workshops or presentations. 

It’s a philosophy, not a rigid playbook. 

Let’s get into what a piece of ethical longform marketing content looks like. These are the five principles I follow when I’m writing cornerstone blog content for my clients and, if you’re creating your own blog content for your business, I invite you to implement them too. 

Lead With Your Values 

If you’re an ethical business owner, creator, or service provider, you probably started your business because you care deeply about what you do and want to help people. 

Your cornerstone blog content is the place to highlight these values and show how you’re living them. 

Values-driven content focuses not only on what makes your products or services great and how they benefit customers, but on what your brand does to make a positive difference in the world in a wider sense. 

Do you give a portion of proceeds to a relevant charity, run a zero-waste production facility, or offer opportunities for people looking to break into your industry? Whatever it is, write about it! Say what you’re doing and talk about why it matters. 

This isn’t performative or inauthentic. It’s the show-don’t-tell principle in action for your values.

When clients work with me on a cornerstone content marketing package, I start with values. It’s one of the first things we’ll talk about, and I’ll help you drill down into:

1. What matters to you
2. Why you do what you do 
3. Where your values intersect with what your ideal audience most needs from you 
4. How we can transform these core values and practices into evergreen content that will sell your products or services to those who need them for years to come. 

Then, once I’ve written it all up for you, I will also show you how to use it to get clients or sales without feeling icky about it. 

Be Honest and Transparent 

Exaggerating, over-promising, or outright lying are some of the (sadly far too common) marketing tricks that have led many people to feel uneasy about marketing in general. 

If your product or service is good, you don’t need to do any of this. And if it isn’t good, you shouldn’t be selling it in the first place.

Instead, focus on producing blog content that is honest and transparent. 

Tell the truth about what you do and why you do it that way. Talk about the positive impact of your product or service without exaggerating. Use real case studies, reviews, and testimonials. 

For businesses selling physical products, consider sharing information on your production processes, the materials you use, and how you deal with waste. When you make a mistake, take responsibility and communicate clearly with your customers about what went wrong and how you’re ensuring it doesn’t happen again.

If you feel like you have something to hide from your customers, ask yourself why.

This next part is going to feel uncomfortable, but stick with me: you can, and probably should, talk about who your product or service is not for as well as who it is for. Putting off the wrong people is as important as attracting the right people.  

No, your ideal customer is not “everyone” and your offer, however amazing, will be completely wrong for some people. Sorry! 

But this is actually a good thing. Speaking honestly about the cons or drawbacks, as well as the pros or benefits, helps customers make a more informed buying choice and creates a smoother ongoing relationship built on radical trust and transparency. 

Here’s a real example: 

My longform cornerstone content packages are ideal for people who want to get long-term results and are willing to put the work in to achieve this. They’re not suitable for people who want a “set it and forget it” marketing strategy. 

Be a Human

Generative AI plays a direct role in human rights abuses, particularly in the global south. It’s destroying the environment. It steals from creative professionals, using our labour without compensation or consent. In the four years it’s been available to the general public, it has caused scientifically-significant cognitive decline. 

If this information shocks you, it’s because the AI lobby is powerful and well-resourced. The billionaires behind this dangerous technology have a vested interest in keeping people uninformed. 

But once we know, we can make the shift. That’s why I won’t stop speaking up about this and why gen-AI has no place in my work or life, ever. 

(And, to get a bit meta for a second, this is me practicing what I preach in the section above: putting my values front and centre and showing how they inform the ways I do business.) 

Using gen-AI to create your content is also a bad marketing decision, by the way. 

Yes, most consumers can tell you used AI. And yes, many of them really do care, especially those who want to work with values-led businesses. 

Any gains you make in terms of time and efficiency (which are also negligible if you’re bothering to edit your AI content into anything remotely readable) will be more than overshadowed by a loss of trust and credibility.

Your content doesn’t need to be perfect, especially when you’re just starting out, but it does need to be real. 

So step away from ChatGPT and create something in your own voice (or hire a human professional to do it for you!) 

Focus on Solutions, Not Insecurities 

A good product or service solves a problem, meets a need, or satisfies a desire that customers or clients actually have. 

It does not manufacture a problem, create a fear, or convince people they need something by playing on their insecurities.

The mainstream diet and beauty industries are perhaps the biggest offenders here, but they’re far from the only ones. Ethical marketing efforts should never rely on convincing customers there’s something wrong with them that you can correct. 

Instead, good ethical content marketing uplifts people, values their autonomy and individuality, and offers solutions to their challenges without shaming them.

When you write blog content about how your products or services can help people, remember that the message is more “how can this make your life even more awesome?” rather than “you’re broken and we can fix it.” 

Be Inclusive 

Who does your business serve? 

Presumably, as someone running an ethical or values-led business, you care about diversity and inclusion. However, many brands fall at this hurdle simply by not thinking about it. Others don’t realise the message their marketing is inadvertently sending.

Ethical content marketing considers representation beyond the superficial and tokenistic. In ethical content marketing, inclusion is built in, not used as a tick-box exercise.

If you default to referring to your prospective customers or people in a particular role as “he”, women will probably assume your business is not for them. 

If your holiday content only ever focuses on Christian traditions such as Christmas and Easter, people of other religions and cultures may feel excluded. 

If you change your wedding services business logo to a rainbow in June but completely ignore LGBTQ+ couples in all your blog content, those couples will likely go elsewhere. 

And so on.

So What Should You Actually Write About? 

“Okay, I love this framework, but… what should I actually write about!?” 

Now we’re getting to the fun part. That is, the part where you get to figure out what matters most to your customers and give them the advice, insights, and information they need. 

In this section, I’ll share four types of evergreen cornerstone content that my clients tend to do well with. 

Not all of them will be applicable to all business types, but you’ll probably be able to adapt most of them to your needs if you get a little creative. 

In-Depth Guides and Informative Articles

Guides, instructionals, and informative articles teach your prospective clients something. It could be almost anything. 

This type of content is one of the best ways you can provide no-strings-attached value to your audience. 

“But Jess, if I give them information for free, they’ll never hire me!” 

This is a reasonable fear, but the opposite is actually true. 

Longform informational or instructional content shows your audience that you know what you’re talking about. (Remember that “show-don’t-tell” principle? Yeah, turns out you can take the woman out of the Creative Writing degree but you can’t… etc.) 

Almost every expert I’ve hired for business support or purchased paid content from over the years has taught me something valuable with their free offers long before I gave them any money.

Why?

Trust. 

When you solve people’s problems, answer their questions, and give them useful information that aligns with your expertise, their trust in you naturally grows. So if and when they are (or someone they know is) in the market for what you sell, guess who will be front of mind? 

You can (and should) also include a pitch for your paid products or services, offer a lead magnet to get people on your email list, or invite prospects to book a meeting with you inside your free content, by the way! Just make sure you’re also providing genuine value even if they take things no further. 

Getting meta again: this post is an example of this type of content! 

EXAMPLES: 

• An In-Depth Guide to Choosing the Right Wedding Photographer for You (for a wedding photography business) 
• 10 Questions You Must Ask a Therapist Before You Decide to Work with Them (for a therapist) 
• How to Choose the Perfect Colour Scheme for Any Room (for an interior designer or decorator) 

Case Studies

Case studies are where you showcase work you’ve done, clients you’ve served, or projects you’ve completed. 

There are two important things your case studies must be: true and specific. 

Tell your readers exactly who you helped, naming them if possible. (Always ask your clients if they’re happy to be a case study and, if so, if it’s okay to use their real name. Giving them a pseudonym to protect their privacy is fine!) 

Then tell your readers exactly how you helped. What frameworks or approaches did you use? 

A good case study is a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. 

The beginning should focus on the problem or challenge the client was having. In other words, what led them to you in the first place? The middle should explore how you approached and ultimately solved the problem. The end should show where the client is now, in contrast to where they were before working with you. 

The message here is: you too can get these kinds of results if you work with me/us! 

EXAMPLES: 

• How One Small Dietary Shift Helped Sarah Get Better Sleep and Have More Energy Every Day (for a dietician or nutrition coach) 
• Transforming an Old, Outdated Website Into a Lead-Generation Machine for a Consulting Firm (for a web design company) 
• How I Save John 10-15 Hours of Time Every Single Week (for a virtual assistant or executive services provider) 

Behind-the-Scenes

Behind-the-scenes content gives your readers a glimpse of how your business runs, from how you achieve results for clients to how you live up to your values. 

Behind-the-scenes content can be a powerful relationship-building and credibility-building strategy. 

It humanises your business, helping prospective customers or clients to feel like they know you better and trust you more. And, as we all hopefully know by now, customers buy from those they like and trust! 

This type of content can also increase customer desire for a product or service by building a sense of connection. 

As an added bonus, behind-the-scenes content can also help to demonstrate the value of what you sell by showing the care, attention, materials, knowledge, and expertise that go into creating it.

EXAMPLES: 

• Five Web Design Tools of the Trade I Can’t Live Without, and How I Use Them (for a web designer) 
• How We Use Fabric Scraps in Our Zero Waste Factory (for a sustainable clothing brand) 
• The Multi-Day Process Behind Every One of Our Custom Cakes (for a bakery) 

Bust a Myth or Address a Misconception

What does everyone get wrong about your business, job, or industry? This is the place to address it! 

Mythbusting is a specific type of educational content that can also have the benefit of proactively addressing common customer objections. Is there a belief that commonly stops people buying from you or signing as a client… which isn’t actually true? 

This type of content can perform well in search because people often use phrases such as “is it true that…” and “facts vs myths about…” in search engines. 

A post with an intriguing title can also pique readers’ curiosity and draw them in through a mechanism called a pattern interrupt. Simply put, this just means introducing a novel, unique, or surprising element–in this case, challenging someone’s beliefs or assumptions–to grab attention and invite engagement.  

A word of caution: don’t be contrary for the sake of it. Deliberately controversial or outlandish claims might work as “clickbait,” but they won’t drive the genuine interest and engagement that leads to sales. 

If you’re going to bust a myth or challenge a misconception, make sure the things you’re saying are the things you actually believe, can evidence, and will stand behind. 

EXAMPLES: 

• Veganism Needn’t Be Expensive: How Eating More Plants Can Actually Save You Money (for a vegan nutrition coach) 
• Graphic Design is About Far More Than Just Making Things “Look Pretty” (for a graphic designer) 
• I Promise You’re Not “Too Old” to Start Improving Your Fitness (for a personal trainer) 

Will Longform, Blog-Based Content Marketing Work for My Industry?

In the vast majority of cases, yes. 

Content marketing is an industry-neutral approach and can work for most types of businesses if you do it right. I deliberately designed my ethical cornerstone content marketing framework to be applicable to almost any industry or service type.

Exceptions: 

• If your business is brick-and-mortar only and relies primarily on hyper-local custom or passing trade, without any ecommerce presence, this approach may not be the right fit for you. 
• It may also not be a good fit for very low-cost, impulse-purchase consumer goods retailers. Low prices, rapid availability, and immediate desirability tend to be the biggest factors in these types of purchases.  

But if you sell mid-ticket or high-ticket physical or digital products online, or are seeking to attract and build relationships with prospective clients for a service-based business,  longform cornerstone blog-based content marketing can almost certainly work for you. 

A promise I take very seriously: I’ll tell you if you approach me to work together and I genuinely don’t think this approach can help you. I have no interest in taking your money if I don’t believe I can deliver results for you. 

How Long Will This Take to Start Working?

I’m going to write a separate post soon about how quickly you can expect to see results with cornerstone blog-based content marketing, because I have a lot to say on this subject. (Quelle surprise.)

The short and admittedly not particularly helpful answer is “it depends.” 

None of this is an exact science, and you should be very, very wary of anyone who promises you you’ll definitely have ten new clients by next month or be on the first page of Google within a week. 

It simply doesn’t work like that. (I’d be a lot richer than I am if it did!) 

Let’s get one myth out of the way: content marketing is not a quick-fix. 

It’s also not a “set-it-and-forget-it” strategy. 

It requires an investment of time and resources, both upfront and in an ongoing capacity, and is likely to involve at least some trial and error. It also requires some planning ahead and a strategic approach. 

Posting the first idea that comes to mind whenever you remember your Instagram account exists is not a content marketing strategy. Posting a link to your latest blog post on LinkedIn and then leaving it to languish in the archives is not a content marketing strategy. 

Fortunately, a lot of the variables regarding whether and how quickly this process works for you are within your control. 

You can choose to invest (time by doing it yourself, or money by having someone like me do it for you) in the process.

You can choose to take the time to really understand your customers, their needs, and their challenges, so you can create content that speaks to them. 

You can choose to continue putting yourself out there and using your content across your channels to connect with the right customers for you. 

Other factors–including the age of your business, the level of competition,  geographical regions you’re targeting (if applicable), the whims of the algorithm gods if you’re using social media, and even wider economic and market forces–are outside of your direct control. 

On average, with high quality content and a consistent posting, repurposing, and engagement strategy across your chosen platforms, most businesses start to see good results within six months and significant returns within around a year. Again, though, this is an average, not a guarantee. 

Key Takeaways 

Embracing content marketing has been transformative for thousands of businesses across the world and in all industries. I’ve seen first-hand how it can work for ethical small businesses, solo entrepreneurs, creative professionals, and service providers who are led by their beliefs and values.

I’ve thrown a huge amount of information at you in this post, so if nothing else, please remember these key messages:

1. MARKETING ISN’T GROSS! Some specific marketing tactics can be, but marketing itself is not predatory, spammy, or contrary to running a business in an ethical and responsible way. Try to reframe marketing in your head from an icky but necessary evil to a service: you’re connecting with people who can genuinely benefit from what you have to offer! 
2. Your blog is the most powerful tool in your content marketing toolbox, and longform cornerstone content can form the foundation on which all future marketing efforts rest. 
3. The five principles of my ethical content marketing framework (leading with values, being honest and transparent, using human-made content, not preying on insecurities, and being inclusive) can be adapted and applied to any type of content for any business or sector. 
4. Your business, your service, and your passion matter! But people can only benefit from all the amazing things you have to offer if you actually tell them about it. I’d love to help you do that. 

Want to Stop Hating Marketing Forever? 

The success vs. soul dilemma can feel very real, but ultimately it is a story we tell ourselves. 

Do you want to succeed without feeling like you’ve sold out? Do you want to centre your values and still get results? 

Do you just want to not hate marketing any more? 

If any of this sounds familiar and my ethical content marketing philosophy resonates, let me make it happen for you. 

If this post has made something click for you, let me build you a package of cornerstone evergreen blog content that puts your values front and centre, builds genuine connections with the people you can help, and actually gets you sales or clients. 

When you hire me to build your content marketing cornerstones, you’ll get:

✔️10-20 pieces (depending on the package you choose) of quality, high-converting, highly reusable evergreen cornerstone content for your blog.

✔️5 ideas per piece (so 50-200 altogether!) showing you how to use your cornerstone content across your content marketing strategy and sales process going forward. (Optionally, I also offer content management and repurposing retainers at competitive monthly rates!)

✔️All-human content that builds trust and credibility by reflecting your voice, your values, and the soul behind your business.

Let me take the “ick” out of your marketing forever, so you can start enjoying success and soul together.

→ Let’s talk — click here to book a discovery call!