There was a time when pitching yourself as a "one-person marketing team" was classic code for over promising and under delivering. Not anymore. Welcome to the age of the Claygency, where solo operators and lean teams move faster, smarter and more cost-effectively than traditional ones could ever dare dream...
It’s more than just a mildy amusing portmanteau. A Claygency is a marketing model that fuses AI tools, automation and systems thinking to help a solo marketer or a small team perform at the level (or beyond) of a traditional multi-person department.
Inspired by tools like Clay—hence the name—the Claygency is not just a tech stack, but a shift in mindset. It’s about being lean without being lacking, autonomous without being isolated, and agentic without being chaotic. It’s properly becoming a new default for agile growth.
Let’s break it down. A typical Claygency stack might include:
The key point is that tech is modular, but the orchestration of the tech makes it sing. The best Claygencies aren’t tools just stitched together. Instead, they’re strategies built on intent and precision.
We’re in an era of budget cuts, leaner teams and mounting pressure to deliver more for less. The Claygency concept thrives in this environment.
And it’s not just about speed or cost—it’s about clarity and control. Yes, AI and automation reduce grunt work, but they also allow small teams to test, pivot and personalise faster than legacy teams with unclear handoffs or misaligned KPIs.
In 2025, most marketing teams won’t get beaten by better-funded competitors. They’ll get beaten by sharper, nimbler ones using smarter systems.
The Claygency model isn't a licence to automate everything. It’s a discipline. And it works best when you pair it with a high-quality, differentiated content strategy.
So it’s not for people who want to switch off and let tools do the thinking. It’s for people who want to go further, faster without losing the human layer that makes strategy sing, content meaningful and a real connection count for something.
So what about your team? The Claygency mindset might start with solo operators, but it scales beautifully to any small or scaling group marketing function. These five moves aren’t radical, but they take the best of the Claygency vibe and you can use them right away.
As more businesses embrace AI workflows, the value of what you say and why you say it will start to become even more important. You'll need partners who understand how to wield the tools. You'll also need people who know how to ask the right questions and shape narratives that actually land.
So what’s the smartest next move?
Start small. Run a one-week sprint to Claygency-fy your content process. Map your current tools. Identify your content bottleneck. Test one new automation or repurposing technique. Notice what works and then double down.