Zero Click Marketing

I chat with my buddy Kevin Indig about what he’s learning in his AI research, along with generative engine optimization, and user behavior in tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode. Kevin explains why clicks are disappearing, why citations may matter less than brand mentions, and why trust is becoming one of the most important assets a brand can build in the AI era. He also exp...

In this Field Notes episode, Amanda looks at new research from Similarweb on the downstream impact of AI visibility, plus Seer Interactive’s argument that AI visibility isn’t just an SEO issue — it also affects paid media, brand, and attribution. Timestamps 00:00 Why AI visibility is creating a new attribution problem 01:30 What Similarweb found: AI-recommended brands saw more downstream visits 03...

When AI puts your brand in the wrong category or compares you to the wrong competitors, it's tempting to dismiss it as a hallucination. But what if AI's mistakes reveal something about how the market understands you? I suggest why AI visibility isn't merely a score. It's a mirror. This episode pairs nicely with my May episode, " GEO Is What Happens When Search Becomes Zero Click ." :) Timestamps:...

What if the best marketing doesn’t drive a click at all — but makes people seek you out? I chat with Jay Acunzo about why public speaking might be the ultimate form of zero click marketing, how to build ideas that actually matter to your audience, and why resonance beats reach when you’re trying to create work people remember. Jay breaks down how to build stronger arguments for your ideas, why com...

Breaking news! Rand Fishkin/SparkToro published a new zero-click search study. In the first four months of 2026, a whopping 68% of Google searches ended without a click. I sound off on this finding, the trajectory of the zero-click phenomenon, and a durable strategy to help you win. Sources: My blog post, which expounds on this episode: The Click Is Now Optional. Here’s What Isn’t. Rand Fishkin/Sp...

I chat with writer and strategist Kaleigh Moore about how content teams can adapt to AI search without sacrificing quality.  Kaleigh shares her “source signal stack” framework, explains why third-party validation matters, and makes the case for treating LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, newsletters, and employee-led content as part of one larger visibility ecosystem. Timestamps 00:00 — Why employee exper...

B2B buyers like to pretend decisions are purely rational. But when your job, reputation, budget, and team trust are on the line? That’s emotional as hell. I sat down with Talia Wolf , founder of GetUplift and author of Emotional Targeting, to dig into customer research, pricing transparency, AI search, and how emotional targeting helps marketers create messaging that actually resonates. Talia also...

The best-of-breed marketing stack made sense when traffic was cheap. But in a zero-click world, every lead is harder to earn — and every tool handoff is another place for that lead to die. In this episode, I make the case for rethinking bloated marketing stacks, explain why small teams may need fewer tools instead of "the best" tool for every job, and share how Typeform’s Growth Flow turns forms i...

Here's my new rule for demand generation: Ungate the argument. Gate the utility. Ungate the point of view — and ungate the template, tool, deeper cuts, or genuinely useful live experience. Buyers now have more ways to get answers without entering your funnel: AI search, Reddit, YouTube, private communities, and competitors’ ungated posts. And if your best educational content is locked behind a for...

AI search is changing SEO, but not because SEO is dead. It’s changing because search is becoming more zero-click. In this episode, I explain GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — and why it’s less about chasing AI hacks and more about making your content easier to retrieve, understand, cite, trust, and remember. I break down four practical mechanics of GEO: retrievability, extractability, credibi...

Zero Click Marketing: How to Build Brands and Earn Customers on a Traffic-Starved Web is officially available for pre-order. YOU HEARD RIGHT, CUTIES! I announce my and Rand Fishkin's upcoming book, explain why pre-orders matter, and tell you how to claim the pre-order bonuses. Pre-order the book at zeroclickmarketing.co/book . Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co Connect with Amanda Natividad (@amand...

Marketers say they want good strategy. Then they optimize for whatever’s easiest to measure. This episode is about why easy-to-see metrics like traffic, likes, attributed pipeline, and rankings can create false confidence. Instead, better measurement can look like this: off-platform sharing, stronger sales conversations, customer education, adoption of your language, and content that does more tha...

For years, marketers were told to create the ultimate guide: one page that covers everything on a topic. That advice worked when the goal was to rank, earn the click, and keep people on your site. But that era is coming to an end. In this episode, I walk through new research on Google and ChatGPT that points in the same direction: broad, catch-all content is getting weaker, while focused, hard-to-...

Best practices can help you avoid obvious mistakes — but they can also make your marketing forgettable. In this episode, I explain why the real problem isn’t best practices themselves, but using them without personalization, taste, or audience insight. Drawing on my experience at Fitbit, I’ll show you how audience research leads to stronger content, smarter channel choices, and more compelling mar...

Before someone clicks your website, they may already have formed an opinion about your brand from the public record — snippets, Reddit threads, reviews, and AI answers. So today, I’m sharing a 7-step playbook for shaping your brand’s public record. I’ll help you audit what’s visible, identify weak claims versus strong facts, publish more credible proof, make that proof easier to retrieve and cite,...

A lot of marketers say they want better measurement. Usually, what they really want is cleaner attribution. In this episode, I argue that those are two different jobs. Attribution tends to reward the channel that captured demand once the buyer was already in motion. SparkToro's latest research proves that influence happens everywhere. So what we really need is better measurement — to help us under...

Today I'm sharing my notes on recent news/research in the worlds of AI and Google Search.  I'm breaking down 3 key pieces: Ross Simmonds of Foundation Inc shows how Reddit influences buyer discovery earlier than many marketers realize.  Cyrus Shepard of Zyppy Signal argues that clicks still matter — not as a vanity metric, but as a signal of relevance and satisfaction.  Wil Reynolds of Seer Intera...

A lot of marketers confuse polished with effective. Or they confuse consistency with substance. But neither one guarantees the work is actually good. In this episode, I make the case for a higher bar: usefulness. In a zero-click world, your content has to stand on its own. So before you worry about making it prettier or posting more often, ask whether the idea is actually strong enough to deserve...

My buddy Brendan Hufford drops by! We talk about his journey from old-school SEO to zero-click marketing. We cover the early days of SEO, the content habits that helped him build a reputation, and why he stopped trying to win by playing the obvious game. We also get into why zero-click marketing works, why it was happening long before it had a name, and why attribution gets messy fast in B2B. Bren...

Once you understand the concept of Zero Click Marketing, the next question is obvious: Where should you actually be doing this? In this episode, I break down the four environments where Zero Click Marketing thrives — the places on the internet where influence happens before someone ever clicks a link. From social feeds to AI answers, these platforms reward content that delivers value natively. If...

ZCM Field Notes are short reactions to news or observations of what’s happening in the field. Today, we're talking about the LinkedIn algorithm — because Christopher S. Penn just published an unofficial guide on how LinkedIn's algorithm works right now — and I have some quick notes and a "party" analogy I want to share. Subscribe to Christopher's Almost Timely newsletter on Substack for lots more...

You know the zero click problem is real. But how do you get your CEO or CMO on board — and how do you prove it's working once they are? In this episode, I chat with Rand Fishkin to talk measurement frameworks, his new AI visibility research , and why correlation (not causation) is the name of the game. Guest: Rand Fishkin, Co-founder and CEO of SparkToro Key takeaway: Zero Click Marketing is not a...

I (Amanda Natividad) define Zero Click Marketing, share a simple mental model (the ZCM Ladder), and give you a mini playbook you can use this week. What you’ll learn: What Zero Click Marketing is (and what it isn’t) The ZCM Ladder: Seen → Understood → Remembered → Preferred → Sought out The scoreboard: what to measure when clicks aren’t the whole story 3 moves to start doing ZCM this week (without...

If clicks are your primary success metric, you're probably undercounting what's working — and over-rewarding what isn't. In the debut episode of Zero Click Marketing, I (Amanda Natividad) make the case that the click-based funnel isn't just outdated, it's actively misleading. And the cost isn't just bad measurement — it's bad decisions. In this episode: Why the click-based funnel made sense for a...