Zero Click Marketing

What makes a book worth reading, remembering, and recommending?

Ben Putano, founder and CEO of Damn Gravity (and Rand’s and my publisher!), explains why books might be one of the most powerful marketing tools in a zero-click world.

We get into why great books need one memorable idea, how to engineer word of mouth, why romance authors might be better at positioning than business authors, and how to market a book by starting with your biggest fans instead of chasing the broadest possible audience.

...

I tossed out the idea that “today GEO is CRO,” and it gave Ross Hudgens actual goosebumps, because he’d just written about the same thing. Ross argues that if you can convince a user to buy, you can convince an LLM to recommend you. 

Ross is the founder of Siege Media and author of Generative Engine Optimization, and we talked about what actually drives AI visibility. We discuss his research on more than 100 B2B websites, why comparison pages are associated with more AI referral traffic, and the limitations of AI attribution.

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Rand Fishkin (my co-author!)  is back on the show for a special episode about our new book, Zero Click Marketing.

We talk about what surprised us while recording the audiobook, and some of the Zero Click Marketing ideas that marketers have pushed back on the most.

We get especially fired up about attribution and post-purchase surveys and taking stronger positions in your content. Plus, learn how an expert like Rand is learning an entirely new kind of marketing as he builds his gaming company, Snack Bar Studios.

Marketing keeps changing. But good marketing? Not so much.

Sarah Stockdale, founder and CEO of Growclass, joins me to talk about what still matters as algorithms, AI, attribution, and the platforms change. We talk about what still wins, and one crucial skill you still need today.

In this episode:

00:00 Why good marketing was never supposed to be easy

03:30 The fundamentals that still matter

07:15 Why changing user behavior is so hard

15:39 What “direct traffic” is hiding

16:15 When your marketing data is t...

Josh Ho, founder and CEO of ReferralRock, and I chit chat about marketing challenges and opportunities as of late. My fave part of this episode is when Josh explains how ReferralRock turns its existing customer conversations into an always-on source of audience research — using real customer language and anecdotes to shape strategy. (This happens about 15 minutes in!)

We also get into why marketers need both audience data and anecdotes, what AI changes about qualitative research, and how the smallest, weirdest details can sometimes become the most memorable parts of a brand.

Wil Reynolds joins me to chop it up over what AI is changing — and what it’s revealing — about marketing, expertise, and trust. We talk about using AI without losing your voice, why accountability may matter more than “taste,” and how AI search is making it harder for brands to simply optimize their way into credibility. Wil also explains why he’d rather measure human trust than algorithmic visibility, how an intern exposed gaps in his own 25+ years of SEO experience, and why this moment in AI has rekindled the way he wants to build Seer Interactive.

Ch...

Wistia CEO Chris Savage joins me to talk about how marketing has evolved in recent years, especially now as attribution keeps getting harder. We also dig into building sustainable content programs, finding opportunities in saturated channels, making the case for creative risks, and why some of the ideas that are hardest to green-light are actually the most valuable.

Timestamps

00:00 — Why the hardest ideas end up being the most valuable

01:31 — Wistia’s sustainable approach building its podcast

06:38 — Let the audience choose the format

10:19 — Marketing in a zero-click world

As AI makes it easier to produce more content, podcasting offers something increasingly valuable: unmistakable evidence of a real person behind those ideas. Erica Bonser, co-founder of Fan Club, joins me to talk about what success should actually look like for a new show, and how marketers can turn a podcast into a sustainable engine — without expecting immediate business results.

Chapters

00:00 — Why podcasting feels distinctly human in the AI era

00:41 — What fitness brands teach us about identity and marketing

09:53 — Starting a podcast makes you a better communicator

11:34...

It’s never been easier to create content — which means simply making content isn’t much of an advantage anymore. Today, I talk about what AI changes about the creator economy, why credibility is becoming more valuable as content gets cheaper, and how marketers should evaluate creator partnerships beyond clicks and impressions. 

Chapters

00:00 — It has never been easier to create mediocre content

00:45 — How the creator economy has grown up

02:14 — As content gets cheaper, credibility gets more valuable

03:15 — Why creator marketing *is* Zero Click Marketing

04:08 — The prerequisite...

What happens when your marketing is clearly doing something — but attribution can’t tell you exactly what? In this conversation with Wistia’s Talking Too Loud, we dig into zero click marketing, branded search, word of mouth, recall, and the growing gap between what marketers can measure and what actually influences people. It’s a conversation about learning to work with evidence instead of expecting perfect proof — and it feels even more relevant now than when we recorded it.

This episode was originally published on Talking Too Loud, Wistia's podcast about the brands, products, and market...

This is me reacting in real time to news from Promptwatch and Petra Labs that Reddit just lost about 80% of citations in ChatGPT. TL;DR: chasing platform behavior is not a good strategy.

Other sources:

Timestamps:
00:00 Reddit citations fell off a cliff. So what?
00:59 Your strategy shouldn’t depend on one platform
01:54 If your audience uses Reddit, Reddit still matters
03:10 ChatGPT citation behavior is wildly unstable
04:26 The boring winner: brand-owned websites
05:32 Build useful homes across the internet
06:36 AI visibility is a benefit of good ma...

LinkedIn’s feed has changed since I first published this episode — but the core idea holds up: the platform is trying to understand what you talk about, who should care, and what deserves distribution. In this refreshed Field Note, I revisit LinkedIn’s retrieval-and-ranking system, clarify what topical consistency actually means, touch on the new “Seems like AI slop” reporting feature, and explain why the best LinkedIn strategy still looks a lot like behaving normally at a party.

Timestamps

00:00 — What’s changed since the original episode

01:05 — Retrieval vs. ranking: the...

AI is new, yet somehow it’s already exhausting. Marketers are under constant pressure to adopt more tools, track more things, rethink their strategies, figure out AI visibility, and generally become smarter about a technology that keeps changing underneath them.

So this week, we’re resurfacing a conversation with my co-author Rand Fishkin because it feels even more useful now than when we recorded it.

We talk about how to make smart marketing bets when perfect attribution is impossible, what AI visibility can and can’t actually tell you, why “r...

Marketers know how to distribute content. But getting a post, podcast, or report in front of people doesn’t guarantee that its central idea will stick.

Today, we dive into the difference between content performance and idea portability — and I offer five qualities that help an idea travel beyond its original container: immediate usefulness, a memorable handle, and oh… guess you’ll have to listen to find out the rest. 

Timestamps

00:00 — Moving content vs. making ideas portable

02:07 — How the Paul Rudd example traveled

03:18 — Make it useful...

The zero click internet sounds like marketing jargon, but the idea is simple: platforms increasingly give people answers without sending them to the original source. Citing my recent NPR appearance and using Paul Rudd as the leading example, I explain the zero click web… for your mom. Well, for my mom. Both, really. I also break down why the shift is convenient for users, difficult for publishers, and impossible for marketers to ignore.

In this episode:

00:00 — Zero-click marketing for the normies

01:09 — Paul Rudd and the zero click internet

02:41 — The brok...

Good marketing is not about doing more. I explain why every channel creates an ongoing obligation, how opportunity cost shapes modern marketing, and the three filters to decide what deserves time, energy, and attention.

Timestamps

00:00 — Why doing more is not the answer

01:39 — What should you stop doing?

02:04 — Marketing channels are recurring obligations

02:56 — How maintenance overwhelms strategy

03:21 — The question to ask before saying yes

05:13 — When metrics should change your plans

06:47 — What can you stop feeling guilty about?

07:11 — You do not have to show...

This is what marketing looks like when perfect attribution isn't possible — and why that may actually be freeing. I chat with Rachel Elsts Downey, founder of Share Your Genius, to discuss podcasting as a business strategy, measuring what actually matters, choosing marketing channels intentionally, and why trust compounds faster than dashboards.

Timestamps

00:00 Why podcast partnerships created six-figure pipelines

03:31 Why podcasting worked faster than traditional lead generation

04:10 Is launching a podcast easier today than 10 years ago?

08:46 How Share Your Genius measures marketing success

10:05 The question ev...

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 explains “ghost citations,” how AI systems seem to read content, and why customer research is becoming newly essential.

Links to some of Kevin’s recent research:
The F...

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
03:00 Why the traffic often shows up as branded search, not AI referral traffic
04:45 Branded search as a “receipt” for upstream marketing
06:00 Why AI may not create demand, but move or nurture it
07:3...

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:

00:00 — Why AI visibility is becoming an executive question
01:34 — AI visibility as a mirror
03:15 — Testing HubSpot’s AEO Grader with SparkToro as an example
05:04 — What a mes...

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 commodity content has such a short shelf life, and what it really means to matter more instead of simply marketing more.

Timestamps
00...

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:

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 experts are such a powerful source of original content

03:06 — How Kaleigh started learning AI tools and GEO/AEO hands-on

05:46 — The “source signal stack” and how LLMs evaluate content

09:40 — Th...

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 shares a case study on how her team helped one company increase free trials by 54% through emotionally resonant comparison pages.

Ti...

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 into richer workflows for capture, enrichment, automation, and reporting.

Timestamps:
00:00 — The best-of-breed era is ending
01:00 — How we got from monoliths to unbundled SaaS stacks

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 form, it's not shaping your public record.

The better question isn’t “should we gate this?” It’s: what should be freely available so buyers can understand, trust, remem...

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, credibility, and public evidence — and show why good AI visibility still starts with good marketing.

Timestamps

00:00 Why AI search is changing SEO

01:35 What GEO actual...

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 (@amandanat): LinkedIn | Substack | Instagram | Threads

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 than one job. In a zero-click world, the easiest metric to report is not always the one that matters most.

Timestamps

00:00 Why marketers optimize for what’s easiest to measure

01...

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-replace value is getting stronger. I break down what winning websites actually have in common, why relevance now beats comprehensiveness, and how to rethink your content strategy for a...

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 marketing — plus a few practical ways to get started without spending much money or time. This episode is an expansion of my blog post, “Best Practices Are Meaningless Without Audience Research.”

Timestamps:

00:00 H...

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, and track whether the public story around your brand is getting stronger over time. It’s a practical episode about reputation, visibility, and what marketers can still influence in a world of fragmented d...

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 understand lift: are more people searching for you, remembering you, mentioning you, and showing up ready to buy? If you confuse the two, you’ll keep overvaluing what’s easiest to credit and undere...

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:

If you want a more...

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 attention.

New here? Start with Episode 2: What Zero Click Marketing Actually Is

Join us next week — I’ll break down why marketers overvalue what’s easi...

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. Brendan shares how he thinks about buyer journeys, self-reported attribution, becoming your audience’s favorite, and the simplest way to start measuring zero-click impact today.

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 you understand where ZCM happens, you can create content that builds trust, recognition, and demand — even when you can’t track the click.

I also share three real-world examples of Zero Click...

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 on AI, data science, and marketing. And download his report and read it yourself! :)

IMO, some of the best pages to read in the 150-page report:

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:

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:

Timestamps:
00:00 Zero-click isn’t anti-click. It’s pro-reality.
01:20 The definition (and why it’s not “no clicks”)
03:10 What ZCM is not...