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Zero Click Marketing is a marketing strategy podcast about content marketing, audience research, and how brands grow when clicks matter less. Hosted by Amanda Natividad, Chief Evangelist at SparkToro, the show explores how marketers reach audiences, build influence, and earn attention in a zero-click internet. New to the show? Start with Episode 2: What Zero Click Marketing Actually Is.
[00:00:00] Jay Acunzo: don't market more. Matter more."
[00:00:01] Everything gets easier. Everything you want, whether it's impact in the world or some kind of cold, hard capitalistic outcome or both, it all gets easier if what you're saying really truly matters to people. And that's real craft. There's process and structure to that.
[00:00:15] You can build ideas and words and language and content and experiences and stories and speeches to like really truly matter to other people by showing them what you probably already see.
[00:00:26] Amanda Natividad: I'm Amanda Natividad and welcome to Zero Click Marketing.
[00:00:34] Amanda Natividad: Okay. So Jay, a while back you said to me, "Public speaking is the ultimate form of zero-click marketing."
[00:00:43] Yeah, let's just start here.
[00:00:45] Say more
[00:00:46] Jay Acunzo: Well, I've, I've given speeches, professionally, meaning like I was my own independent, entrepreneur, soloist, creator, voice since 2016, sometimes for a fee, sometimes for free. And then before that, it was on behalf of companies. So I've given many, many speeches for many, many years, and not once has someone tried to click me after a speech.
[00:01:04] So I think for that reason alone, it is Zero Click. cause the click is literally impossible and/or just unwelcome. Don't go to, up to a speaker and try to click them.
[00:01:15] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, don't poke him.
[00:01:16] Jay Acunzo: No. But I was taught anyway, and it maps to my sensibilities that like if you give a speech, you shouldn't have all these complicated, clever tentacles back to your website or your offering or an email sequence or all these things.
[00:01:32] Like you are forced to stand in front of a room and deliver. Deliver discrete value, deliver something that makes people wanna rush up to you and talk to you afterwards, or other speakers go, "You know, it's like Amanda said this morning," or et cetera. Like you, especially for me as a keynote, what I learned was like, don't sell from the stage.
[00:01:50] Don't put a CTA. Like you just-- your ideas and therefore the value and originality of your thinking should compel people to take an action. You shouldn't need an overt like call to action. And I think that really gives a lot of people pause. So not only is it literally and physically the same, it's the n- it's the Zero Click, you know, joke, but also it's the spirit of it.
[00:02:16] Like your best foot forward, adding as much value as humanly possible right here in this experience and in this moment, and that should compel people to seek you out either live or online.
[00:02:26] Amanda Natividad: 100%. So I will say as this relates to a keynote talk, 100% hard agree. I don't think anyone would dispute that. But now I'm also going to say I would even argue that this should apply to any talk you do. Like even if you have a workshop or like a breakout session where it doesn't have to be like you have the big transformational idea. but I think what we're also getting at here is your zero-click idea needs to come through in whatever talk you give because your talk shouldn't just feel like, oh now, like as an attendee, it shouldn't feel like, oh now I have a to-do list and like I
[00:03:08] got to do things. It should also just feel like, oh I get it. Or
[00:03:13] like, ah that changed something in me. Or like
[00:03:16] I understand, I got, I know what to do next
[00:03:19] Jay Acunzo: There was a symptom that when I was head of content at HubSpot, something that really angered me that I failed to change at that company was, my team would write an e-book, and they would spend a lot of time and effort to write the e-book. It's one of those classic, like, creative questions.
[00:03:33] "Hey, how long did that, did that e-book take?" Or did whatever it is you're creating take to create? And it's like, well, overtly they wrote it for six hours, but it took their entire life to be able to write it in six hours because they used it, right? So that's for a philosophy conversation for another day.
[00:03:49] And I always thought that that was really disrespectful of both sides, the writer creating it and the audience receiving it. Because if the writing was really good and the ideas were really actually interesting and valuable and original, then in the pages, isn't that when their perception is the highest?
[00:04:06] Isn't that when they're like, "Oh my gosh, this company or this person, and I want more"? And isn't that when you should strike, so to speak, as a marketer? You should ask them alongside the best possible page of writing to take an action then because their perception's the highest, they're the most eager, they're the most energized.
[00:04:24] So to me, that's like what a speech should do, is like what all content I think should do, which is compel a response. You know I joke about a metric I made up in marketing, URR, unsolicited response rate.
[00:04:36] You know, it's just like, "Here's my ideas," and then you back away and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I want more." And because it's unsolicited, it is more useful, more qualified. They are better fans. They are probably better buyers, better advocates, etc. But unfortunately, that means like being genuinely really, really good at what you do.
[00:04:55] You can't fake it or game it. And it's a little bit harder, not actually impossible, but it's a little bit harder to operationalize.
[00:05:02] Amanda Natividad: It's just so funny because there was a little story I wanted to bring up, and I was gonna try to figure out how to weave it in here, but you already did that for me, which is, isn't that just really, really good content, right? Like, isn't that just a really, really good talk? Which, yes, like, I feel like I'm, I'm just gonna say this now. I'm thinking of like the, what is it? The bell curve of like the dumb-looking guy who's like, "Just make good content." And at the end, there's like the Jedi that's like, "Just make good content." And then the top, right, the top of that bell curve is the midwit that's like, "Oh, need to have H2 headers, need to do this, need to set up the lead gen funnel," when it just comes back to, but you just gotta do the thing really, really good.
[00:05:45] Jay Acunzo: Yeah. Like you've done the work, congratulations, which is necessary but insufficient of getting the idea or yourself in front of the right audience, right? You're giving the talk. They're seeing you on LinkedIn. They're reading your newsletter, listening to your podca- whatever. You're in front of them.
[00:06:00] And now it's like put up or shut up time. It-- Can you make them care? And I don't know why, but we forget as profession- allegedly professional communicators, that the whole job of communication in any form, any medium, to any size crowd for any reason at all, if you open your mouth or write words, then you have one overriding objective, which is the people receiving this stuff, I'm trying to make sure you care.
[00:06:21] 'Cause if you don't care, you don't act. If you don't act, we don't see results. And that's why I say that like for as much as we care about reach, it's actually resonance that drives results. Like resonance drives revenue.
[00:06:31] And we have forgotten how to do that.
[00:06:33] At some level it feels like a superpower and it feels kind of like h- like I'm cackling to myself in the corner like, everyone out there is giving these mediocre talks with such like clever automated calls to action, and they got the QR code and they got the email drip sequence when you, you know, go to the link from that QR code
[00:06:50] And it's like, you know what I'm gonna go do? I'm gonna go and absolutely blow the doors off this room, and I'm going to get people talking to me after, and I'm going to build relationships, and I'm going to get the sale. So like you're doing the middle part, which is like after the talk, before the sale, and I'm like, I wanna absolutely get the sale.
[00:07:09] Like isn't that the point?
[00:07:11] Amanda Natividad: Yeah.
[00:07:11] The beauty of Zero Click is it's, it's k- kind of called, it's a philosophy or a moment that is kind of calling marketers out on their own bullshit. It's like, oh, right, maybe that content wasn't good enough to market in the first place, and that's actually why it's hard to drive traffic, et cetera.
[00:07:25] Jay Acunzo: We, again, we-- the, the midwit is, is where we like, "Wow," but like, let me get real academic about like why, and I'm like, I've been saying this since 2008. You know? It's not new. It's like it's, it's I wanna build a really awesome airplane 'cause it's easier to get into the sky. Everyone else is duct taping together a bunch of spare parts and trying to yeet it as hard as they can into the sun.
[00:07:44] Not gonna work.
[00:07:46] Amanda Natividad: Not gonna work.Okay, so the story that I have was,I had a coaching session with you because you were helping me with my signature talk on zero-click content and zero-click marketing. And we had this great call where you had more questions for me around, like, in the end you were like, "Okay, you have the, like, the solution. Like, here's how you do it. Here's how to measure it or whatever." But you were like, "But what's the problem?" And I was like, "What do you mean?
[00:08:13] Like, you have to just do this thing." And you were like, "Yeah, but what's the problem?
[00:08:18] Why do people have to recognize that this is a change they need to make? What gets them there? What are they missing out on by not seeing the problem?" you said, "Well, isn't that just really, really good marketing? Isn't that just creating really, really good content?" And I was like, "Yeah, but like, it's like zero-click, and then like, you have to, like, do it, and then this way." You were like, "I agree with you. But there's still more that you need to, like, dig into the surface too." And I was like, "Oh, you're right."
[00:08:47] Jay Acunzo: Yeah. And thank God Anne Handley is writing a book about ASAP, As Slow As Possible. And it's all about, you know, when speed becomes cheap, judgment carries a premium. That, that's Anne Handley's premise, for the book and a lot of other work she does. it's so needed. You know, or you have Robert Rose wrote Valuable Friction.
[00:09:04] Like, these ideas are so needed because it's like I wanna put a gentle hand on the marketing industry and be like, "Take a breath, slow down for a second, and let's consider the fact that you haven't actually developed these ideas to matter much at all." So naturally, you're gonna market more and more and more.
[00:09:22] And I'm like, "Don't, don't market more. Matter more."
[00:09:25] Everything gets easier. Everything you want, whether it's impact in the world or some kind of cold, hard capitalistic outcome or both, it all gets easier if what you're saying really truly matters to people. And that's real craft. There's process and structure to that.
[00:09:39] It doesn't have to be this ineffable thing where like, oh my gosh, like they rolled out of bed this morning and had a genius idea. And now they're a thought leader or influential, or they're driving the sales in our space, and we're struggling. Like it's-- You can build ideas and words and language and content and experiences and stories and speeches to like really truly matter to other people by showing them what you probably already see.
[00:10:01] Like to your point about our call, you're at letter Z of your ideas. You're all the way at the end of a journey of understanding. You care about those ideas. You want others to care. You're at letter Z. Everyone else is at letter A. And mostly what we do, because we're close to it and we're at the end of it, is we say to the world effectively, "XYZ."
[00:10:19] Like really good communicators go out and meet their audience where they're at and create a narrative argument aligning with them first around what they want, what they're experiencing, agitating some kind of pain or problem to create a real urgent need to change, addressing the deeper problem that maybe they don't even see, and then solving it with some kind of distinct premise.
[00:10:38] And then they're like, "Oh my gosh, I totally see what you see. I totally get it." And the final question they ask you is, "So how do I do it?" It's that, that's at the end of their journey is how do I do it? And what do we do as marketers? We're just, "How do I do it? Here's how to do it. Here's how to do it," over and over and over again.
[00:10:52] I'm like, you have not gotten them ready to care or to act. Maybe that's why it's hard.
[00:10:57] Amanda Natividad: So when we had that, after that coaching session, shortly after, I was like, "I'm not quite ready to finish this, like, coaching arc because this coaching arc for this signature talk." Because there was more work that I needed to do in the, in the world building for what the problem is. And so what followed then was Rand Fishkins and my work in writing the Zero Click Marketing book.
[00:11:23] it feels better. Like, it feels a lot better to me right now because it dives into like, "Hey, doesn't marketing feel hard? Here's why. Here's the problem. Clicks are disappearing. overviews are taking your answers. attribution's broken," right? All that stuff that I kind of took for granted as,
[00:11:42] "Oh, everybody knows this."
[00:11:44] And you were like, "No, they don't," because to your point, you are at letter Z, everyone's at letter A.
[00:11:50] You need to say the alphabet.
[00:11:53] Jay Acunzo: What are the beats of the argument? There's like, again, there's craft and repeatability and framework here. It's not gut feel all the way. That helps, but you need to structure it and put scaffolding around what your gut is telling you, what's in your head and your heart. And like, I always think about this as a speaker, but thinking in speeches is actually really helpful because what is a speech, a really good one, if not an argument to embrace an idea?
[00:12:15] That's what a good presentation is for. It's like among all the vehicles to communicate, I find that the speech is uniquely suited to break patterns. It's like here's a before and after moment with the person and their ideas, and they had the conventional wisdom, they leave with yours. They had a way of thinking or feeling or acting before, they have a better way of thinking, feeling, and acting now.
[00:12:34] You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. That is a premise. It breaks a pattern right away. There's a before and after effect with that one moment. Or, you know, my premise is to think resonance over reach. Reach is how many see it, resonance is how much they care, right?
[00:12:51] Don't be the best, be their favorite. These are all ways I explain my premise, and I hope people go, "Oh yeah, like I thought of it one way, now I think of it another." And the work you do to get people to embrace your ideas isn't just like, here's a pithy soundbite with some tension built in, because then you get the crappy like AI schlock, which is like it's not a marketing tactic, it's a lifelong paradigm shift.
[00:13:16] That takes what could be a good device, linguistic device, and it AI-ifies it, unfortunately. It's like that wasn't the wrong direction, it was the wrong execution. so like you don't just need the soundbite. You need to know, well, what do they want? How are they trying to get it?
[00:13:32] What are the problems in the way? What's causing those problems really? What's my perspective on solving that deeper root cause? Do I have any stories to illuminate what it looks like if you embraced my premise for solving it? I need some stories to illuminate it. Do I have frameworks, methods, terminology, just advice to do it?
[00:13:49] And like I said, like that's an argument. What's not an argument is, "Hey, I know we're here to talk today about how to be a better speaker. Here's five tips on being a better speaker. Go." Like, that's just the generalizing or generic junk you're used to seeing from marketers, and we have to be better arguers for our ideas.
[00:14:05] Amanda Natividad: I love that. You have to be better arguers for your ideas. I like that you're breaking down all these good examples of, you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. Meanwhile, I was like, "Oh, so my pithy soundbite is just do really, really good marketing." That's mine
[00:14:21] Jay Acunzo: then you pull that thread. Then what's underneath it? You chip away, you dig, dig, dig, and it's like, it's not that the web is starved for traffic. It's that traffic is going to people who can deliver the most value upfront. That's clunky. It's like, all right, how does that feel? You know what it feels like to me?
[00:14:38] It feels like trying on a piece of clothing from the rack. It's like most people wanna look at the rack and decide, "It's that one. That's our message. That's our idea. Like in theory, that's gonna fit." And I'm like, you gotta do tr- creativity is trial and error. That's all it is. You can't skip that even though AI companies wanna promise it.
[00:14:55] Like it's trial and error. So say the thing. It's gonna sound bad and then be like, "That wasn't it." You know, you're a comedian in a small club. You're on social media getting feedback. And so for you it's like just do really good marketing. All right, why aren't people doing really good marketing? it's because they always have to justify what they're building and creating with some kind of traffic result, but now traffic isn't hap- Like you start ranting like you've had a couple of strong cocktails,
[00:15:19] But like get your inhibitions down, have a couple of those cocktails and then you just like rant at the world but onto a page and then you tighten and tighten and tighten. Like it's a, it's a period of discovery that people are uncomfortable with because they just want the idea that popped to mind to be like it, that then they go share with the world and it works.
[00:15:36] They wanna see the shirt on the rack and go, "I'll buy that," versus try on a lot of different clothing and, you know. Like you have to like try something, sample it yourself, taste it. Nope, okay, I gotta add a little more seasoning. I gotta try a different shirt on.
[00:15:48] and I don't think people like that 'cause it puts them in a period of discomfort.
[00:15:51] Well that and it's a lot of work. Sometimes we're lazy. Sometimes. I've worked in marketing for enough years to know it's more than some
[00:16:00] of the times.
[00:16:01] It is most of the times, especially in most of the marketings, that people are not trying to do the works. And sometimes it's for a good reason. I get it. I get it. Most of the time I'm like, "Oh, wow, yeah. You think this is gonna go really great in theory."
[00:16:15] it's trial and error, my friend. Anyone, anyone you admire who communicates with such grace and effortlessness and power, you're putting them on a pedestal. I promise you the pedestal is made of crap. It is made of bad work and lots of attempts that didn't work and went nowhere, and you never saw or you saw and didn't like.
[00:16:30] Like, that's the work. I wish I had better news
[00:16:33] Amanda Natividad: So when, when I'm thinking about that, I'm thinking about, you know, don't market more, matter more, I think part of what this gets at too is, like, you have to figure out the intrinsic motivation of your own work. Because part of it is, 'cause you're saying you have to do the work, ask the uncomfortable questions, keep drilling yourself and asking more, write more.
[00:16:56] Like, it is, it's, it's sit with those thoughts more, even if you're uncomfortable, and keep working through it. And I think you can only really do that if you really truly care about the job to be done,
[00:17:11] the
[00:17:11] Jay Acunzo: Yes.
[00:17:12] Yes. Cause everybody wants to be some kind of thought leader or at least communicate in a way that, like, has the power and influence of one, in the good sense. That, that phrase is loaded. I was taught,
[00:17:22] Amanda Natividad: by Andrew Davis, who I think is the world's best living marketing speaker.
[00:17:27] Jay Acunzo: Andrew said to me early on, he's like, "So you have a lot of frustration around the marketing space, Jay. Like you have to ask a lot of questions about that, but mostly you have to find questions that Google can't answer." And in his words, he said, "Go launch a quest." like that's what a show, a good show is.
[00:17:42] Like I'm on a journey to figure this out and change this. Join me on this journey in the speech. Join me on a journey in my one newsletter or all my newsletter editions. Like I am trying to ask questions that there's not a simple answer for, and then I dig, dig, dig. I create, create, create. I validate those ideas, and all of a sudden I can say something that sounds like, "Don't market more, matter more," and people go, "Oh yeah.
[00:18:05] And it's like all that was built. It was built by being curious, sensing how you feel about something, turning those feelings into curiosity and questions, and then pursuing it. And it's actually in the pursuit. Trying to communicate makes it clearer to you and to others.
[00:18:22] Pursuing and answering and creating leads to answers. Everybody wants it up front a- and that's not how it happens, so what they do is they settle. They settle for mediocrity. And now here's the market saying, "Use this tool to create mediocrity at scale." And I'm, I'm like watching this world and I'm kind of chuckling because at one hand I'm, I'm like really frustrated by it.
[00:18:41] On the other hand, I'm like, "Thank you for continuing to create lots and lots of gray." And then Amanda and I are gonna step up on stage, literally and figuratively, and we know how to shine our own colors, and it's useful to have a wall of gray behind us. Like thank you. Everyone's like, "LinkedIn, why do you post there?
[00:18:55] It's so, it's so gray." I'm like, "Precisely."
[00:18:57] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, it's true. I mean, like sure it's so, oh, it's people just, you know, like all these like nerds at work and they're just, they're talking about the same thing. to your point, I'm kind of like, well then cool, they should because I'm not gonna do that. That's not what I do. I do my own thing
[00:19:12] Jay Acunzo: Isn't it the case that like everyone listening to this is in marketing in some sense, right? You've heard, I'm now talking to your audience, you've heard people on podcasts say lines that they're sort of passing off as their own, even if you know and they know they're quoting someone else. They're not trying to be, you know, evil about it.
[00:19:29] But they're saying lines where it's like they shut off their brain and just regurgitate. So like an example that everyone knows that it's super easy is if you were interviewing me about AI and the future of jobs given AI, at some point in my explanation, I'm prone to say, you know, "It's not really that AI will replace you, it's that somebody using AI will replace you," right?
[00:19:52] Like that's the default setting for so many marketing voices and thinkers and practitioners, is they're just an echo chamber of each other. And along comes somebody who says something original and you're like, "Ah, that was a lightning strike moment," or whatever. It's like, no, they're probably like their intake is different than yours.
[00:20:10] They're not just so steeped in the LinkedIn feed or even industry content, right? Like Rand, I know, believes this. Perhaps you do too. Why are we always reading about the biggest brands in the space? You can learn very little from them. Go find interesting, weird niches. You know, as a speaker, I've been across the business world speaking to pest control CEOs and agriculture business marketers and trucking industry professionals.
[00:20:35] Like I've been in such cool, interesting random niches that I'm like my brain is getting stretched like Silly Putty in all these different directions and then comes back to center. So when I show up on a podcast, I hopefully don't sound like a complete and total dolt, right? It's like we need that more.
[00:20:52] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, we do. You know what? Speaking of pest control, my pest control company, they have one of my favorite newsletters
[00:21:04] Jay Acunzo: That's awesome. Please forward that to me. I need to know more.
[00:21:08] Why is it your favorite? Wait, why is it your favorite?
[00:21:10] Amanda Natividad: well, it only comes like once a quarter or like once every two months or so, and I always open it, I always read it because I'm a customer who has the general ongoing, not problem, but the ongoing concern of I wanna keep pests out of my home.
[00:21:29] but their newsletter, the topic is like, "Oh, the weather's warming up. You're probably going to start seeing a lot of water bugs. Hey, don't worry, that's not the same thing as a cockroach even though they're in the similar family because a water bug doesn't live in your house and reproduce in the same way that a," I think it's a German cockroach, the, the one that does, right?
[00:21:53] So it explains the difference, and I'm
[00:21:54] like, "Oh, good." like stuff like that is really helpful to me as a customer because now I'm like, "Cool. Now I know the possible problem that might happen during the summer." Two, I trust them because they are my service provider. And three, if I do want them to come now, like, "Hey, hey, hey, come back and do preventative measure," I can just hit reply and say, "Can you come over next week?"
[00:22:17] Jay Acunzo: I like that. So could you see a scenario where this organization practices ZCM to help you achieve ZCM? So it's zero-click marketing to help you achieve zero cockroach mode. I will show myself out. I am so sorry.
[00:22:38] Amanda Natividad: For those listening,
[00:22:40] I was people left, we can keep talking
[00:22:43] My favorite example of this is I work with a business coach, and I've, to know her over the years. I refer her everywhere, Michelle Warner. And Michelle built several kinda larger businesses herself and has been coaching other entrepreneurs for many years now, and helps with business model design and offer design, helps with, you know, making sure if you sell something for a high price, you don't market like somebody who sells something for a low price 'cause they're different flavors, relationship marketing versus traffic marketing.
[00:23:11] Jay Acunzo: You'd love Michelle because she is a, is an embodiment of zero-click marketing, but also, helps others practice a version of it, which is showing up for me as someone who advises executives and entrepreneurs on their speaking and their s- and for professionals, their speaking businesses as well. Me showing up on a podcast, me showing up to give a private webinar, during a, you know, a mastermind like learning and development session.
[00:23:37] Even though I can't, like, brag, "Hey, I just gave a talk to this mastermind group that you don't know exists and doesn't actually have a name," that actually is good marketing for me. It drives no traffic. It drives no, you know, marketing-approved, marketing department-approved fame or metrics, but it's much better for me to do that.
[00:23:53] And what Michelle has done for herself and teaches others, sh- her website is awful. It's, like, so poorly designed. It's not optimized at all. It looks like it was built in, you know, 2006. It probably was. She doesn't need it, does not need it whatsoever. Her last post on Instagram, I checked. Well, let's start with LinkedIn.
[00:24:12] So if you go to LinkedIn for Michelle, no banner on her profile, just like the stock whatever, like stock image of a mountain or whatever LinkedIn puts there. No logo for her business, and you're like, "That's horrible, but okay, she's, she's a coach. She's probably on Instagram where a lot of coaches thrive."
[00:24:27] And you wouldn't be wrong. She is on Instagram. she posted, her last post has, like, 60 likes and 25 comments, which is not nothing for someone with a small following until you realize that that last post was A, about her dog, and B, It was posted 238 weeks ago So like all these shoulds and have tos and best practices, Michelle's like, "They don't matter."
[00:24:52] She's like burning the playbook of all the traffic marketers right now because she's like, " I don't need a single thing that looks like traffic," because she just goes everywhere, adds such discrete value, and has become this like secret weapon. And she makes so much money now. She takes like summers off.
[00:25:06] She's doing great. She's making money hand over fist. She's living her best life. She has absolutely not a care in the world for the fact that the internet is like restricting attributable traffic.
[00:25:17] And not that we all have the same business as Michelle, I realize that. But there's plenty to learn from her. and prime among that is where she goes and delivers value discreetly, speaker or otherwise. People want to like beat down her door to find her. And that's actually a central problem. Like that's really why most marketers are unable to grapple with a decline in traffic is because they're not saying or doing anything that compels people to seek them out.
[00:25:42] They're just the same as their peers
[00:25:44] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. And that also brings us back to public speaking is the ultimate form of zero-click marketing
[00:25:51] because you just need to hear Michelle talk and you're like, "Boom, need her. she gets me. She knows how to solve my problems." And I, and I'm also saying that as someone who has sat in on a webinar with Michelle.
[00:26:03] Jay Acunzo: Well,
[00:26:03] and you and I are doing, we're doing the work for her right now, right? It's like that's another question is
[00:26:07] like, would they talk about you when you're not in the room?
[00:26:11] You know, look at your business, look at your marketing. The answer is almost assuredly no for a lot of people that, you know, come out of SaaS or other industries where it's like a real churn and burn approach to content marketing and, you know, SEO and traffic-based everything.
[00:26:25] It's like if you're not actively digging the hole in the sand, it caves in on you. It's all brute force everything. And I'd much rather, you know, say one thing one time that my audience thinks about 10 times a day than have to like get in front of the audience 10 times a week, right? It's like influence and impact, not followers and, and traffic.
[00:26:47] And so it's a real possibility. The question is where you want to put the heart. Do you want to put the heart in all this like clever merchandising of, of your marketing and your message and your website and all the technical optimiz- optimization, or do you have ideas and messages and stories and experiences that people will continue to remember and/or talk about?
[00:27:03] both are hard. Pick your hard. I think right now only one is winning out.
[00:27:07] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. And this is also... So all of this, you know, Michelle's, sorry Michelle, the crappy website, right? The not, the non-focus on social media and social media growth, but this incredible thriving business. That has me thinking of this rant that I kind of go back to, which is, sure, you can do all the marketings and all the platforms if you want to, if you have the time, I guess. But those impressions, those views, none of those things matter if you're reaching the wrong person,
[00:27:40] right? Like, if you're, if you're a coach, and this is probably an obvious, well, obvious to you and me, right? It's if you're a business coach who's on Instagram, that makes sense for coaches to be on Instagram, right?
[00:27:51] It makes sense to create content there where you are delivering native to platform value to people on, like, how to improve your business and all that good stuff. But if you're doing that and you are trying to game the system in terms of I wanna get as many impressions and likes as possible, then what you're going to have to do inevitably is speak to the lowest common denominator,
[00:28:14] which is going to be probably some version of wanna make more money, wanna drive more sales, do this one hack. And it's not to say that those aren't true or that those never work. It isn't even that. It's, well, when you post that stuff, who are you attracting? Who is listening to that and going, "Oh, they're right. I have to make a website. Do, do, do, do, do.
[00:28:38] Go make website," right? Or, "Oh, they're right. I need to speak clearly." And right where it's like, often it's not advice that you even disagree with, it's advice that you're like, "Yeah, I learned how to do that eight years ago in my career,
[00:28:53] or 10 years ago, or completely.
[00:28:55] Jay Acunzo: The distribution channels that we play on, we treat like they are sort of... And I know immediately people go, "Oh, they're not." But we approach them, our behavior would suggest that we believe that they're just a system of pipes through which we put our work. They're not. They're constantly changing direction, and the owners of those pipes have an opinion of what should spread or should succeed.
[00:29:18] And if you look at just any social network, how do they monetize? Take Instagram. Ads,they are an ad network, not a social network. So what are they gonna do? Subtly and sometimes not so subtly reward the content that helps them create infinite ad inventory for free. You are engaged, It's all eyeballs driven.
[00:29:39] Of course it is. The way that cable news acts. Like, people are like, "How could that social net- how could that news company..." I'm like, "Look at the business model." It's, this is not rocket surgery. This
[00:29:50] is, this
[00:29:50] Amanda Natividad: surgery
[00:29:51] Jay Acunzo: this is an obvious, this is, this is checkers, it ain't chess. You know what I mean? Like, it's, they have a business model, and they are optimizing for the business model.
[00:29:58] That's all this is. It's not your business model. The content they want from you is not necessarily content that's best for you to create or for your audience to receive. And so you're right. As a speaker, yes, there are certain ways I need to pitch or package or, you know, respond to inquiries and make sure I get onto the stages.
[00:30:16] And then for 45 minutes, I get to show you what I see. No algorithm in between us altering or warping me. But on LinkedIn, I have to teach a 101 level entry-level class, not an executive forum. Why? Because that's more ad inventory. That's gonna reach more people. Or my ego goes, "It is reaching more people.
[00:30:34] Do it more." no, I'm in the business of hosting executive forums. I'm in the business of giving keynotes. I'm like, "This is the audience I wanna serve. This is the audience who hires me." My public speaking is where I mostly, you know, not earn a living directly anymore, although for many years I was getting paid to speak and that was it.
[00:30:50] I still do a little bit, but most of my work is client services now. So it's now really good marketing and a little bit direct revenue. And who am I trying to speak to and how? Oh, it, it does not actually map to what LinkedIn wants me to be posting at all, at all. So I love speaking because not only is it the original OG zero-click marketing perhaps.
[00:31:09] but it's also in your control.
[00:31:12] And anyone's who, who's ever driven stage side leads, they, you know it hits different when someone rushes up to you after a talk. It, there's just something different about it, which is like, "Ooh, I don't experience this through my website."
[00:31:22] Amanda Natividad: Now I feel like I have to round this out with a little bit of hypocrisy here. So what I'll say is so I, you know, we've, we've been talking about, you know, marketing to the people who matter, to your real audience. Now I will say as somebody who is evangelizing audience research and zero-click marketing, which to me, or they are philosophies on how to do the marketing, the starting points for it, what it should look like. And so because I have that element of teaching people how to marketing, there's a little bit of, I do have some of that content, right? That is more like, "Hey, if you're going to create content that you want to get picked up by the LLMs, here are some things to consider.
[00:32:08] You do need clear headers. You do need to have content structured in a way that's easy for people to read, but also for machines to crawl." Sure. But like that works for me because the audience I'm trying to reach are people who might be new to marketing. They might be beginners, or they might be f- further along in those journeys.
[00:32:30] Jay Acunzo: Oh, I have
[00:32:31] something similar. You know, like how do-- what assets you need as a speaker to get booked. Like that kind of like here's the... It's almost like once you know this, you don't need to know it again. Short shelf life content. And the source of that content doesn't really matter. I think it's a huge problem, is most people are shooting out a lot of commodity content.
[00:32:47] When I tell you, "Here are the three most important marketing assets for getting booked and paid to speak," that, that's commodity content, right? And sometimes we create it. I want to color it through the lens of my premise, not a competitor's. But we, we are creating those things that, you know, it's useful, it's valuable, but again, short, short shelf life.
[00:33:06] And I think it's the other stuff, the long-lasting stuff that I'll remember the thing, but also where the thing came from. And therefore, when I think I have a need in that space, I go back to the source, not just to the piece, but to the source, to the brand, to the person. we're really bad at that. And, you know, there's a, there's a shortcut word for that, shorthand word for that: influence.
[00:33:24] Like we're, we're good at like traffic marketing. We're not good at being very influential with the marketing that drives traffic, which actually matter, which, which matters
[00:33:32] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, it matters. Jay, I really appreciate your work. The work that you
[00:33:38] do to really push people to create content, to do things that better resonate with the people they're trying to reach. And I appreciate this so much because you have so many resources, so many essays, so many podcast episodes that help people how to do this, and I think that's really hard to do as someone who also tries to teach people how to do things.
[00:34:06] And I'm also saying this because in my little, like, zero-click marketing ecosystem, your work is key to that. Like, great, do zero-click marketing. How? To not market more, matter more. To choose resonance over reach. The thing I add to that is sometimes I do quote you on that and I add to it resonance over reach, but when the more you focus on resonance, the further your reach will ultimately go
[00:34:32] Jay Acunzo: You're right. And, and so I thank you for that. That's so really nice of you to say
[00:34:36] Amanda Natividad: I didn't mean any of it.
[00:34:37] I just didn't. Super lying though. No. On that note, I think it's a good way to wrap up. Where is the best place for people to learn from you next?
[00:34:48] Jay Acunzo: jayacunzo.com for all those things you said that I create. Also, I love that most podcasts end with a lightning round, and you literally just ended with a lying round where you're like, "I didn't mean any of that, Jay." Nope, absolutely not
[00:34:59] Amanda Natividad: Didn't mean it. No. jayacunzo.com, newsletter, relaunched podcast.
[00:35:05] Jay Acunzo: podcast. The podcast is now called Why They Resonate. It is me teaching directly, to camera and onto the mic, but also when I have a guest, we run sections of your speech, people's speeches, whether we're watching it and responding to it, or people are performing it and then we analyze it.
[00:35:20] But if you're trying to be a better speaker, thought leader, public communicator, storyteller, it's a, it's a great resource, Why They Resonate
[00:35:27] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. And in a couple weeks or in a week or so, I will be joining this podcast. We are gonna break down the talk that I've been starting to give over this past year. So it's a new-ish talk. We have the recording of it. I told Jay like, "Hey, you get to gently roast me. I get to learn." So when that goes up, I'll cross-link it, you know, with this episode.
[00:35:48] Thank you for joining us.
[00:35:50] Jay Acunzo: Thank you for having me.
[00:35:51] Amanda: Thank you for listening or watching Zero Click Marketing. We'll see you next week.