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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.
From Old-School SEO to Zero Click Marketing (with Brendan Hufford)
[00:00:00] Brendan: The best people that come to you are ones who have been consuming the thing that you will do with and for them for a while,
I'm Amanda Natividad and welcome to Zero Click Marketing.
[00:00:15] Amanda: Up until couple years ago, I guess I would say you were teaching a lot of people, SEO, like you had a successful SEO course. And so one, I'm sure your background as a teacher helped that. That's no question. But so the thing I'm also curious about is, so after you know after teaching some point after that, you got into marketing and got into content marketing by way of SEO, right?
[00:00:41] Brendan: Yeah, so I just really, the, the quick synopsis is I started a couple side hustles around my passion and I started websites and then I learned. Hey, if you have a website, you should collect email addresses and it should show up in Google and all these things. I just learned these like piece by piece, kind of listening to a lot of the, like make money online niche people.
there was this guy named Pat Flynn. He had a website called Smart Passive Income, and he would just teach anything to help people make passive income. And one of the, like he was teaching SEO, he was teaching email marketing and newsletter, like all these things. So I kind of got this. Liberal arts degree in online marketing.
And SEO was the thing where I was like, okay, cool. Like I can be really, really good at this. And this was probably circa 2009. 2010 maybe.
but that was, that was the start of it. And I, I did the course, I did a ton. Amanda, I think I got really lucky that. Content marketing was just education. I don't think marketing was education. You know what I mean? If we go back to like the Mad Men era, like marketing and advertising was not about educating the consumer or anything like that.
Like that wasn't a, a thing where it's like, I'm going to teach you so much that you trust me to solve this problem. I think I fell in a really nice sweet spot where content marketing was kind of like, I'm the upswing and my skillset was perfect for that, and I just kind of like caught a wave.
[00:02:03] Amanda: that makes sense. I think. I think it's important. For people to know that timeframe in 2009, around that time, that was when, I mean, if I recall correctly, like generally speaking, that was kind of a time in SEO where people really started to learn or discover the whole information gain thing like I think marketers started to understand like, oh, we need to create original content that's actually really useful, that solves problems and spreads awareness of our product and. You know, a few people were doing that really well. I remember KISS Metrics was awesome with that and that sort of, I remember for me that was sort of a gold standard of like, I wanna be like that one day. You know, like solve all these problems. but so the thing I'm really curious about, especially because, so my foray into content marketing was like, I was a journalist before this, got into content marketing because I could, I can write.
I didn't know SEO first, that came later, but you did it the proper way and you learned SEO, and you were a good writer. And this was just kind of how you thought. Can you tell me about, I guess, your journey or evolution of how you went from kind of primarily focusing on the SEO driven piece to what it is today, which today I feel like you're doing a lot of very audience driven marketing, audience driven content.
Not that, it's not SEO driven at all, right? I'm not saying that you don't do SEO, it's just that I don't think you're creating content today specifically, or, or first and foremost through SEO.
[00:03:40] Brendan: I'm not, uh, not for myself at least. So I'll tell you the. This, I lost a client recently because, well, a lead, but we were, you know, everything was going great. I thought I was gonna close them. They were gonna be a client, and the founder came back to my point of contact there and said, I put his personal blog into SEMrush, and he doesn't rank for any keywords, so I don't think he's good at SEO.
Which sounds just like one of those, like too smart to get out of their own way. Founder moves, you know, where like logically that makes sense to them. And my contact was like his business though, like his business is this never. And I was like, you're never gonna convince him otherwise. He thinks he's outsmarted it.
Oh, Dodge Bull there, this guy, whatever. but the reason, I don't do a lot of SEO and things like that for myself. Primarily was because like that was never the game for me. When I started in SEO, the game was already afoot with like personal blogs, right. Neil Patel was already an SEO monster.
And then what was I gonna outrank, like do SEO about SEO and outrank Neil Patel and Andy Cress and HubSpot and SEMrush and Moz like, Nope, nope. Like there was no chance. And I was like, well. What I can do is I can do all this other stuff better than them. I can out podcast them, I can out YouTube them, I can out blog them and email all these things.
So I did a project called a hundred Days of SEO. I read, uh, Cal Newport's like, be so good they can't ignore you. And I really took that to heart of like, I'm just going to create a body of work where it is hard to ignore. So I put out, for whatever, 120 weeks, five days a week, I put out a. Blog post, a podcast episode and a YouTube video, and I don't recommend anybody do that,
[00:05:31] Amanda: Wait, so you had a podcast episode every day?
Oh, five
[00:05:34] Brendan: day it was the YouTube. It was the YouTube audio. So I was like trying, but this was like pre the tools that like today, that's not a hard, like, that's not, doesn't sound impressive, but when you realize what I used to have to do to make a good YouTube video and then rip the audio, submit that to its own feed. Create a thumbnail, create all the stuff for YouTube, and then turn that into a blog post, which meant writing it. I couldn't just put the transcript into Chatty G and have it make a blog for me like you can now. Um, I was
[00:06:08] Amanda: doing all this manually. I mean, like I'm sure you had good tools, but Yeah.
[00:06:13] Brendan: the tool is like my brain and my like tenacity of I'm just not gonna quit. It worked out really, really well. But I learned all these other skills, things I had understood, building, like little hobby websites, and I had sold some like hobby websites before this and everything, but that's what really got me on a lot of people's radar.
Like I got a job promotion. Because of that, I, I'd made a lot of cool career moves because of that series, and I think everybody, if they're, if you're. Listening to this, watching this, and you're stuck in your career, like, do a hundred day project, do something really challenging for a hundred days in public.
It will get people's attention and people love following that journey. Like people were like, oh, it's day 47. Day 47 of what? Like, oh my gosh. Like, I wanna follow along. That were like, that was really, really powerful. But I had all these other things that I didn't have a word for at the time. I was just like, I'm just not going to do SEO about SEO, and like that conveyed it.
Now, obviously we have a phrase, zero click marketing. That helped. Explain like what I had done. and then now what's been really cool with this evolution is I still do search really well for clients. I'm doing, I'm playing around with a lot more like a EO stuff for myself. So like AI search for myself, which is really cool.
but a lot of the stuff that I've done to get clients, building a big audience on LinkedIn, building a big newsletter, they ended up coming to me and being like, cool, we know you're the SEO guy. But we also see you do all this stuff. Can you help us with that? And I was like, yeah. And I would say yes a little bit and then yes here and yes there.
And once I had enough client proof and I had a good system of like, Hey, I actually know how to do this for clients, not just myself. 'cause when you do client work, you need more of a system. You can't just be me manic. On a Sunday, writing out nine LinkedIn posts in one Furious, you know, over, you know, I've got like three empty Alani on my desk and it's like my heart's about to explode writing these posts.
Can't do that for client work. but once I'd done it enough and I got enough reps and doing it for somebody other than myself, I had a good system and it's like, okay, cool, I can do this for clients. And now I've moved into this world where I, I think especially in the world of B2B, which is mostly where I operate, we're talking.
Anywhere from two month sales cycles. So 60 days to 18 month sales cycles you have to do, like, we can't just base it off of like, oh, this closed one revenue over an 18 a year and a half sales cycle, and probably 18 month plus marketing cycle before. So three years. But we're gonna say it's whatever they clicked first or last, like that type of attribution wasn't working.
Anymore for the type of business and these clients I was working with. So I was like, okay, cool. now that I understand, there is this zero click marketing. Now that I understand there are all these other touch points. I understand that's how my business works. Like I use self-reported attribution. People just, I ask, how did you hear about me?
And the thing with self-reported attribution is, Amanda, like it's just as flawed as click-based attribution. You have primacy effect, recency effect, like all these other cognitive biases. Throw that information off. But it's still a good hint as to what had a big impact on people. And I think all of that combined like really changed how I operated and now like has informed kind of like my thesis and the way that I sell and even the way that I do content marketing.
[00:09:36] Amanda: I mean, you know, one thing I probably should have said earlier, it's not too late, is I feel like you've been doing zero click marketing. For a long time before we started calling it that. and I also say that in recognition of when I first started saying it or when I first, first came up with zero click content, I was giving name to a practice I was already seeing.
So it wasn't, Hey, I invented a new way of marketing everyone. It was. Hey, there's this thing that I think a lot of the best marketers are doing intuitively, but they don't call it this, and I think this is what it's called. And you were one of the, one of the people who have been doing this for a while now.
[00:10:17] Brendan: Heck yeah. And the, here's the thing about naming stuff. The worst thing you can name is something that already has a name like. Marketers don't get this. They're like, we're gonna create a category. We're gonna become customer experience automation. And it's like you are a email marketing tool. Stop it.
Like now you're confusing the market. If you name something that everybody already has a short quick name for, whether it's a problem or a solution, you don't gain any trust. You kind of just seem corny. What really works with zero click marketing as a phrase, and I know we're being really meta here, but like.
When you name something like that, it works and it lands and it resonates and it sticks because we, we all saw it happening and nobody had like codified it yet. And the same thing happens with problems when a problem already has a name. Like I do a lot with my clients. I call it content IP naming. The problem you solve when they try to give a new funny name to a thing that already exists, it always falls flat.
Like people ignore it, right? Because they're like, oh, that's just this, and that happens a lot, especially in the SEO world. People will be like, not new. Not new. Not new. Okay, cool. But the stuff that sticks, like it sticks for a reason. It's because we had a short tail or long tail way of explaining it. But we didn't have a two to three word phrase and zero click marketing completely accurately described the wave that we all saw coming.
That's why it's stuck and that's why it's a really good, like, that is value. Like there is value there. That is part of what we do as marketers. We're helping people make sense of the world. giving names to things that don't have easy to remember names or easy ways to explain it is absolutely our job.
[00:11:56] Amanda: You know, this is reminding me of, this was like probably almost six years ago now, but I remember, and this was also before I met Rand Fishkin. I, I saw a tweet of his where he said something like, is there a name for the kind of marketing where you are marketing to the things that influence people like.
Marketing to their sources of influence and like going where they going, where your audience is speaking their language, you know, all these things. And he was like, is there a name for this? Like is there some, maybe it's obvious and I don't know it. a lot of people were like, oh, you're talking about influencer marketing?
And he was like, no, it's not influencer marketing because that influencer marketing is paying influencers. To kind of be your spokespeople for an ad. Like that's what influencer marketing is like. No, this is like influence marketing. Like marketing, the sources of influence. Of course, that sounds not as like sexy or immediate.
It doesn't, it doesn't sound as immediately understandable. And I think it was just a couple years after that that I was like, oh yeah, zero click marketing. And he was like, what? What is this? And then, you know, now this podcast exists.
[00:13:14] Brendan: Heck yeah. It's really, so I think like all of that to say like the. It is really effective, but it is hard. Like it's easy for somebody like you or I to be like, yeah, zero click marketing totally works. And people are like, yeah, we agree. But then they're put in like a really hard spot if you're trying to do this within a business where you are not the leader, especially if you're leaders are.
Sales leader, former sales leaders, former financial operators, former whatever, they're somebody with a non-marketing background. It's really, really hard to explain to them because we're asking them to rethink. Especially lately, like zero click Marketing has always been around, like anybody who's ever watched an, episode of Mad Men.
Anybody who's ever watched that, that's zero click marketing. Like they literally used to have somebody sitting out by billboards and clicking a clicker of the number of cars that drove by and maybe saw the billboard like that was the sophistication we had back then. or they were like, Hey, we ran this ad campaign and national sales are up 4.8%.
So it must have been the advertising campaign. Like it was very unsophisticated, there was no attribution to be had and we got so excited about software based attribution 'cause we're like, finally we can see things. When, do you remember the old I, the, these are like the glory days of Google where you could see conversions and then you could see in Google all the different channels that each one had touched.
[00:14:35] Amanda: Yeah. And it was accurate.
[00:14:38] Brendan: It was accurate and it was messy. It was like, oh my God. There was two paid clicks and three organic visits and two direct and one email like. This is messy and that's okay. And we could see, hey, this is what it looks like and here's the over, like, they used to give us this beautiful Venn diagram of like the overlaps between channels when
[00:14:54] Amanda: They did. I remember
[00:14:56] Brendan: that? Oh, it was so good. Where you're like, oh my god, email actually doesn't overlap with any of the rest of these. What does that mean for my business? or email is fully inorganic search. Everybody who's on the email list also has a touchpoint of organic search. That's really interesting.
We used to have all these insights and then slowly people were like, there, there's money to be made. There's money, there's gold in those hills. and then they were like, we're not gonna give this to you anymore 'cause we're gonna charge you money for it. Which capitalism. But I think that then we got really excited about software based attribution and first click and last click and w and all these different like shapes and letters of attribution.
And then it was like, you know, we taught executives like, Hey, we can track and see what's working. And they were like, cool, we got it now. And then we were like a couple years later like, Hey, everybody just kidding. Turns out we make a lot of bad decisions when we do it that way. and then we, you know, it's just been this reeducation of non marketers and that's a really hard thing.
Like marketers are great at marketing, but it is hard to operate in a company and be like, our marketing strategy is zero click marketing.
[00:16:06] Amanda: Right. Fully agree, I think you're gonna be a lot more knowledgeable about this than I am because you work with a lot of different clients. I mean, before going full-time as a consultant, you know you did growth marketing for active campaign.
And then since then, you've done some advising for copy ai, I think Adobe and Nevada, just to name a few. Those are just a few. I know they're a lot more companies. So I think you have a, a really good sense of sort of how you, how you sell zero click marketing internally. And maybe you're not calling it that, but maybe what I'm trying to ask is like.
For the way that you approach marketing, which I know that you are, you care about hard metrics too, but how do you have these conversations with CEOs or heads of marketing, the people you work with on getting this good like holistic view of marketing progress or just doing the campaigns that you think are going to be really impactful, even if they can't see it?
[00:17:07] Brendan: So there is some software that I really like that helps you put together this buyer journey, dream Data is a good example of this. I have a couple clients who use them. I'll give you the, this is the short answer is like something like dream Data. I don't think it's cheap, but it is really helpful 'cause you can look at a customer journey and you can be like, oh, okay, cool.
I can now see all of the outbound touch points. We have all the emails they did, all the webinars they've attended like. All these different things. That is really, really interesting for me because you look at one touch point and it's like sales is like, oh, this is an outbound lead. We get credit for that, right?
If for whatever reason outbound is a part of sales, I think it should be part of marketing hot take. but then you look in and you're like, oh, this, there are all these touch points. It's nice to be able to see that in one dashboard or at least be able to see the correlative. Is that a word effect of when somebody signs up for our newsletter?
They convert into a paying customer at double the rate of non newsletter subscribers. That's interesting. Or like, they move through our sales cycle. If you have like a sales, motion going on, if somebody's a member of our newsletter, they're. Sales cycles half of the time that, uh, people are, or you know, if they're not subscribed to the newsletter.
That sort of thing is really interesting for me 'cause it's like, okay, cool. We now know the value of newsletter subscribers is not that they're maybe even worth more as customers or whatever. We know it takes half the time to close them, so it frees up our sales reps and sales reps get excited when they have somebody come in that's already been reading our newsletter for six months or whatever.
so I like software like that, like dream data's really, really helpful. It has made really, really easy. Now, this isn't an ad for them, obviously. although I like them and I've worked with them a bunch. The other way that's been really, really helpful is starting to look at that sort of data. I think with some of the AI tools and especially some of the vibe coding that we can do now.
you can build like small versions of this or analyze a cohort of people and be like, I'm going to take all of these touch points. I'm gonna feed it in here and I'm gonna see what comes out. Okay, cool. because that's really what we want. I think there's a big split between correlation and causation of what causes somebody to buy.
And maybe I'm just a, a hopeless, romantic, zero click content guy, but I just kind of believe like people buy when they're ready. You know, like I, let's talk about this. I literally got a DM today. Somebody said, Hey, we met at a conference last year, and today I was asking some people, who are the best people that do what you do, Brendan, and your name came up.
And I was like, oh, I know Brendan. I forgot he did that. So then they became a lead today. How do I attribute that? Like, what is that? What made everybody who told you I was a good person and how did they find, like it becomes this messy thing. Right? I think that's where like some of the magic comes in with this is like, marketing is not direct response, not in 2026 anymore.
we can't increase our conversion rate on our website. even e-commerce is not direct response. You know, I hit, uh, just for a, a really recent example. I listen to the Pete Holmes podcast on and off. I find him to be really, really funny and, and I adore him. And the, he had a sponsor called Dad Grass, which was like, just like pretty low dose, THC drinks and gummies, and I'm down for that because I don't have a high tolerance for that stuff.
And I. I have other humans in the house. Like I can't just like get stoned and not do anything. Right. And it's like, okay, cool. But I like, you know, I don't drink alcohol, but I, I imbibe some of those things and it's like, I listened to this podcast with him and he's like, get a discount. Cool.
So I, I ordered some stuff and I'm like, I like these. These are actually like good tasting beverages. I enjoy this. I ordered some more stuff and I was like, this is cool, and I haven't ordered for a long time. And then a bill came through Congress that was, or what, maybe it's an executive order. Who fricking knows anymore?
Are they, are those even different things? It was like we're getting rid of the ability to ship anything with THC in it anymore in the mail. And that goes into effect in a year. But that was like a big rallying cry for dad grass to be like, order now. 'cause in a year we're like, we might be able to get this fixed, but we might not be able to.
so I didn't like stock up or anything, but like I didn't buy anything then. But today they're like, it's our six year anniversary. Buy some stuff with this discount coat, like. I'm sharing this long ass story to say like, as much as they might think, it's certain touch points that cause me to buy, it's so much more correlative and even for dumb sub $50 purchases, I'm not working on direct response.
It's not, oh, I sent this discount code, or, oh, we sent this email. Like that might be when they buy, but that might've just been the reminder. Like I shared with you something earlier, one of my clients, I don't work on the paid side of things, but when you track touch points and things like that, again, not every company has access to this, but somebody had booked a demo and if you looked at what, they just came straight to the website, just direct traffic.
But we could see they saw three ads the day before. Did the ads have an impact? And like remind them like, Hey, didn't you want to book that demo? Like, Hey, did you remember we solved this thing that you're struggling with? I would say probably like, it'd be pretty wild to say like the, but are they gonna get credit through click attribution?
No, I just think we're not, it's not direct response anymore. The goal is to educate them and empower them and entertain them and let them know that like we are the best to solve the thing that we do. But I don't, I don't know that. it was really anything there for us anymore with any sort of like the old school attribution models.
[00:23:10] Amanda: Yeah. I mean, I'm starting to really doubt that too. Like I. I mean, I'm also just a big believer that people will buy when they're ready. So the best thing you can do is to make it as easy as possible for them to make that decision by being super clear on what you do, what you sell, how you do it, and just being there for them when they're ready.
When they're ready.
[00:23:35] Brendan: Our friend Jay Zo talks about this all the time, like be their favorite.
[00:23:39] Amanda: Yep. Don't be the best. Be their favorite.
[00:23:41] Brendan: a hundred percent. I've taken that to heart. It is, it is a big north star for me and all of my clients of like, we need to figure out like what does it, what is our plan? Instead of it being like, what's our content marketing plan?
What's our plan to become their favorite? Amanda. Do you know how many deals I've seen get pushed forward? Because some junior person at the table. When they were like, Hey, we're thinking of going with this solution, or maybe this one, or this one, and some person you know, down from the other end of the table, just like pokes their little head up and is like, oh, I love their blog, and then they just disappear.
That little co-sign from like a very junior person on the team will push a deal forward and you'll never know. There's no attribution for it. There's no way to track that. But like that happens all the time where somebody on the team liked them or you were, when they were putting together this competitive set of what they wanted, whatever was their favorite originally is what they, I mean, we have data on this, like it's what they buy like the majority of the time.
So if you're already their favorite when they are deciding to solve that, it now is the time, the pain. To, keep doing it. The status quo way is higher than the pain of using a solution. They're going to choose their favorite.
[00:25:01] Amanda: Well said. I feel like this is a great spot to end and hang up on you and take away your mic. No, I, no, I feel like this is a, this kind of wraps us up really nicely. I feel like we've talked through. the different kinds of marketing, the way these all influence buying decisions, got some solid receipts from you.
can I help you promote anything right now? You've got the people here, you've got literally a handful of people
[00:25:25] Brendan: people tens. I always say that. I'm like, I'll promote you to tens of people. Um. No, I don't have any, I don't have anything to promote. Like the, the, the thing that I want is the, the best people, and I think you found this to be true too, Amanda. Like you've, you've done consulting and worked with clients and things.
The best people that come to you are ones who have been consuming the thing that you will do with and for them for a while, right? So the best people for me are people that read my newsletter and people that. Follow me on LinkedIn and engage and things like that. So that's usually, like, that's my pretty standard ask anymore, and I feel like it is the right zero click ask to make, which is just find me on LinkedIn.
Follow me there. I guess that's a click. if you would like to do one additional click, like you'll find my newsletter through that where I share really cool behind the scenes of how companies actually get customers. there's an interview in there about with Amanda as well,
Check that out. Like that's the best way to learn more. And I, I love, I think you do this really well too, Amanda, is like sharing everything, you know, along the way. Like finding me on LinkedIn is the best way to keep up with what I'm learning, like day to day, what's working right now, things like that.
[00:26:38] Amanda: It really is. you're very generous with what you share. And also I will say like very respectful and mindful to not reveal too much about your clients. and I learned a ton from you, so.
[00:26:49] Brendan: I get a little excited sometimes and I'm like, Hey, look at this, and somebody's like, chill out. People don't see 'em though, people, I delete those pretty quick, so don't worry about it.
[00:26:59] Amanda: nah, all good. But I think your content is a great way for you to qualify and even disqualify clients, so it's awesome them.
[00:27:08] Brendan: Yeah, I want, I wanna say this before we close. Like if you're thinking of running a zero click program at your company, obviously reach out to Amanda. but I think the easiest way to get started, and I know this is really silly, but so many companies still don't do this. Is ask two questions, actually the same question twice.
Once in your form when they're at the moment of conversion or whatever, whether they're starting a trial, starting a freemium plan, or booking a demo or whatever. That's just my world. Those are the usual calls to action. Ask them how they heard about you. Don't make it a dropdown. We have AI tools. Now you can ask them an open-ended question and then use AI tools to sort through that later, especially if it's a lot.
and then ask again. When they're doing the thing that they're, they wanted to do, right? When they're either starting the trial or ending the trial or they get on the sales call, ask them the same question again. Like, Hey, what made you reach out? Oh, cool. How'd you hear about us? Log that as well.
Sometimes those are, they'll give different answers, and you want both data points. That is the easiest way to start zero click marketing and be like, Hey. People are find like we're seeing all of this impact from channels that we previously didn't know. Maybe we should do more of that.
[00:28:26] Amanda: Holy moly. That's good. Thank you, Brendan.
[00:28:29] Brendan: Yeah. Heck yeah.
[00:28:30] Amanda: All right, friends. Thank you for listening or watching Zero Click Marketing. We'll see you next week.