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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.
Hello friends, and welcome back to Zero Click Marketing, the show about how marketing influence happens before the click.
If you’re new here, quick orientation:
In Episode 1, we talked about how the clicks lie — platforms like Google are hoarding traffic, and the problem with Dark Social, and how referral traffic gets incorrectly shown as “direct traffic” in Google Analytics.
In Episode 2, I laid out the core framework for what Zero Click Marketing actually is.
So if this is your first episode, you might want to start with Episode 2. That one explains the whole model.
Today, I want to answer a very practical question:
Where does Zero Click Marketing actually happen?
Because once you understand the concept, the next question is obvious:
Okay… where should I actually be doing this?
Zero Click Marketing works best in environments where people can get value without leaving the platform.
Places where someone can understand your idea, learn something useful, or form an opinion about your brand without clicking a link.
The platforms love this.
The algorithms reward it.
And increasingly, users expect it.
So let’s talk about the environments where this happens most often.
Environment 1: Social feeds
The most obvious place is social feeds.
Think LinkedIn. Instagram, TikTok, X.
Feeds are designed for native consumption.
Platforms want people to stay inside the feed, so they reward content that delivers value right there.
That’s why long LinkedIn posts often outperform link posts.
That’s why TikTok creators explain things directly in the video.
That’s why threads summarize ideas instead of just linking out to a blog.
You’re not sending people somewhere else.
You’re delivering the value right there.
And if people find that valuable, they remember you.
They follow you.
They trust you.
Then later, when they’re ready to buy something or hire someone or sign up for a product, they search for you directly.
Environment 2: Video platforms
The second place this happens a lot is video platforms.
YouTube is a great example. Someone can watch a ten-minute explanation and learn everything they need without ever clicking a link.
TikTok is even more extreme. People search TikTok for product reviews, tutorials, recommendations, and (unfortunately) news — and they get the answer directly in the video.
Again: influence without the click.
Now… a lot of marketers worry that sending referral traffic to YouTube is somehow bad for the algorithm. That’s not really the right way to think about it.
The better takeaway is this: external traffic is not bad traffic. It’s just often different traffic.
If someone clicks over from a newsletter, a LinkedIn post, or an embed on your website, they may not behave like a native YouTube viewer. They might watch for less time. They might bounce faster. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t send people to YouTube. It means you should judge traffic by source.
External traffic can be great for awareness and audience building. But if you want YouTube to keep recommending your content inside YouTube, the video still has foster that kind of binge-watching once viewers get there.
Environment 3: Communities
Another environment where Zero Click Marketing thrives is communities.
Places like Reddit. Slack groups. Discord communities. WhatsApp group chats.
In these spaces, the valuable thing isn’t traffic. It’s conversation.
People reference brands, tools, and creators all the time.
Sometimes they link.
Often they don’t.
Someone might say:
“Oh yeah, I learned that from Amanda’s post.”
Or:
“SparkToro has good research on this.”
Those mentions shape decisions. Even though no click happened. (Plus, even if they did, you most likely can’t see it. Especially in the case of Slack and WhatsApp. Dark Social!)
Environment 4: AI answers
And now we have a new environment:
AI answers.
When someone asks ChatGPT or Claude for recommendations, they often get an answer without ever visiting the original sources.
AI summarizes the information. It mentions brands. It cites ideas. And that shapes what people believe and what they eventually choose.
That’s why in Episode 3, when I talked with Rand Fishkin, we discussed AI visibility — whether it’s feasible for brands to track mentions in AI. (Spoiler: it is feasible. You may want to listen to Episode 3 next.)
Because that’s another form of influence.
Again: influence without the click.
The pattern
If you zoom out, there’s a pattern across all of these environments.
Zero Click Marketing works best where:
people consume information natively
platforms discourage outbound links
value can be delivered instantly
That’s the internet we’re living in now. And honestly, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Three case studies
Now I want to make this really concrete with three examples, so you walk away with a clear sense of what Zero Click Marketing looks like in the wild.
Example 1: A totally new category — ultrasonic knives
My first example is from my friend Scott Heimendinger, who is an inventor and, frankly, one of the coolest people ever.
Scott is the guy who helped bring sous vide to home cooks. The technology already existed, but he helped shrink it down and make it accessible enough that normal people could actually use it in their kitchens.
He recently did something similar with ultrasonic blades.
Commercial ultrasonic blades already existed. They’re used in industrial settings for things like slicing bread evenly before packaging. Scott took that underlying technology and turned it into something much more accessible: a chef’s knife you could actually imagine having on your kitchen counter.
During launch week, he published a roughly ten-minute YouTube video fully explaining the product — how the technology works, why it matters, and what problem it solves.
And that’s Zero Click Marketing.
Because the persuasion is happening inside the video itself. You don’t need to click to the website to understand how the knife works. The website matters for sales, obviously. But the understanding and the desire get built before someone ever gets there.
The result? That video got roughly a quarter-million views in about a week, and the product sold out of preorders in around 60 days. And honestly, it’s really, really cool and it’s a total gamechanger for slicing roasts, legs of ham, and stubbornly hard vegetables like sweet potatoes.
That’s a brand-new category. A weird, technical, unfamiliar product. And the explanation itself became the marketing.
Example 2: A highly competitive category — makeup
My second example is Erica Taylor, a makeup artist I first found on TikTok years ago.
She does makeup tutorials and beauty product recommendations, but what made her stand out to me was two things.
First, her content is fast. No fluff. She gets right into the 60 second or even 20 second tutorial.
And second, she has a very clear audience: women in their late 30s, 40s, and 50s who are realizing that the makeup techniques they learned as teenagers don’t always work the same way on a 45-year-old face.
That’s a strong point of view. That’s audience specificity. And that’s part of why it works.
Her Zero Click Marketing channels are TikTok and Instagram, where she has a massive following. You can get a ton of value from her content without ever leaving those platforms. You can learn the techniques, understand the products, and trust her expertise right there.
If you want longer content or you want to search through her library, then YouTube becomes useful.
But the core influence happens on-platform.
That’s Zero Click Marketing too.
Example 3: Me
And the last example is me.
Because you know I always have receipts.
For me, Zero Click Marketing is literally this podcast and the ecosystem around it.
Last week I stumbled upon Christopher Penn’s analysis of LinkedIn engineering sources — a giant document about how the algorithm works. I recorded a short, seven-minute reaction episode on Monday and posted it on LinkedIn with a short explainer.
The next day, I published a longer blog post diving deeper, and I also published another LinkedIn post with some new nuggets from the report.
Each one of those assets could be consumed on its own.
You didn’t need to read my blog post to get value from the LinkedIn post.
You didn’t need to listen to the podcast to appreciate the blog post.
You didn’t need all of it to get something useful.
But of course, it’s better if you do.
That’s the point.
Each asset creates standalone value. Together, they create momentum.
That’s Zero Click Marketing.
Tease Episode 6
And next week, I’m going to talk about this with my friend Brendan Hufford.
Brendan used to focus heavily on SEO-driven content marketing, but over time he shifted toward a much more audience-driven approach.
We’re going to talk about how he made that shift, and we’ll walk through some real Zero Click Marketing case studies.
So if you’re wondering what this looks like in practice — especially if you come from a traditional SEO or content background — that episode will be a really good one.
Review ask
Before I wrap up, one small request.
If you’re enjoying the show, please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts.
It genuinely helps the show reach more marketers.
And also, selfishly, it helps convince podcast platforms that I am a serious and legitimate broadcaster and not just someone talking into a microphone in my office… with Lego bricks scattered in the background.
Which, to be clear, is exactly what’s happening.
Outro
Alright friends.
That’s it for today.
Next episode: Brendan Hufford on audience-driven marketing and Zero Click case studies.
And until then, remember:
The click might be disappearing. But influence isn’t.
To learn more, go to zeroclickmarketing.co