Zero Click Marketing

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.

Timestamps

00:00 — How Josh learned marketing through SEO and inbound

05:23 — How ReferralRock gets customers today

07:55 — When attribution is broken, what do you measure instead?

13:34 — AI search, prompts, and understanding buyer intent

15:10 — Turning customer calls into an audience research engine

20:47 — Creating content from what customers actually ask about

27:47 — Why marketers need “audiences + anecdotes”

30:02 — Blue spoons, memorable details, and creating word of mouth

35:29 — What does a “blue spoon” look like in B2B SaaS?

Connect with Josh Ho: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuajho/

Check out Referral Rock: https://referralrock.com 

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

Connect with Amanda Natividad (@amandanat): LinkedIn | Substack | Instagram | Threads

This episode was produced in partnership with Share Your Genius
www.shareyourgenius.com 

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.

Chapters

00:00 — Human trust vs. algorithmic proxies

03:14 — Spotting AI slop on LinkedIn

06:23 — The upside of competition in AI

08:15 — AI, creativity, and owning your work

25:49 — Taste vs. accountability in an AI world

27:58 — AI search is forcing brands to bring receipts

34:21 — Why SEO and AI visibility aren’t the same

38:42 — Measuring human trust instead of algorithmic traffic

46:29 — Hiring for a world that’s changing again

Connect with Wil Reynolds: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilreynolds/ 

Check out Seer Interactive: https://www.seerinteractive.com/ 

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

Connect with Amanda Natividad (@amandanat): LinkedIn | Substack | Instagram | Threads

This episode was produced in partnership with Share Your Genius
www.shareyourgenius.com

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

14:02 — Massive opportunities in untrackable marketing

16:36 — How to pitch bold ideas to leadership

20:42 — Where Chris would invest if he were starting from scratch

28:19 — Brand search as a leading marketing indicator

31:05 — How marketers can manage up more effectively

Connect with Chris Savage: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cjsavage/ 

Check out Talking Too Loud: https://wistia.com/series/talking-too-loud 

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

Connect with Amanda Natividad (@amandanat): LinkedIn | Substack | Instagram | Threads

This episode was produced in partnership with Share Your Genius
www.shareyourgenius.com 

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 — What should a podcast actually accomplish?

15:45 — Defining success and overcoming the “podcast graveyard”

19:10 — Why Erica isn’t worried about business outcomes yet

22:12 — The reality of sustaining a podcast

23:47 — Erica’s podcasting cheat sheet for 2026

Connect with Erica Bonser: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-bonser/ 

Check out Fan Club Brands: https://fanclubbrands.co/ 

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

Connect with Amanda Natividad (@amandanat): LinkedIn | Substack | Instagram | Threads

This episode was produced in partnership with Share Your Genius
www.shareyourgenius.com

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: authority with the right audience

05:01 — #1: Message transfer

06:24 — #2: Audience saturation

08:02 — #3: Asset value

10:01 — What the creator economy rewards now

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

Connect with Amanda Natividad (@amandanat): LinkedIn | Substack | Instagram | Threads

This episode was produced in partnership with Share Your Genius
www.shareyourgenius.com 

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 marketing moves people can’t stop thinking — and talking — about.

Watch the original episode: https://wi.st/TTLNatividad

Explore more Talking Too Loud: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMCL9HnQdLDHx8xxzeorzmQ

Learn more about Wistia: https://wistia.com/

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

Connect with Amanda Natividad (@amandanat): LinkedIn | Substack | Instagram | Threads

This episode was produced in partnership with Share Your Genius
www.shareyourgenius.com 

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:

• Axios
• Semrush
• Profound

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 marketing

ZCM Field Notes are short reactions to news or observations of what’s happening in the field. Edits can be a little messy 'cause I'm doing them with my bare hands.

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

Connect with Amanda Natividad (@amandanat): LinkedIn | Substack | Instagram | Threads

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 “two algorithms” caveat

01:28 — Why topical consistency still matters

02:20 — LinkedIn’s new “Seems like AI slop” reporting feature

03:20 — Stop chasing algorithm hacks; become understandable

05:02 — How LinkedIn’s retrieval and ranking stages work

06:20 — Why LinkedIn is like a party

10:03 — The real LinkedIn strategy: predictable relevance

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

Connect with Amanda Natividad (@amandanat): LinkedIn | Substack | Instagram | Threads

This episode was produced in partnership with Share Your Genius
www.shareyourgenius.com 

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 “rank tracking” inside LLMs is mostly the wrong mental model, and where AI genuinely helps marketers — provided you know enough to recognize when it’s wrong.

Most importantly, this is a conversation about keeping your head while everyone else is telling you to do more.

In this episode:

04:20 — How to measure marketing when you can’t prove causation

07:11 — Why executives accept fuzzy measurement for traditional advertising but demand perfect attribution from digital

08:45 — Leading and lagging indicators for zero-click marketing

14:07 — Why AI actually makes zero-click marketing easier to understand

19:49 — Rand’s skepticism about AI visibility tracking — and the research that changed his mind

27:02 — What Rand learned about real versus synthetic prompts

30:52 — Using AI to analyze marketing data without outsourcing your judgment

33:45 — Zero Click Marketing does not mean zero sales

Of course, you’ll learn all about this and more in our forthcoming book, Zero Click Marketing. It comes out this October, and you can preorder today at zeroclickmarketing.co/book. 

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

Connect with Amanda Natividad (@amandanat): LinkedIn | Substack | Instagram | Threads

This episode was produced in partnership with Share Your Genius
www.shareyourgenius.com 

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 without the click

07:15 — Find the smallest complete version

08:51 — Make the idea applicable

10:21 — Give up control of the route

12:14 — Influence is bigger than attribution

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

Connect with Amanda Natividad (@amandanat): LinkedIn | Substack | Instagram | Threads

This episode was produced in partnership with Share Your Genius
www.shareyourgenius.com