Best practices can help you avoid obvious mistakes — but they can also make your marketing forgettable. In this episode, I explain why the real problem isn’t best practices themselves, but using them without personalization, taste, or audience insight. Drawing on my experience at Fitbit, I’ll show you how audience research leads to stronger content, smarter channel choices, and more compelling marketing — plus a few practical ways to get started without spending much money or time. This episode is an expansion of my blog post, “Best Practices Are Meaningless Without Audience Research.”

Timestamps:

00:00 How best practices turn into beige marketing

01:27 The antidote: audience research

02:01 The Fitbit example and the real B2B challenge

03:43 Good marketers have always done some version of this

05:08 More examples: marketers, skincare, and sports betting

06:36 How to start doing audience research

07:40 How to spot patterns faster

09:38 Best practices only tell you the format

10:05 How audience research improves taste

11:02 Best practices get you on the field. Audience research helps you win.

You can do audience research with all kinds of tools and networks like Google Trends, Exploding Topics, Reddit, and of course, my launch sponsor, SparkToro. You can create an always-free account and get 5 reports per month on sparktoro.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

Before someone clicks your website, they may already have formed an opinion about your brand from the public record — snippets, Reddit threads, reviews, and AI answers. So today, I’m sharing a 7-step playbook for shaping your brand’s public record. I’ll help you audit what’s visible, identify weak claims versus strong facts, publish more credible proof, make that proof easier to retrieve and cite, and track whether the public story around your brand is getting stronger over time. It’s a practical episode about reputation, visibility, and what marketers can still influence in a world of fragmented discovery.

This episode pairs nicely with the previous week’s “Why Better Attribution Won’t Fix Your Measurement Problem.” You might want to check that one out after this one. :)

Timestamps:

00:00 Why your brand’s public record matters

02:00 The 7-step playbook

02:35 Audit the story the internet is already telling about you

04:00 Treat third-party services as an extension of your brand

05:25 Separate weak claims from strong facts

07:22 Make your content easy to retrieve, cite, and summarize

09:01 Measure whether your public record is getting stronger

Resources:

• Wil Reynolds’s “GEO Experiment: How AI highlighted the 1 bad review we got in 24 years”
• Ross Simmonds’s “Reddit’s Impact on B2B Search” study
• Search Engine Land’s “Why your content doesn’t appear in AI Overviews”
• Alertmouse for brand monitoring
• SparkToro for audience research

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

A lot of marketers say they want better measurement. Usually, what they really want is cleaner attribution.

In this episode, I argue that those are two different jobs. Attribution tends to reward the channel that captured demand once the buyer was already in motion. SparkToro's latest research proves that influence happens everywhere. So what we really need is better measurement — to help us understand lift: are more people searching for you, remembering you, mentioning you, and showing up ready to buy? If you confuse the two, you’ll keep overvaluing what’s easiest to credit and underestimating what actually drives demand.

Timestamps:

00:00 The real problem: buyers are influenced before the click

01:41 Attribution vs. measurement: two different jobs

04:33 Stop giving the wrong channels all the credit...

05:10 ...because influence happens everywhere!

08:05 Why measurement needs to get broader and simpler

09:30 Why we (accidentally?) end up starving our demand creation channels

10:47 Measurement needs to grow up.

11:24 Next week: influencing the public record

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

Today I'm sharing my notes on recent news/research in the worlds of AI and Google Search. I'm breaking down 3 key pieces:

• Ross Simmonds of Foundation Inc shows how Reddit influences buyer discovery earlier than many marketers realize.
• Cyrus Shepard of Zyppy Signal argues that clicks still matter — not as a vanity metric, but as a signal of relevance and satisfaction.
• Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive offers a brutal real-world reminder that if you don’t publish defensible facts about your brand, AI may fill in the gaps with whatever scraps it can find.

If you want a more polished version of this episode along with a spiffy graph, read my blog post.

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:27 Why these three studies belong together
01:05 Ross Simmonds on Reddit’s growing role in SaaS search
03:05 Cyrus Shepard on why clicks still matter
04:18 Zero-click does not mean clicks stopped mattering
06:10 Wil Reynolds on AI surfacing an old negative review
07:26 Why “the truth is out there” is not enough if it isn’t published
09:08 What marketers should do now

Big thank you to my launch sponsor, SparkToro, the makers of fine audience research software. Rand Fishkin/SparkToro did the research that also supports the ideas in this episode.

ZCM Field Notes are short reactions to news or observations of what’s happening in the field.

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

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

A lot of marketers confuse polished with effective. Or they confuse consistency with substance. But neither one guarantees the work is actually good.

In this episode, I make the case for a higher bar: usefulness. In a zero-click world, your content has to stand on its own. So before you worry about making it prettier or posting more often, ask whether the idea is actually strong enough to deserve attention.

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

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

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:37 The tension between polish and volume
01:24 Why polish can signal care but not guarantee value
02:02 Why volume can create momentum but still say very little
02:38 The real bar: usefulness
03:15 Respecting your audience by assuming they’re smart
04:54 A simple test: strip away the design and ask whether the idea still holds up
05:20 What Amazon’s memo culture gets right
06:30 What to do when the idea itself is the problem
07:01 Three signs a piece of content is ready to publish
09:28 The hierarchy of useful marketing content
11:03 Why this matters even more in a zero-click world
11:46 The question to ask before you publish
12:15 Next week: why marketers overvalue what’s easiest to count

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

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

Produced in partnership with Share Your Genius
www.shareyourgenius.com

My buddy Brendan Hufford drops by! We talk about his journey from old-school SEO to zero-click marketing. We cover the early days of SEO, the content habits that helped him build a reputation, and why he stopped trying to win by playing the obvious game.

We also get into why zero-click marketing works, why it was happening long before it had a name, and why attribution gets messy fast in B2B. Brendan shares how he thinks about buyer journeys, self-reported attribution, becoming your audience’s favorite, and the simplest way to start measuring zero-click impact today.

This was a fun one because Brendan brings both the receipts and the realism. If you’ve ever struggled to explain marketing impact beyond first-click or last-click attribution, this episode is for you.

00:00 Intro
00:15 Brendan’s early path from teaching and side hustles into SEO
02:03 The SEO era when useful, original content started to matter more
04:54 The “100 Days of SEO” project and building a body of work in public
07:56 From SEO specialist to audience-first marketer
09:36 Why Brendan had been doing zero click marketing before it had a name
10:17 Why “zero click marketing” works as a phrase — and why naming matters
11:56 Rand’s earlier search for a term for “marketing to sources of influence”
13:14 Why zero-click marketing is effective but hard to sell internally
14:38 The rise and limits of software-based attribution
16:06 How Brendan talks to leaders about marketing impact beyond hard attribution
19:10 Why people buy when they’re ready — and why attribution gets messy
23:10 My take: make it easy for people to choose you when they’re ready
23:35 “Don’t be the best. Be their favorite.”
25:25 Brendan’s zero-click ask: follow his work and learn along the way
27:08 Brendan’s practical advice for getting started with zero-click measurement
28:30 Outro

This episode was edited by Share Your Genius (shareyourgenius.com)

Connect with Brendan Hufford and check out his work: LinkedIn | GrowthSprints.co for B2B SaaS growth | BrendanHufford.com for his personal site

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

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

Once you understand the concept of Zero Click Marketing, the next question is obvious: Where should you actually be doing this?

In this episode, I break down the four environments where Zero Click Marketing thrives — the places on the internet where influence happens before someone ever clicks a link. From social feeds to AI answers, these platforms reward content that delivers value natively. If you understand where ZCM happens, you can create content that builds trust, recognition, and demand — even when you can’t track the click.

I also share three real-world examples of Zero Click Marketing in action, including a fascinating product launch from Seattle Ultrasonics that shows how a single piece of content can explain — and sell — an entirely new category.

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

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro and orientation
01:00 Where ZCM generally works best
01:30 The four environments where ZCM specifically works best
05:25 The pattern of ZCM
05:55 3 case studies of ZCM in the wild
06:01 ZCM when you've created a totally new category
07:56 ZCM in a highly-competitive space
09:12 ZCM with a core idea and remixing across channels/formats
10:33 Next week: Brendan Hufford tells his firsthand experience with ZCM!

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

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

ZCM Field Notes are short reactions to news or observations of what’s happening in the field. Today, we're talking about the LinkedIn algorithm — because Christopher S. Penn just published an unofficial guide on how LinkedIn's algorithm works right now — and I have some quick notes and a "party" analogy I want to share.

Subscribe to Christopher's Almost Timely newsletter on Substack for lots more on AI, data science, and marketing. And download his report and read it yourself! :)

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

• pg. 19-29: great high-level explainer of how LinkedIn works
• pg. 91-94: addresses the things you/your brand could likely improve

Thank you to my launch sponsor, SparkToro, the makers of fine audience research software. This show wouldn't be possible without 'em!

Oh also, I tried to find when I posted something about social media being a party, and I couldn't find it, but I did find this awesome blog post from Grace at Demand Curve where she explains how I built my Twitter following and she includes my party analogy.

Learn more: zeroclickmarketing.co

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