Zero-Click Marketing: What to Do When Clicks Disappear but Accountability Doesn’t

If you’re a marketer experiencing a minor (or major) panic about disappearing clicks, murky attribution, and executives still asking for clean ROI, you’re not imagining it.

You’re just living in the current reality of zero-click marketing.

In this episode of The ChangeOver, I sat down with Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at SparkToro, to unpack what zero-click marketing actually means, why it’s increasingly vital for full-stack marketers, and how we can adapt without abandoning credibility, rigor, or accountability.

What emerged in our conversation wasn’t a doomsday narrative. It was actually far more constructive:

Zero-click marketing doesn’t mean marketing without impact. It means marketing that creates value before conversion.

Watch the episode in full here, or read the recap below first — you’ll want to come back for the full conversation.

Watch episode 33 of The ChangeOver, then subscribe on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, Weidert.com, or your favorite podcast app.

What Zero-Click Marketing Is (and Isn’t)

When Amanda talks about zero-click marketing, she’s not saying links are dead or conversions don’t matter.

She’s describing a shift in where value is delivered.

“Zero-click marketing is doing marketing where your audience gets standalone value right where they are — without needing to click.” — Amanda Natividad

Of course, clicks still matter. But they’re no longer the default mechanism for value exchange.

Across Google, social platforms, and AI tools, users are increasingly staying put:

• About two-thirds of Google searches now end without a click
• A significant portion of remaining clicks go to Google-owned properties
• Social platforms actively deprioritize outbound links

The implication for marketers is clear: if your strategy depends on the click to prove value, you’re exposed.

You can learn more about zero-click marketing with Amanda Natividad at Experience Inbound, Wisconsin’s premier marketing and sales conference, April 28, 2026 at Brookfield Conference Center in Milwaukee, and April 29 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Get tickets here.

Why the Shift is Happening (Don’t Just Blame AI)

It’s tempting to blame AI for everything. But zero-click behavior predates generative search.

As Amanda points out, this is just as much about user experience as it is about technology.

People don’t go to LinkedIn hoping to leave LinkedIn. They don’t Google a simple question hoping to read a 2,000-word blog post and find it in there, somewhere. And platforms have optimized relentlessly around that reality.

“The platforms have trained us — and we’ve trained the platforms.” — Amanda Natividad

Marketing has to do its work inside the feed, the SERP, the answer box, the AI summary. It’s no longer enough to put everything on your website and depend on your target audience to click through to come and get it.

RELATED. The Search Visibility Playbook: How B2Bs Can Stay Visible in the Age of AI 

“Attribution Panic” is Understandable

This is where, for most marketers today, things are becoming pretty uncomfortable.

If fewer clicks happen:

• Conversion paths break
• Referral data disappears
• “Direct traffic” balloons in your analytics
• Dashboards become less trustworthy

Amanda shared SparkToro’s own research showing that entire platforms — including TikTok, Slack, WhatsApp, and Discord — essentially obscure 100% of referral data.

What’s that mean for your analytics?

• Social traffic gets misclassified
• ROI models end up distorted
• Decision-making suffers

“We can’t make big investment decisions based on data we know is wrong.” — Amanda Natividad

For marketers reporting to analytical, numbers-driven leadership, this creates real tension.

What We’ve Lost, and What We Need to Relearn

Amanda isn’t arguing that attribution no longer matters. Rather, she makes the very good point that in general, we marketers allowed ourselves to become overly dependent on precision that was never as precise as we thought. So, what replaces the old-school attribution model? A little bit of old-school thinking, for starters:

A Return to Incremental Lift Thinking

Before dashboards and multi-touch attribution, marketers proved impact by looking at incremental lift, not perfect causation.

If exposure increased in a market, did results improve afterward? That meant measuring:

• Market-level performance changes
• Revenue deltas over time
• Correlation rather than one-to-one attribution

When clicks disappear, impact doesn’t — it just shows up in broader signals like branded search growth, deal velocity, and earlier brand recognition in the buying process. You lose some precision, but you gain a more honest view of the results.

A Shift From ROI to VOI (Value on Investment)

Traditional ROI asks how much revenue can be directly attributed to a tactic. VOI asks what value that tactic creates across the business. That value often shows up as:

• Less friction for sales
• Fewer repetitive support questions
• Faster buyer understanding
• Stronger brand recall and trust

In a zero-click environment, these indirect outcomes are often the most meaningful ones. VOI doesn’t replace accountability; it helps marketing leaders explain how their work improves business performance even when conversions can’t be cleanly traced back to a click.

“Marketing powers other parts of the business — and that value still matters.” — Amanda Natividad

How Zero-Click Marketing Raises the Bar for B2B Teams

Just like Google’s algorithm updates forced marketers to stop gaming SEO, zero-click environments force us to:

• Lead with value
• Be clear instead of clever
• Earn attention instead of extracting it

“We’re being forced to focus on providing value. And shouldn’t that have always been the goal?” — Amanda Natividad

When clicks aren’t guaranteed, clarity, usefulness, and relevance become the strategy across all channels.

The Bigger Opportunity: Creativity, Craft, and Taste

One of my most important takeaways from this conversation was more philosophical than tactical. In an environment flooded with AI-generated content, Amanda’s bet is that the differentiator isn’t speed or volume. It’s discernment — knowing what’s actually good, and what your audience really wants in those spaces where they’re hanging out.

AI can help you move faster. But there’s plenty it can’t do:

• Develop judgment
• Build empathy
• Create original insight
• Replace craft

Those remain human advantages, if we invest in the work to get them right.

Stay tuned for Episode 34 of The ChangeOver, where we’ll continue the conversation with Amanda and dive even deeper into marketing strategy in a world where nobody wants to click anymore. Subscribe here to be notified when it’s live.