7 consequences of the shift to the zero-click marketing world

We can't change the path where big platforms go on. Let's see how we can adapt.

Zero-click marketing is not a new term, but if it had sounded a bit revolutionary earlier, now AI chats and AI overviews in Google have made everyone talk about it.

Suddenly all content creators realized that there is no way back, and it is unlikely to be possible to change it.

You've probably seen Rand Fishkin's video about it. If not, I recommend to view it.

It looks like Rand was the first who in 2022 explained what zero-click content is and why we have to use it.

2 simple ideas of how digital space is changing

1/ Platforms (search engines and social media) work hard to keep the user's attention on their platforms.

For example, most social media (especially LinkedIn, X, and Facebook) penalize your posts if you include links.

2/ In many cases users also don't want to leave a platform to get the answer.

We can't change the path where big platforms go on, we can only adapt.

Rand says that it leads to zero-click marketing. Brands are fighting more and more for impressions, not website traffic.

I agree with this statement. I observe it every day during my SEO and LinkedIn experiments with Sitechecker and Favikon.

I guess this is a big shift that will have long-term consequences, especially for B2B brands. In B2B sales cycles are longer and usually more touchpoints are needed to convert a user into the customer.

7 consequences of the zero-click marketing world

1/ The accuracy of measuring ROI by one specific channel will drop significantly.

It means B2B marketers will make more mistakes. The cost of mistakes will rise too.

The ROI calculation by traffic channel was built on the rule that you acquire users to the website where web analytics tools can track the conversion.

My GA4 Looker Studio template with a performance by source/medium looks convincing. But in this case, a huge part of the social networks' contribution lies in google/organic. And I don’t know how big this part is.

Even if multiple channels are involved in the user journey you could use different multi-channel attribution approaches to calculate the impact of each channel.

Now, if you want to reach more people, you avoid sending users to the website. As a result, more and more people who see your content on social media will find your website via brand search queries and you won't track the first touch in web analytics.

2/ As a result more B2B brands will ask you, where you find them the first time, during onboarding.

I bet it will become almost a must-have feature. This will be the only way to reduce the risk of spending money on the channels that don’t work and get quick feedback about what works.

We already did it on book a demo page on Sitechecker and will implement it in the sign-up process soon.

3/ Brands will spend more resources on designing content for each platform

It is no longer enough to publish an interesting article on your corporate blog and distribute a link to it through social networks.

An example of the carousel we did for LinkedIn to promote our SEO software market study

The content creation process has changed completely. When I have an interesting idea I think about how I should design it in different channels even before I created it.

Writing a blog post is the simplest part of the job. On LinkedIn, X, and YouTube you have to use fewer words and learn how to engage people and keep their attention.

4/ Email newsletters never died, but now they're getting a second wind.

Platforms aren't just trying to keep people's attention. They're showing your content to all your followers less and less. That's also why I launched this newsletter in Jan 2025.

I have 10k+ followers on LinkedIn, but my median amount of impressions per post is around 2-3k impressions.

Among my 200+ posts, only 15 have more than 10k impressions.

So, my content isn’t distributed to all my followers, and I don’t paste external links to my posts.

I believe more and more B2B founders and marketing will start their email newsletters.

5/ The B2B influencer marketing boom is just the beginning.

The rise of LinkedIn can be both a cause and a consequence of this.

Influencers are the fastest way to get more impressions. They already have access to your audience, and they already have the trust of their audience.

I see how Favikon rankings become viral in hours and how many people are already looking for these ratings on Google.

Creators need these ratings, but brands need them even more because it makes it much easier for them to understand who invest in.

6/ CRO and copywriting will become even more important.

Less traffic on the website = each visitor is more expensive = you have to figure out how to convert him/her.

Also, only the right message to the right audience can force people to leave the platform and visit your website by brand search queries.

7/ SEO isn't dead.

It looks like, this is the only good point from this list. However, I think so.

1. There is always new information people will look for that AI chats haven't learned yet.

2. For many SaaS websites, SEO becomes a part of product management, because it helps to understand how to improve UX too (people still don't want duplicates, they want live pages, visible images, easy tools, etc).

3. I believe we still need static pages that are easy to find, recognize who is behind them, link to them, and send friends. Posts on social media and excerpts from AI chats aren't good for it.

That’s all. Correct me if you disagree with any statement.