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Zero-click marketing is the practice of designing marketing and content so users get value without ever clicking through to your site in the form of answers, solutions, or brand impressions delivered inside the platforms and surfaces people already use (search results, social feeds, chatbots, voice assistants, in-app experiences). For seasoned digital marketing experts, on the surface of it this feels like a radical departure from chasing clicks and website visits but beneath the surface, it’s really just a case of reframing expectations and adjusting the way you structure and deliver content to your target audience.
In a world where search engines, social networks, and AI assistants increasingly provide instant answers (featured snippets, knowledge panels, AI overviews, embedded videos, carousel cards, in-platform product displays), “winning” looks less like driving raw visits and more like owning context, trust and attention where people pause. This shift forces marketers to reframe success metrics, creative formats, and distribution tactics to capture attention, conversions and brand equity even when a click never happens.
Consider search engines as a retail high street for and you are a shop owner. Your goal up to now has been to stand out from your competitors and attract digital footfall to your shop (or website). Your shop window attracts visitors and in-store, you convert them into customers. Search engine marketing aims to optimise your presence to ensure you maximise the clicks to your store and conversions. But that’s changing rapidly.
Search engines and platforms answer queries directly in the interface through snippets, knowledge panels, AI overviews, “People Also Ask”, and embedded video — so many informational queries are resolved without a visit to your page. The role of your digital shop front has changed and so small to medium business owners must reimagine their marketing strategy.
This changes the value of discovery: there’s a massive shift from referral visits to a greater focus on consistent brand exposure inside third-party platform experiences. The net result of this is twofold: (i) pure traffic as a dominant digital marketing KPI becomes less useful and (ii) there’s a higher premium on being the quoted source the platform quotes or the content shown inside the result.
This makes content optimisation all the more important. A direct answer that cites your product or content — even if it doesn’t generate a click — can drive brand lift, search intent alignment, higher downstream conversion rates (via voice, app usage, direct brand queries) and incremental demand that bypasses traditional click metrics. Multiple industry analyses show zero-click behaviour is rising and that brands that optimise for ownership of answers, schema, and structured content see disproportionate benefits.
Examples:
A user asks Google “how to change a bike tyre” or “how to change a headlight in a VW Passat” and the search results show a step-by-step snippet and a short how-to video from a brand, so they don’t click further.
A social feed shows a full recipe card with ingredients and steps; the user bookmarks or screenshots the post and shares it on WhatsApp rather than visiting the site.
A voice assistant reads an answer sourced from a knowledge panel or FAQ you published; the user acts on it via an app or in-store rather than visiting a website.
These are just a few examples of zero-click interactions between customers and brands that are happening every single minute — your brand may still be the answer, but the user never touches your landing page but their engagement represents a relatively new value-stream that the best digital marketing experts are already capitalising on.
These are just a few examples of zero-click interactions between customers and brands that are happening every single minute — your brand may still be the answer, but the user never touches your landing page but their engagement represents a relatively new value-stream that the best digital marketing experts are already capitalising on.
Zero-click searches are definitely disruptive especially for publishers dependent on pageviews and ad impressions (CPMs) but they’re not a death knell as long as you can adapt your strategy. Think of them as a change in terms of capturing people’s attention: platforms will capture some value, but brands that build direct, multi-channel relationships (email, apps, social followings) and that own the answer ecosystem can sustain and even grow value. Some publishers have successfully repackaged answerable content into subscription offerings, apps and premium newsletter formats. The smarter path is to diversify revenue and optimise for both owned channels and platform-native visibility.
To adapt to this growing zero-click trend, businesses must consider three core elements to a well-executed marketing strategy that is zero-click proof:
1. Visibility: Create content designed to appear in SERP features: concise, authoritative snippets, FAQ blocks, step lists and schema markup so platforms can parse and display your content. Structured data helps platforms attribute the answer to your brand even if the user stays on the platform.
2. Utility: Build micro-content that is complete and delivers value on its own: short videos, carousels, single-screen explainers, and social posts that solve a problem without requiring navigation away. Think about brand-first formatting: clear branding within the asset and subtle CTAs that invite future engagement.
3. Measurement: Move beyond last-click web traffic. Track brand lift, search impressions in SERP features, assist metrics, share-of-voice inside AI overviews, embedded click-outs, voice-action conversions, and downstream behavioral signals (direct searches for your brand, app installs, store visits). Combine platform analytics with first-party telemetry and experiments to measure the value of zero-click experiences.
The first trick is prioritising your time. Small to medium businesses don’t typically have the luxury of being able to optimise and reproduce all of their content with zero-click opportunities in mind. Be selective. As explained here on the excellent SEMRush breakdown, prioritising high-intent search queries, brand awareness opportunities (e.g. trending topics in your niche) and low-competition SERP features can produce quick wins for your zero-click efforts.
Zero-click marketing rewards a content strategy that puts a clear emphasis on completeness and reusability:
Create canonical micro-assets: Ideally, every longform article should spawn a 30–90 second extractable answer, a 60–90 second video, a set of images/infographics, and an FAQ snippet. The micro-asset is the weapon of choice in zero-click battlegrounds but this requires focus and effort.
Prioritise brand signals inside assets: If a user sees an answer without clicking, you still want the brand to be memorable and searchable later. Include clear logo placement, verbal brand mentions in videos and short “about” lines in the content.
Optimise content for machines and people: Write human-friendly answers while also structuring content for extraction by AI and search engines. Use schema, but also human-centric storytelling that builds trust.
Sounds kinda funny, how do I optimise for zero clicks?!? It’s more a case of making the most of not getting the click. Clicks are still good, you’re just adapting to a world where you will get less of them and still be able to win customers. The checklist below will help with optimising your content:
1. Answer the question first: front-load the concise answer in the first 40–60 words/seconds. Featured snippets and AI overviews favor brevity and clarity.
2. Use structured data: FAQPage, HowTo, Product, Recipe and other schema types make your content machine-readable and increase the chance platforms will reuse it directly.
3. Design for extractability: format content as clear lists, numbered steps, tables, and short Q&A blocks so snippets and assistants can extract the exact text.
4. Repurpose in multiple formats: publish the same core answer as text, short video, image infographic and audio. Platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram prefer native assets (video carousels, image packs, short clips).
5. Optimise brand signals: include succinct and subtle brand mentions inside the snippetable content (e.g., “By [Brand] — 3 steps to…”) so when platforms surface your answer, the brand still appears.
6. Monitor SERP features: track which keywords trigger featured snippets, AI overviews or knowledge panels and prioritise those where you can credibly be the source. Tools like SEMRush that surface SERP features help identify such opportunities. Operating without tools still works but it’s slower and more tedious.
Paid and performance marketing strategies are adapting all the time with regulations providing a fresh challenge and will also evolve in the zero-click era. Here are some tips to factor into your paid marketing strategy:
Bid for presence, not just clicks: Some paid placements (knowledge panels, shopping panels, in-platform cards) can increase visibility and assist conversion events off the click.
Value assisted conversions: Zero-click exposure can be a powerful assist. Attribute and credit impressions inside SERP features and social surfaces that later drive conversions in app, store or direct traffic.
Shift creative to platform-native formats: Short, brand-first clips and product cards perform better inside feeds and often show up in zero-click contexts.
Use experiment-driven budgets: Run lift studies to compare click-driven spend vs. presence-driven spend and measure long-term brand metrics. Recent analyses recommend tightening targeting and focusing on high-intent queries where presence amplifies downstream conversions.
One of the best aspects of working in digital marketing over the last 15 years has been the ability to attribute real monetary value to the marketing effort at an individual campaign level. In many ways this is the hardest shift for marketers in the zero-click world: creating a KPI system that recognises the value of attention on third party platforms and not just website and landing page visits.
The nicely branded graphic above from Datos and SparkToro illustrates how much SEO is changing. In 2024, only 30% of European searchers chose an organic search result. That means 70% of searchers went elsewhere for their answer, this is a huge opportunity for your business. Seize it.
Key metrics to adopt:
Impressions in SERP features and AI overviews (share of appearances).
Assisted conversion: downstream conversions influenced by zero-click exposures.
Brand lift studies: short experiments that measure recall and preference after exposure to platform answers.
Direct and branded search growth: an increase in people searching for your brand after encountering an answer is a strong signal of effective zero-click marketing.
Micro-engagements inside platforms: saves, shares, follows, voice actions, and time-spent on in-app assets.
By combining these with traditional website and landing page performance metrics you can get a more holistic view of your marketing performance. HEALTH WARNING: Do not let decling website sessions alone dictate the health of a campaign.
How your team are set up to capture zero-click markeing opportunities will depend on your own context. From a marketing perspective, it’s all hands on deck to ensure your SEO, content and social media teams are aligned to produce extractable, native assets. Brand and design personnel should also be embedding logos and brand snippets while analytics and testing should also be focused more on measuring brand performance and assisted conversions. Whether you have a one-person marketing department or a bigger marketing team with specialist roles, the zero-click effort has to happen across the board to maximise its potential impact on sales.
From what I have seen, businesses that are alive to the zero-click opportunity are still in a minority, so there’s room for mistakes and learning as you go. The biggest mistake I’ve seen so far is to start incorporating zero-click elements into your marketing strategy while continuing to prioritise traditional measurement as indicators of success (i.e. clicks, website visits). These are some common pitfalls to avoid:
Publishing unstructured longform and hoping it ranks as an answer: If you want to be excerpted, you must format for extraction. This may be something you need to outsource to a technical marketer or web developer but it’s something worth investing in if you don’t have the in-house capability.
Letting platforms retain your users: This one is a real hang-up for me. Social media algorithms are designed to retain users and it’s not a battle you can easily win based on trends. But this should not mean conceding outright because then you are forever at the mercy of algorithm changes. Stealthily build direct channels (email marketing lists, app, CRM), collect first-party data, and convert zero-click awareness into durable relationships.
Long-fingering experiments. I don’t know how many times I’ve made this mistake through the years and I cannot emphasise enough that experimentation is vital. The landscape is changing fast; run controlled tests to learn which zero-click tactics actually drive downstream revenue.
For your end-of-year 2026 marketing strategy meeting, focus on treating zero-click as a structural shift: audit priority keywords for SERP features and zero-click risk/reward and map opportunities where your brand can own the answer; launch a “snippet-first” content stream (short, self-contained answers, FAQ schema and 60–90s videos) so your assets perform natively inside search and social; overhaul measurement to include impressions in SERP features, assists, brand-lift studies and downstream conversions (branded search growth, app installs, direct sales) rather than relying on sessions alone; run rapid experiments that test whether owning the answer drives real business outcomes; and double-down on owned channels and simple tools (templates, checklists, newsletters) that convert zero-click awareness into durable customer relationships and revenue.
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