Welcome To Zero Click Digital Marketing
Yes, the search game is rigged. But don't hate the players. Hate the game.
It’s Monday. And, yeah, I know. It was a very weird weekend.
As this email flies, I’m headed to Florida to speak to a conference of commercial printing companies who are all trying to make sense of what’s going on in the world of marketing right now.
Sometimes the weird jokes write themselves.
So - we have 170 days left to reach our marketing goals this year.
Well, wait, let’s be honest. Nobody really works or does anything after Dec. 20. And if we’re really honest, December itself is a wash, and so is the last week of November with the U.S. Thanksgiving celebration.
So, you really have 133 days to reach your marketing goals
So…. How’s it going?
Okay, before I go on - speaking of…
<cue fancy game show music - and the brilliant voice talent of Don Pardo (look him up kids)>
Here at TCA, we just finished a content marketing project with a tech company. We helped them put a new overall thought leadership platform together, as well as helped them implement a new editorial calendar tool, and a content plan for the next six months.If this kind of project is similar to something you’re looking to do - let us know. We’re ready for one more client.
<scoots off stage>
Okay… Let’s get focused and talk about groovy marketing things…. In this week’s edition.
Zero-Click Content Marketing Is Now A Thing
An amazing Content Marketing example
The rise of sludge content
Let’s roll….
ZOOM LENS: ZERO CLICK CONTENT MARKETING
So a couple of weeks ago SparkToro released its 2024 Zero-Click Search Study You might be surprised to learn just how much traffic isn’t getting generated by search these days.
Zero-click search happens when a searcher gets their answer on the results page without having to click a link. For example, if a searcher asks, “What is content marketing” The definition just appears on the results page, so the searcher never visits a website that might have different definitions.
Rand Fishkin and his team at SparkToro examined millions and millions of Google searches all over the world using what they call a multimillion device clickstream panel. They didn’t look at keywords, which wouldn’t have been terribly helpful anyway. Instead, they looked at what Americans and Europeans do after they conduct a search.
What did they find?
More than one-third (37%) of people end their search without clicking. Of the remaining people, 21% conduct another search and 41% click on something.
Of those who click, 70% go to an organic result, and 28.5% end up on another Alphabet (i.e., Google) property, such as YouTube, Maps, Images, or News. And 1% click on a paid ad.
While nuances exist as they relate to mobile and voice search, those numbers are interesting. For example, almost 30% of clicks go to a Google property where Alphabet can further monetize the searchers’ actions. That doesn’t even count any portion of the 21% who ultimately end up on a Google property when they conduct another search because they didn’t get the right, best, or most satisfying answer the first time.
However, the real punch line is this: Only 360 of every 1,000 U.S. Google searches go to the open web.
The research concludes that Google is NOT losing in search despite what many seem to think. Google is doing very well in translating more searches with more avenues to keep users in the Google ecosystem.
Evolve your Google strategy
What’s the takeaway?
People are overreacting with their claims that AI Overviews (the AI-generated summary at the top of results) and the quality of Google search results are failing.
The research clearly indicates that marketers can no longer think of Google search as a silo. In a more perfect world, you would have matching content on Google’s other properties — YouTube, News, Maps, etc. Every blog post created should be accompanied by a video, a news item, etc.
But the study’s bigger lesson is that marketers must look at the Google ecosystem to understand where they have the best chance of being an off-ramp for people looking for things. It’s most likely not a link to your website or blog, at least initially.
We could wax philosophically about the technically complex zero-search results. But the simplest way to address it right now is to ask: “How do we become the answer that Google uses for that particular query?”
I can tell you from experience about the benefits of doing that. For a few years, when searchers asked, “What is content marketing,” a page from the Content Marketing Institute popped up. In recent years, Google changed that. CMI remains the No. 1 organic answer in the query, but above it is a “dictionary box” with a third-party definition that I don’t think is quite right.
But there’s nothing I can do about that. The question (and this is one that I think really deserves some serious thinking) is “what will be considered the truth?” In other words, am I wrong about that definition? Or am I right and it doesn’t matter because no one hears my objection? Either way, I lose.
For something like the definition of Content Marketing the stakes are pretty low. But what if it’s you, or your brand?
You must understand that the search game is (still) rigged. Google isn’t optimizing for the best answers. Google optimizes for Google. If that’s also the best answer, well then they’re satisfied. And if not?
It’s your story. Who’s going to tell it the best?
Let’s have a great week.
WIDE ANGLE LENS: MARKETING SNAPS
Let’s get it all in frame. Shall we?
🏆Want to see an amazing example of content marketing? - If you haven’t been turned on to Mohawk Chevrolet’s TikTok Channel then you need to see it immediately. The New York car dealership has transformed their social media channel into an original show done in the spirit of The Office. There are wonderful characters, it’s hysterical. Here’s an article about the campaign and the team behind it.
🤮 More Sludge Content - Back in the day I was a huge fan of TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog). Yes, it was back when blogs were called Weblogs. When AOL sold off TUAW in 2015 you would have thought that would be the end of an era. Except it’s not. According to this Verge article, a new owner scooped up the domain and began posting articles under the bylines of former writers who haven’t worked there for over a decade. And that new owner, which also appears to run other AI sludge websites, seems to be trying to hide.
LENS FLARE: - TCA Events & Happenings For You
Did you miss any of our Webinars
We’’re taking the Summer off for Webinars - we’ll be back in August with our newest. In the mean time, we’ve got a new page that features our last four months of webinars. So, if you missed any - check out the on-demand versions.
LENS CAP: Let’s Finish With A Flourish
The TUAW thing is an interesting story - and I feel sick for those journalists. But I also include it here for another reason to bring all this newsletter back around to me (see how I do that LOL). So, this last weekend it was brought to my attention that my X account has been suspended. See the screenshot here:
There’s only one problem with that. I deleted my X/Twitter account almost six months ago. I have no idea if someone tried to launch an account under my handle, and then it got suspended somehow (I mean whaddya gotta do to get suspended these days - sheesh). Or, maybe X just decided to throw me under the bus (you can’t quit, you’re fired). Either way, the lesson with both the TUAW and this is - we have to be much more circumspect about letting our namespace accounts fall into the wrong hands. If I had to do it again, I probably wouldn’t have deleted my account - and would have just maintained a “zombie” there so that no one could take it.
Even if we’re going to “quit” something - it’s probably worth hanging on to our account names and shared brands - so that we don’t actually run the risk of being impersonated.
Let’s be careful out there.
It’s your story. Tell it well.
See you next week!