Rand Fishkin on Building Brand Influence in a Zero-Click World

How does marketing work when LLMs are disrupting search visibility and platforms are suppressing clicks back to your website?

In this episode, Rand Fishkin, co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, joins Dan Baptiste to unpack major shifts in search-driven discovery, the rise of “zero-click” content, and the hard truths marketers must face in the process: site traffic is a vanity metric and attribution is a dead-end.

Today, brand discovery and consideration happens across fragmented, untrackable terrain—in feeds, forums, and ChatGPT sessions—that don’t feed neatly into our analytics dashboards. Your website is no longer the destination; it’s one stop on a messy, pinball-machine buyer journey.

But there’s a path forward. Rand doesn’t just dismantle the old content marketing playbook, he lays out new rules for modern brand building:

• Getting traffic isn’t the goal. Building influence is.
• “Building on rented land” isn’t risky. It’s required.
• Influence now comes from showing up consistently across platforms your audience already uses—LinkedIn, Instagram Reels, Reddit, LLM search—not pulling people back to your site.

This is a major shift from traffic-centric marketing to influence-centric marketing. If you're serious about staying relevant in the AI era, this episode is a must-listen.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why classic attribution is inaccurate and what measurement looks like now
• How zero-click behavior and platform algorithms are changing everything
• The importance of multi-channel presence (even on “rented land”)
• Why AI can support ideation but not replace human creativity
• How to align teams around a clear, consistent market position
• Tactics for leveraging original content and insights across channels

Episode Highlights:

[03:55] The Role of Content Atomization in Modern Marketing

Rand explains how today’s content strategies mirror TV, record a lot, cut it down to attention-grabbing moments, and amplify on platforms like LinkedIn and Reddit.

[06:30] The Myth of Attribution

Rand shares why he feels embarrassed about his past focus on full-funnel attribution, urging marketers to shift to measurement over credit.

[17:08] The Future of SEO in an LLM-Driven World

Rand unpacks how people are still discovering brands, but the journey is happening off your website, inside AI conversations, and platform ecosystems.

[23:42] Building on Rented Land

Forget the old advice; if your audience is on LinkedIn, YouTube, or Reddit, that’s where your brand should be, even if it means no direct traffic back to you.

[32:03] Traffic as a Vanity Metric

Why focusing only on traffic misses the bigger picture of influence and brand-building, and how to reframe what success looks like.

[39:53] The New Website Publishing & Distribution Strategy

Websites are still the home base for your insights and data, but most of the audience interaction now happens on platforms you don’t own. Rand lays out tactics for leveraging original content and insights across channels.

[48:39] Breaking Down Silos for Impact

Rand and Dan discuss how alignment between product, marketing, and sales is the secret to creating a brand that people love and remember.

[53:25] The AI Agent Hype

Rand shares his skepticism about AI agents fully taking over tasks like researching tickets or purchases, arguing that brand trust and loyalty will always matter more.

Resources:

SparkToro website

Ross Hudgins’ SEO Research via Siege Media

Reddit as a Marketing Channel

Alaska Airlines Loyalty Program Case Study

Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” Campaign

Want more bold takes on the future of brand marketing? Explore past episodes of Content Disrupted and insights from enterprise marketing leaders on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.