A clicker when properly used with well timed clicks is just more efficient at communicating to the dog the exact desired behavior. That the exact behavior the dog is doing is desired and earns a reward. That's what I like about it. You can shape almost any behavior if your good.
You can do the exact same thing with a consistent well timed word but consistency is harder.
There are many things I train that I would have a harder time doing with a clicker, just because I don't want or need to carry one around with me always, and to me training is always happening all day whenever me and the dog interact.
Simple things like naming the room every time we go in it, saying "lets go in the house" every time we go in the house, "drink some water" every time the dog drinks, saying "do your business" every time the dog is about to relieve "smell it" when I hold something down for her to smell, "look there" when I point to something she'll want, "take it" for things I want her to take (starting with food/toys) etc. etc. all day all the time for lots of mundane actions and places that over time become conditioned just by consistent repetition, as well as naming each toy every time I pick it up to play and go get it every time I toss it, go find it every time I hide it and bring it here every time the dog does and just building on each thing as she starts to understand it.
Those things come in handy when I want to teach "go get X and bring it here" and X can mean anything she knows the name of, or even just something she's sniffing at the time i can say "get it, bring it here". Or I can say "go in the house" and the dog gets it. No need for a clicker. It's just the way I self taught myself to train years ago.
I talk to my dog a lot, but try to be very consistent in what I say and when and eventually the dog learns a lot that way, we learn to communicate. My dogs life is constant mental stimulation, I am always challenging the dog to think and learn.. I end up with a dog that responds to basically what appears like normal conversation to most people. I also talk in dog as well when it'll get the message across quicker, like an alert bark, a whine, body language etc. to get the response I want to condition to a cue or help the dog understand. Try to picture a 50 year old 6'4 guy on the floor play arching like a dog to to teach a dog to play with a human..

Maybe I'm crazy but I get results.
I also observe closely and reinforce the dogs communication with me by consistently reinforcing her attempts to ask for things in a way I can understand and approve of. She paws the back door, I say "backyard?", and then repeat "backyard" when she goes out the door, every time. Anytime the dog wants something I go out of my way to figure out what it is, and to get her to come up with a way to tell me, specifically I try to teach "show me" when the dog wants something to let her know I want to comply and to offer me behaviors until I understand. Then I reinforce those to give her one more way to communicate back to me.
I've had Hope about 2 months and she's already well housebroken, learned what the words leash and ball are, is getting pretty conditioned to relieve on cue, and learned "go get it" as well as sit, down, shake, and to target my hand, to target where I point to a degree, and a decent recall by voice and whistle, to go to the door and paw once to go out and "lets go inside" only the first "sit" was learned by clicker to get her started because being asked for a behavior for a reward was foreign to her. She's now playing with me and learning how as that seemed foreign to her as well. She seemed pretty void of human interaction.
I will definitely go back to the clicker for more tricky concepts that almost require shaping later though for sure. It's a great tool but it's not the end all be all of training IMO.
I've taught dogs to open and close doors, turn off lights, take something and put it on the coffe table etc. and all sorts of things before I ever even heard of a clicker.
The rewarding part is when you tell a dog something it's never done before, like a behavior chain of three commands it has never chained that makes it think for a minute, you see the light bulb come on, and off they go to do it!