569: The #1 Way to Get More Shoppers Without Spending a Dime

Podcast: Download (Duration: 45:12 — 52.0MB)

Word-of-mouth marketing is the single highest-leverage traffic channel for an ecommerce store because it costs almost nothing per new customer, converts far better than paid ads, and doubles as the signal AI search engines like Perplexity and SearchGPT now use to decide which brands to cite. Building it comes down to three things: designing a customer experience worth talking about, personally showing up for your best customers (real replies to emails, real gifts they actually want, real comments on their social posts), and putting yourself out on social media and podcasts so your brand becomes an entity that AI search and Google recognize.

My co-host Toni Herrbach and I walk through why word-of-mouth is now more important than SEO for ecommerce, using specific examples from Bumblebee Linens (my linen store), Toni’s local Italian restaurant that upsold her with a free half-pour of wine and a jar of salt, and Gary Vaynerchuk’s $400 autographed Jay Cutler jersey stunt that turned into a viral wine order.

Below we cover why people actually shop where they shop, how to build customer relationships that generate repeat sales without ads, the corporate gifting trick that most brands get wrong, the social media and personal-brand play that now drives Google and AI visibility, and the checkout tactic (asking for a customer’s Instagram handle) that turns one purchase into ongoing organic reach.

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Key takeaways

• People shop for two reasons: consistency (Amazon) or customer experience (local boutique, direct-to-consumer brands). If you cannot beat Amazon on consistency, you win on customer experience.
• The bar for great customer service is embarrassingly low. Replying personally to customer emails is enough to make people say “I cannot believe a real person responded.”
• Corporate gifting works, but only if the gift is something the recipient actually wants. Do not send them a mug with your logo. That is an ad, not a gift.
• Gary Vaynerchuk spent $400 on an autographed Jay Cutler jersey for a small customer with a large Twitter following. One month later, the customer sent him a massive wine referral order.
• The most reliable modern word-of-mouth engine is social media. TikTok and YouTube are how people now find new restaurants, products, and destinations. Ignoring both is a strategic mistake for an ecommerce brand.
• AI search (SearchGPT, Perplexity) is starting to matter for ecommerce. Perplexity now has one-click checkout via ShopPay. Getting cited requires a strong brand entity, which requires you personally showing up on social, podcasts, and press.
• Steve’s biggest recent SEO win: linking every press mention on his personal site. Traffic to his blog doubled in one day and kept climbing, because Google now confidently ties him to his content.
• The checkout tactic worth testing: ask for the buyer’s Instagram handle at checkout, then have someone comment on their posts or reshare their content. Low cost, high emotional payoff.

Why word of mouth is still the best marketing channel for ecommerce

Word-of-mouth marketing is the best channel for ecommerce because it delivers your two highest-intent buyers (referrals from happy customers) at effectively zero customer acquisition cost, and it compounds with every good experience you deliver. Bumblebee Linens gets most of its wedding and event-planner business through word of mouth, and event-planner customers convert at rates paid ads cannot touch.

Every other channel has gotten worse in the last three years. Google organic click-through rates have collapsed under AI Overviews, Meta and Google ad costs have kept climbing, and Amazon FBA fees now eat about 61% of seller revenue. The relative value of a channel that costs nothing per new customer has never been higher.

Word of mouth is also the input to modern AI-search visibility. AI engines cite brand entities they recognize, and recognition comes from being mentioned across the web (podcasts, press, social media, reviews). A brand that a lot of people talk about is a brand that AI engines can confidently cite.

Why people actually shop where they shop

People shop for one of two reasons: consistency or customer experience. Amazon wins on consistency. If you cannot match Amazon on speed, price, and predictability, your only durable moat is customer experience.

Amazon’s customer experience is actually pretty good for buyers. Returns are usually easy, refunds are usually fast, and shipping is usually reliable. The reason people default to Amazon is not the experience, it is the predictability. Place an order at 11 p.m., have it on your porch by 5 p.m. tomorrow. That certainty is why Amazon owns over 50% of U.S. ecommerce.

Every other successful retailer wins on experience. The local Italian restaurant Toni goes to (owner from Italy via Brazil, always at the bar shaking your hand) has built such a strong experience moat that Toni drives past closer restaurants to get there. He gave her an extra half-pour of wine unprompted and a small jar of a salt they used in an appetizer she asked about. She has recommended that restaurant to everyone in town since.

Almost none of what that owner did cost him real money. It cost him attention. That is the entire template for ecommerce word of mouth: give customers small, specific, generous moments they will remember and repeat.

How to build customer relationships that turn into repeat sales

The two highest-ROI relationship tactics for an ecommerce brand are personally answering customer emails (yes, from the founder) and sending thoughtful year-end gifts to top customers. Both are extremely cheap and both routinely produce shocked, grateful reactions from the customer.

I try to answer every email I get personally, and at least once a week someone replies with “I cannot believe a real person responded.” That is how low the current bar is. Most ecommerce brands hide behind a support ticket queue with a canned auto-response. A founder reply on a real question, especially in the first 12 hours, converts a first-time buyer into a lifetime customer.

Jen (my wife) sends small holiday gifts to Bumblebee Linens’ best customers every year. I initially thought it was pointless (they were already regulars), but many of those customers have kept ordering for over a decade. The gift is not what closes the next order. It is what makes the customer feel seen enough to keep choosing you over Amazon when the next purchase comes up.

Relationships cannot be automated. You can systematize them (SOPs for who gets a gift, who gets a reply), but the actual moment of “someone at this brand knows me” has to be human.

The corporate gifting mistake almost every ecommerce brand makes

The biggest mistake ecommerce brands make with gifting is sending customers branded swag (a mug, a t-shirt, a pen with your logo) instead of something the customer actually wants. Branded swag is an ad you are asking the customer to display for you. That is not a gift.

Good gifts are useful, unbranded, and slightly personal. A Yeti-style cup in a color the customer likes. A holiday ornament tied to the year or the customer’s interests. Something they would keep on their desk or in their kitchen instead of leaving in a drawer.

For your top 20 to 50 customers, spend 5 to 10 minutes each on their social profiles first. Find out what they are actually into. Match the gift to that. It sounds like a lot of work, and it is worth it because a matched gift is remembered for years.

Gary Vaynerchuk ran the extreme version of this on his wine business. He audited his customer list, found people who spent modest amounts but had large Twitter followings, and identified one customer who was a huge Jay Cutler fan. He sent that customer a $400 autographed framed Jay Cutler jersey. Nothing happened for a few weeks, then exactly one month later Gary got a massive wine referral order sent by that customer. That is what a $400 gift buys when it is thoughtful and targeted.

How to get your ecommerce brand cited by AI search (SearchGPT, Perplexity)

AI search engines like SearchGPT and Perplexity cite brand entities they recognize, and recognition is built by having your brand and your founder mentioned across the web (podcasts, YouTube, press, Reddit, social media, and other blogs). Getting cited by AI requires the same brand-authority signals that used to work for SEO backlinks, just distributed across more surfaces.

Perplexity now has one-click checkout. Ask Perplexity for a product, click the shopping button, and the order gets placed directly through a Shopify store using ShopPay credentials the user has already saved. That is a full purchase, in the AI answer, before any Google click happens. If your brand is not in that AI answer, the transaction never touches your store.

Getting into those AI answers requires strong brand authority signals. That means the founder or the brand being talked about across the web, not just on the brand’s own site. Podcasts, YouTube guest spots, real customer reviews, Reddit threads, and press mentions all feed the entity graph AI engines use.

I made one small change to my personal site (adding a section that links every podcast, press mention, and speaking gig I have done) and my traffic doubled in one day and kept climbing. Google finally had enough signal to confidently associate me with my own content. Same principle applies for a product brand: if your brand name appears in five podcast transcripts, three roundup articles, and 20 authentic Reddit threads, AI search will start citing you.

How to use social media as an ecommerce word-of-mouth engine

Social media is now the primary word-of-mouth engine for ecommerce because a single TikTok or Reel about your product can drive more organic discovery than a year of Instagram posts, and clips of you (or the person behind the brand) build the entity signal AI search uses. YouTube and TikTok are where people find new restaurants, products, and destinations in 2025.

You do not need to make content directly about your product. There is a woman in Vancouver who runs a swimwear brand and posts under the handle Strawberry Milk Mob about dating advice. She has 2.2 million followers, never mentions the swimwear in her videos, and drives her whole business through the link in her bio. Her content matches her target demographic (women, roughly her age); the product simply lives adjacent.

For most ecommerce brands, the easiest starting content is behind-the-scenes. Set up a camera in front of the embroidery machine when someone orders a funny custom message. Film how the packaging gets designed. Talk through what actually breaks in the business day-to-day. People love watching how things get made, and a 5,000-subscriber niche channel with an engaged audience can support a service business or a specialty ecommerce brand entirely on its own.

Toni’s biggest push into this in 2025 is content built around Bumblebee Linens as a real operating business: what breaks, what runs, what a print job looks like, and the surprising day-to-day of running a linens company. The behind-the-scenes format works because it does not require the founder to be a comedian or a personality. It just requires showing up consistently.

The one checkout tactic that turns customers into content creators

The highest-leverage single tactic to test right now is asking for the customer’s Instagram handle at checkout, then having someone from your brand comment on their posts or reshare their content when they post something you made. Low cost, high emotional payoff, and it converts customers into ongoing organic reach.

The instinct that makes this work is the same one behind the “you replied to my email” reaction. People are starved for genuine, positive attention on social media. When a brand they love comments on their post (not asking for anything, just being nice), it feels good and gets talked about.

I rented outfits from Rent the Runway for years. Every time I posted an outfit I loved and tagged them, they would reshare it to their stories. I knew exactly what they were doing (it was brand-building for them, obviously), and it still felt good. I told other people about them. Even a cynical marketer’s brain responds to being seen. Your customer, who is not a marketer, will respond even more strongly.

This can be outsourced once you build the SOP. You are not writing a novel. A single-sentence “these turned out beautifully, thanks for sharing” comment from a real brand account, sent consistently, converts customers into free ongoing distribution.

Frequently asked questions

What is word-of-mouth marketing for an ecommerce store?

Word-of-mouth marketing for an ecommerce store is any strategy that gets existing customers to actively recommend, tag, review, or share your brand with new customers. It includes referral programs, thoughtful gifting, personal customer service (like a founder-reply email), a memorable unboxing or customer experience, and content that customers organically post about your product on TikTok or Instagram.

Why does word of mouth work better than paid ads for ecommerce?

Word of mouth works better than paid ads because a personal recommendation from a trusted person has near-100% intent match, whereas an ad interrupts someone who was doing something else. Word-of-mouth customers convert at higher rates, spend more per order, and are far more likely to become repeat buyers. It also does not stop working when your ad budget runs out.

How do I get more word-of-mouth referrals for my ecommerce store?

The three highest-leverage moves are: reply personally to customer emails (especially from the founder), send unbranded thoughtful gifts to your top 20 to 50 customers each year, and design a customer experience worth talking about (unboxing, handwritten note, follow-up thank you, small unexpected extra). Then make it easy for customers to share by asking for their Instagram handle at checkout and engaging with what they post.

Do I need to be on social media to build word of mouth for my brand?

Yes, in 2025 you need at least one social channel (TikTok or YouTube) as a distribution surface, because word-of-mouth recommendations increasingly happen inside those platforms rather than in text messages or emails. You also need presence outside your own site (podcasts, press mentions, Reddit, other blogs) so AI search engines like SearchGPT and Perplexity will start citing your brand as an entity they recognize.

What kind of gift should I send my best ecommerce customers?

Send unbranded, useful, slightly personal gifts. A quality drinkware item in a color they would pick, a holiday ornament tied to something they mentioned, or a small artisanal food item are all good. Never send branded swag with your logo (a mug, t-shirt, pen), because that turns the gift into an ad. If you have time for your top customers, check their social profiles first to match the gift to something they actually like.

How does word of mouth affect my ecommerce brand’s AI search visibility?

AI search engines like SearchGPT and Perplexity increasingly cite brand entities they recognize, and recognition is built by your brand being mentioned across the web (podcasts, YouTube, press, Reddit, reviews, other blogs). Traditional word-of-mouth activity generates most of those mentions naturally, which is why word-of-mouth marketing and AI-search visibility now feed each other directly.

Can I run an ecommerce store without doing customer service?

You can, but you will grow much slower and get far fewer repeat customers than a store that treats customer service as a growth channel. Real customer service (fast personal replies, easy returns, follow-through on problems) is the single cheapest way to earn recommendations. If you do not want to talk to customers at all, Amazon FBA is the platform that lets you offload that, but you give up brand ownership and margin in exchange.

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