Word of Mouth Marketing for Small Business: Who's Wearing Your Jersey?

Salesforce probably doesn't have the best product in its market. According to Hunter Lopatin of MarketScale, it definitely doesn't have the best customer support. It still became a billion dollar business, and Hunter thinks the reason is the people around it: the salespeople and marketers who use it every day and talk about it.

"When you have people talking about your brand, others talk about your brand."

Hunter lives this. He runs MarketScale's guide program, a network of about 365 referral and affiliate partners. When he joined me on the podcast, he described the idea with a Dallas example:

"But when we go to a game, the fans are wearing the jerseys. The fans are pulling out their phones and recording content. And we have to ask ourself in business, who's wearing our jersey?"

Here's how a small or mid-size business can answer that question, and where your website fits in.

1. You already have the people

Most owners say they don't have the team to make content. Hunter doesn't accept that:

"You got a hundred employees around you, you got a hundred customers, you got a hundred distributors and dealers and integrators. Those are your marketers, those are your fans."

This works at any size. As I put it during the conversation:

"even for an organization with like 10 people or five people, if you can have all five of those people promoting your brand rather than maybe just the company page on LinkedIn... you could see how they would actually bring a brand to the next level."

For your business: list everyone who already knows your work well: staff, happy customers, suppliers, partners. That's your crowd.

2. Find one champion and make it easy

Hunter told a story about a construction company where the first person they asked to film said no. So they lowered the bar:

"We made it feel easy saying, hey, there's no stress at all. Everything you create, it's gonna be approved by you, it's gonna get edited"

He filmed his morning coffee, his drive to work and a quick walkthrough on site. Once the edited clip was posted, the rest of the team changed their minds:

"And as soon as we started posting him out and creating those clips, everybody else in the business was like, hey, I wanna do this too"

For your business: don't launch a content program. Ask one person for one short video of something they already do every day. Share it with their name on it, and let the rest of the team see it.

3. Real beats polished

You don't need a studio. Hunter thinks of how he watches content himself:

"I will always watch a vlogger over going to some polished, full actor type TV show."

He isn't against production videos; MarketScale makes them. But his point is simple:

"But when you're able to scale the real authentic content, that's what we watch."

4. AI search rewards original content

This is where word of mouth meets search. AI tools like ChatGPT look for original, expert content:

"It's not that AI inherently just rejects anything coming from AI. It rejects anything unoriginal."

So content from your own people, saying things only they can say, is the kind that gets cited. He also gave a test any owner can run without special tools:

"Search into ChatGPT and ask questions that you think your buyers would ask before they know who you are... See what it sources. And go to those sources and say, okay, I need to post more here."

The answer depends on your industry. For one of Hunter's clients in the hearing aid space, the top source was a forum. For another, it was their own website. Others leaned on YouTube and Reddit.

For your business: run that test this week. If you want the bigger picture, we've covered GEO vs SEO and how to get your business recommended by ChatGPT.

5. Put the voices on your website

All of this content needs a home. Hunter:

"when your buyers are trying to learn more about you, they're going to go to your website to learn."

From my side as a web designer:

"It's what makes a website so much better so quickly is having good video content."

Written reviews still count. Hunter was clear that text helps:

"And yeah, written's great, especially for SEO and for LLMs too, for GEO, written is great. But the video content is what makes it real and authentic"

You don't need to host every video yourself. Our own site links out to YouTube, and the podcast has helped our sales since the first few episodes.

For your business: add customer video testimonials next to your services and contact form, not on a page nobody visits. More on that in the right images and videos make your site 10x better.

6. Turn fans into a referral program

Hunter's guide program started with fewer than 10 people: past clients and former employees who still liked the brand. His advice on starting one was short: "Start small."

Two habits keep it working:

• Know why each person is there. Hunter asks every new guide, "why do you wanna be a guide?" Some want side income, some want to learn media, some just feel close to the team.
• Teach, don't just reward. Prizes and email blasts only go so far. "But what actually engages them is education." He ran 30-minute open office hours twice a week. By the end of 2025, eight to 10 guides were joining each time, and they did most of the talking: "I would talk maybe 10% of the time because it's all the guides talking to each other."

This matters for us too. Looking at the last three months, I said on the show that "I think 70% of it has come from other marketing companies or affiliates more or less." Hunter's response applies to most small businesses:

"Your channel is your most important asset, especially as a smaller business because you don't have a huge sales force."

For your business: look for partners with complementary services. For a web design agency, that's social media and SEO firms. For you, it might be suppliers, installers or other trades that serve the same customers.

The takeaway

Word of mouth isn't luck. It comes from giving the people who already know you an easy way to talk about you, putting what they say where buyers look, and keeping your partners close.

If you want a website that puts your customers' voices front and center and shows up when people ask ChatGPT who to hire, book a call with us. And if you're in Dallas, we'd love to grab a coffee.