The burgeoning landscape of artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI and large language models (LLMs), presents both unprecedented opportunities and significant challenges for e-commerce startups striving to capture customer attention. Kenny Trusnik, founder of the marketing agency Forest City Digital, advocates for a foundational approach: meticulously organizing and enriching product data. This strategy, he asserts, is paramount for e-commerce businesses aiming to thrive amidst the current "AI tumult."
Trusnik’s core advice, shared during a recent discussion with Eric Bandholz, founder of Provision Prototype, crystallizes into a clear directive: "Focus on getting the product data as deep and clean as possible in a structured environment." This emphasis on data integrity and structured formatting, he explains, is not merely a technical necessity but a strategic imperative that directly influences a startup’s visibility and discoverability within the rapidly evolving AI-powered digital ecosystem.
The Foundation: Deep and Clean Product Data
The advent of LLMs capable of understanding and processing vast amounts of information has fundamentally altered how consumers discover and interact with products online. Platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are increasingly becoming digital concierges, guiding shoppers through their purchase journeys. For e-commerce startups, this means their product catalog is no longer just a database for their own website; it’s a critical resource for AI models that can surface these products to potential customers, often before traditional search engines do.
"Think of it like this," Trusnik elaborates, "If you’re trying to get listed in a popular catalog, you want to provide the most accurate, detailed, and well-organized information possible. LLMs are the new, incredibly powerful catalogs. The cleaner and deeper your product data, the more likely these AI models are to understand your offerings and recommend them to the right users."
This involves going beyond basic product titles and descriptions. Trusnik highlights the importance of comprehensive attributes such as categories, subcategories, specific color variations, precise sizing charts, detailed material compositions, unique features, and even intended use cases. For brands in niche or technical sectors, such as aftermarket automotive parts or specialized industrial equipment, this granular detail is even more crucial. Trusnik notes that for these "spec-intensive brands," robust data ensures that an AI can accurately match a customer’s highly specific query to the correct product.
Leveraging Shopify’s Agentic Storefronts
Shopify, a leading e-commerce platform, has proactively addressed this shift with the introduction of "Agentic Storefronts." Launched earlier this year, this feature is designed to expose a merchant’s product catalog to prominent LLMs. Trusnik likens this to syncing product feeds to Google Merchant Center or Meta Commerce accounts, but with a more sophisticated understanding of natural language queries.
"Agentic Storefronts essentially makes a merchant’s data accessible and crawlable by these LLMs," Trusnik explains. "All Shopify product fields are now visible to LLM crawlers. The aim is for generative AI platforms to recommend merchants’ products when shoppers search for those features or characteristics." This integration allows AI models to comprehend the nuances of a product, moving beyond simple keyword matching to understanding intent and context.
The implications for e-commerce startups are significant. By enabling LLMs to deeply understand their product offerings, businesses can tap into new discovery channels. For instance, a customer might ask an AI assistant, "Find me a sustainable, lightweight running shoe with good arch support for trail running." An e-commerce store with well-structured data exposed through Agentic Storefronts would be far more likely to have its relevant products surfaced in the AI’s response, compared to a competitor with less detailed product information.
The Role of Structured Data and Backend Optimization
Beyond platform-specific features like Agentic Storefronts, Trusnik emphasizes the enduring importance of foundational web standards, such as Schema.org markup. This structured data vocabulary helps search engines and AI crawlers understand the context and purpose of a website and its content, including its products.
"Structured data, such as Schema.org markup, is important too, because it helps crawlers and algorithms understand a site, its products, and its purpose," Trusnik states. This technical SEO aspect ensures that AI models can reliably extract and interpret the rich information embedded within a product page.
Furthermore, Trusnik offers a practical, immediate step for merchants: ensuring their site’s robots.txt file does not inadvertently block crawlers from top generative AI platforms. This file dictates which parts of a website search engine bots can and cannot access. Blocking AI crawlers would effectively render a business invisible to these emerging discovery engines, a critical oversight in today’s environment.
Strategic Channels for Customer Acquisition
Forest City Digital, founded by Trusnik in 2020, operates with a core principle: tying marketing efforts directly to client business objectives. This client-centric approach informs their channel strategy, which primarily encompasses search, social, and retention.
1. Search and AI Visibility:
Trusnik categorizes "search" broadly to include traditional organic search on Google and Bing, but critically, also "AI visibility." He notes that for many of their clients, LLMs are already contributing a significant portion of online revenue, sometimes upwards of 10%. This demonstrates a tangible shift in consumer behavior, where AI-driven recommendations are becoming a substantial driver of sales. The focus on metadata backend work, particularly for platforms like Shopify’s Agentic Storefronts, is a direct response to this trend.
2. Social Media Engagement:
On the social media front, Forest City Digital manages both influencer marketing programs and paid advertising campaigns. Influencer collaborations can leverage trusted voices to introduce products to targeted audiences, while paid social ads can build brand awareness and drive traffic, especially for new ventures with limited organic reach.
3. Retention and Sales Funnel Optimization:
For retaining customers and maximizing revenue from existing relationships, the agency utilizes email marketing platforms like Klaviyo and Brevo. The goal here is to "plug holes" in clients’ sales funnels, ensuring that abandoned carts are recovered, repeat purchases are encouraged, and customer lifetime value is enhanced. This often involves sophisticated segmentation and personalized communication strategies.
Building a Strategy for a Future E-commerce Landscape
When asked to outline a customer acquisition strategy for a hypothetical e-commerce startup launched in 2026, Trusnik reiterates his core thesis: "I would focus on getting the product data as deep and clean as possible in a structured environment. On Shopify, I would opt into Agentic Storefronts."
He further suggests a phased approach based on resource availability. For startups with limited capital, the priority should be on optimizing structured product data and securing links in prominent listicles or "best-of" articles. These types of placements are recognized by LLMs as strong signals of quality and relevance.
"If I had the money," Trusnik adds, "I would invest in Meta ads to build top-of-funnel awareness." Paid advertising can provide an immediate boost in visibility, allowing a new brand to reach a wider audience and gather initial customer data.
The Power of Differentiated Content
Trusnik also highlights the ongoing importance of content marketing, but with a crucial distinction in the age of AI. "Content — articles, videos, social posts — helps if it contains original info unavailable elsewhere, unlike AI-generated content, which is, by definition, repurposed," he states. This underscores the need for e-commerce businesses to create unique, valuable, and authentic content that stands out from the proliferation of AI-generated material. Original research, expert insights, behind-the-scenes looks at product development, and compelling storytelling can differentiate a brand and build genuine connections with consumers.
Innovation and Market Positioning: Blue Oceans and Red Oceans
Beyond data and content, Trusnik touches upon broader market strategy, referencing the concepts of "blue oceans" and "red oceans." A red ocean represents a crowded marketplace where competitors fight for market share, often leading to price wars and commoditization. A blue ocean, conversely, is an uncontested market space where a business can create new demand and avoid direct competition.
"A product has to be novel and solve an unaddressed pain point," Trusnik asserts. While true disruptive innovation can be rare and resource-intensive, he clarifies that iterative novelty can also be highly effective. He cites the example of Grüns gummies, which entered a market already populated by gummy vitamins but differentiated themselves by adding dozens of ingredients and positioning the product as a "superfood" rather than just a vitamin.
Trusnik’s agency works with many hemp beverage companies, a sector that has experienced significant growth as an alternative to alcohol. The novelty here isn’t the core ingredient (hemp) but its application: replacing alcohol in social settings. This strategic reframing of an existing product within a new context exemplifies how businesses can carve out blue ocean spaces without necessarily inventing entirely new product categories.
The Entrepreneurial Journey and Forest City Digital’s Mission
Kenny Trusnik’s career path reflects a deep understanding of the e-commerce ecosystem. His background in corporate America, working for giants like Toyota and Sherwin-Williams, instilled in him a disciplined approach to goal-setting. His subsequent experience at a startup focused on helping content creators monetize their viewership through e-commerce provided him with hands-on insight into the challenges and opportunities of emerging digital businesses.
Launching Forest City Digital in 2020, Trusnik aimed to translate his corporate experience into an agency model that prioritized tangible results. "One thing I appreciated as a corporate employee was working toward real goals, regardless of the agencies involved," he reflects. "I brought that approach to my agency: How do we tie marketing to what our clients are trying to accomplish?"
This philosophy guides Forest City Digital’s operations, ensuring that their marketing strategies are not just creative or trendy but are fundamentally aligned with their clients’ overarching business objectives, whether it’s increasing sales, building brand loyalty, or expanding market share in the dynamic and increasingly AI-influenced e-commerce landscape.
For those seeking to connect with Trusnik or learn more about Forest City Digital’s services, the agency’s website is ForestCityDigital.com. Trusnik also encourages outreach via LinkedIn, where he actively engages in discussions about e-commerce. The insights shared by Trusnik underscore a critical evolution in digital marketing: success in the AI era hinges on a robust, data-driven foundation, strategic adaptation to new discovery channels, and a relentless focus on delivering genuine value to the customer.
