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Why Emotion is the Secret to Higher Conversions (with Talia Wolf)
12 Plays2 months ago
AI tools and best practices can only take you so far. At the end of the day, every purchase decision is emotional.
In this episode of More Than You Can Chew, Ashley sits down with Talia Wolf, founder of Get Uplift, keynote speaker, and author of Emotional Targeting, to reveal why emotion is the driving force behind conversions and how brands can tap into it to generate real growth.
You’ll learn:
- Why emotions, not logic, drive buying decisions
- The role of self-image and social image in customer behavior
- How to escape the “hamster wheel of optimization”
- Why most AI marketing outputs are garbage without real customer insight
- Practical steps to uncover emotional triggers and audit your site for conversions
If you want to stop guessing and start converting, this episode is a must-listen.
👉 Links & Resources
- Learn more at: searchlabdigital.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Talia Wolf and Emotional Targeting
00:00:00
Speaker
And we're back. I'm so glad that you've joined me for another episode of More Than You Can Chew. And I hope you remain hungry for new insights because we have a great episode for you today.
00:00:11
Speaker
With me is someone with quite a resume. She's a founder, keynote speaker, An author, highly respected expert on conversion optimization. She's Talia Wolf, the founder of Get Uplift, an author of Emotional Targeting, which she has shared this framework across hundreds of stages to help high growth brands like Amplitude, like Bitly, optimize their funnels and generate more leads, increase sales, and drive higher returns on investment.
00:00:44
Speaker
Talia, I'm so appreciative that you carved out time for more than you can chew. Oh, I'm so excited to be here today. And thanks for that wonderful intro. Absolutely. Well, before I ask you the big takeaway for today, right, the big bite we're going to take off that is bigger than our listeners can chew.
00:01:00
Speaker
I want to set things up by so to start thinking about this big idea. Right. And I want to say that I'm personally chomping at the bit to hear your insights. And here's why.
The Role of Psychology in Marketing and Conversion
00:01:09
Speaker
We all have ah heard the uproar about AI, right?
00:01:13
Speaker
we we We have agencies and businesses talking about all new acronyms, AI agents and all that. But even with AI agents, the ultimate decision to purchase is a person, right?
00:01:24
Speaker
And here's the issue for small businesses. Many of them work with agencies who don't really understand the psychology of marketing, of language, of conversion. And so they pay for standard copy, standard perspective, standard outputs.
00:01:36
Speaker
And almost always that standard approach doesn't consider the person behind the computer or the agent. Again, I emphasize the person. Plus, beyond search, people discover brands and ultimately navigate to assets like websites from so many other platforms and avenues.
00:01:54
Speaker
So that begs the question, tell us, as we develop over our ah develop our campaigns and want to focus more on getting that conversion once we get that person to connect with our brand, why should we prioritize emotion for growth? Why are emotions vital to driving more conversions?
00:02:12
Speaker
Okay, great question. So here's why they matter so much. ah At the end of the day, um technology changes, people don't.
00:02:23
Speaker
So if you want to increase conversions, what is a conversion? A conversion is a decision. Someone has just decided to buy from you to sign up to something, ah your email list, they've decided to leave their information.
00:02:38
Speaker
Conversion means a decision. If you want to increase conversions, that means you have to understand how your prospects make buying decisions and then create actual funnels and customer journeys that speak to those decision making processes.
00:02:55
Speaker
And here's the thing. science, and i'm and I'm talking like neuroscientists, psychologists, and really the biggest brands in the world know that the way people make decisions in life is based on emotion. So every single decision that we make in life, whether we're buying A B2C product, a B2B product, a service is based on emotion.
00:03:17
Speaker
We buy on emotion and then we rationalize that decision later. In fact, um one of the most famous neuroscientists said, ah we aren't thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think.
00:03:30
Speaker
So without emotion, we lack the ability to make any kind of decision. And what this means is that if you want to increase conversions, you have to understand the emotions behind the purchase, why people are buying from you.
00:03:45
Speaker
This means how are people feeling right now before finding a solution? What are their concerns, their hesitations, their pains? And how do they want to feel on an emotional level?
Understanding Self-Image and Social Image in Buying Decisions
00:03:57
Speaker
For example, We've identified over 223 different emotional triggers, right? So they impact buying decisions. But there's two main clusters of emotions that have a huge impact. And I'm going to say impact almost every single decision when it comes to buying.
00:04:16
Speaker
And that is social image and self-image. Self-image is how your prospects want to feel about themselves after finding a solution. They want to feel empowered. They want to feel that they are smarter. They want to feel like better parents. They want to feel like better marketers.
00:04:31
Speaker
How do they want to feel about themselves? Social image is how they want others other people to think about them or feel about them I want other people to see me as the go-to I want them to think that I'm smart I want them to think that I'm lovable I want them to think I deserve a promotion I want them to think that I'm a great mom so social image and self-image are huge it um you know impactors and So this is kind of like the background, right?
Transforming Marketing with Emotional Triggers
00:05:01
Speaker
Emotions matter. They're super important. But how do they actually help you increase conversions? So here's the thing. Right now, most of us are probably on what I like to call the deadly hamster wheel of optimization.
00:05:14
Speaker
That means you're trying to get more sales, you're trying to get more leads, and you're trying everything. You're just running on this hamster wheel. You're throwing all this guesswork at it. You're Googling or you're using ChatGPT to ask it for best practices.
00:05:27
Speaker
You're copying your competitors, because we all do. And you are just doing all this stuff and nothing's working. And then you're told that AI can solve everything. And all these tools are incredible. So you spend ton of time.
00:05:42
Speaker
ton of time and money and resources onboarding these tools. And once you have these tools, you still have to decide what changes to make in a page in order to increase conversions.
00:05:53
Speaker
And you're back on like this guesswork. So you're never actually getting those results that you need. But here's the thing. When you identify the emotional triggers of why people buy from you, you can then go to the website and look at your website. And I'm telling you, when you do this research, you will look at your homepage or you'll look at a product page and you will be laughing.
00:06:14
Speaker
You'll be like, of course people aren't converting. I'm using the wrong stories. I'm highlighting the wrong features. I'm telling, and i'm I'm giving information no one cares about. i am highlighting the things that people aren't looking for. It's It's so much easier to know what changes to make on a page when you understand what your prospect is looking for on ah on an emotional level, what stories they need to hear, how their emotional journey should go from pain point to success.
00:06:42
Speaker
So really, if you're not doing emotional targeting, if you're not really paying attention to that emotional journey, you're never going to get the results that you want. And that was it.
00:06:55
Speaker
That's great. You know, i listen, I can understand the the want to to feel like or think I'm smart. So I get that. ah Let me ask this. Right. So we have this framework. where're We're wanting to to to you know have those emotional triggers.
00:07:08
Speaker
Where can marketers who are just sort of trying to understand this concept, where can they start to integrate those emotional triggers? Yeah. So one of the most important steps is research.
00:07:20
Speaker
um When we talk about our customers, usually we're thinking in kind of segments, age, geographical location, gender, browser. What I want you guys to start thinking about is where are people spending their time? What conversations are they having?
00:07:35
Speaker
So for example, Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook groups, Quora, LinkedIn, These are the platforms where people are having authentic conversations about you and your competitors and your industry.
00:07:47
Speaker
People are no longer making decisions on your website. They are out there having authentic conversations. You should be a fly on that wall. You should be combing through Reddit to understand how people feel about you or your competitor, what they're missing, what they wish they could solve so that you can start collecting that information. You don't have to have deep pockets. You don't have to be, you know, Lego and Nike to start using emotion.
00:08:14
Speaker
They didn't wait to be billionaires to start using emotion. They'd been using it from scratch, right? So, The first step is really doing the hard work, which is research.
Talia's Three-Step Framework for Conversion Optimization
00:08:25
Speaker
And once you do that, everything falls into place.
00:08:29
Speaker
Great. So tell us a little bit about this ah framework that you've built out and and this book. So, ah you know, what what what, as people, again, they're going to need resources. They're going to need things to turn to, it and I think since you've written about it, you're you're you're the perfect person to ask. So give us a little insight of what people will get from the book and this framework to then build out and and really hone in the ability to trigger those emotional responses.
00:08:57
Speaker
Okay, so the book itself is all to do with my framework and we've run at Get Uplift, my agency, we've run thousands of A-B tests. So the book is based on all of those A-B tests. It has a ton of case studies in it where I'm just walking you through how we tested things and why we tested them.
00:09:19
Speaker
The framework itself is based on three steps. The first step, which I already started talking about, is meaningful research. This is when you are uncovering those emotional triggers, understanding if your customers are driven more by their self-image or social image.
00:09:36
Speaker
And really, it's me giving you dozens of ways to uncover those emotional triggers and also reading through um the the generic answers, because a lot of the research methods are surveys or interviews.
00:09:53
Speaker
And what happens a lot of the time is that we kind of do this research and then we get like kind of generic boring, oh, I chose you because you have the best features kind of answers. So um' also I also teach throughout the book how to read through that boring answer and really understand the unconscious and the conscious mind, what we're saying, what we really mean, and how to kind of use that.
00:10:17
Speaker
So that's step number one. Step number two is auditing your website from an emotional lens. And what that means is that once you are armed with those insights, you will then ask yourself a set of strategic questions to see why people aren't converting.
00:10:35
Speaker
Right now, what's happening for most marketers is they go into GA4 and they identify it. Let's say it's your landing page. Your landing page isn't converting or your homepage isn't converting.
00:10:46
Speaker
And then what you do is, you know, GA4 tells you where the problem is. It doesn't tell you why it's happening. So you will go into Google and start searching for solutions or AI or whatever.
00:10:58
Speaker
Um, The emotional targeting audit helps you clearly understand why the problem is happening, why people aren't converting. And then in step three, I teach you how to run meaningful experiments.
00:11:11
Speaker
So how do you even test these emotional triggers? Where do you test them? How do you measure your success? How do you know if you're in the right direction or not? How do you learn from each one? How do you get buy-in from people to actually test this stuff?
00:11:26
Speaker
um And that's the framework. It really is just a walkthrough of how to do it yourself and also a lot of examples just because that's my true belief that ah the more examples you see, the easier it is to implement.
00:11:38
Speaker
um And that's the book. ah great I love it. and You know what? This is such a good conversation have because... you know, as people talk about driving traffic and trying to mitigate click loss from ai overviews and LLMs.
00:11:52
Speaker
Look, we're working towards getting people to still come to the website. And if they're not going to convert, all those efforts are for naught, right? That's now ultimately the goal is is driving more opportunities for businesses to take that traffic and turn them into business.
00:12:09
Speaker
and And here's what I will say. Okay, I think let's touch on AI. Okay, it's it's it's sitting there in the room. It's an elephant. Okay, let's talk about it.
Integrating AI with Emotional Insights for Better Conversion
00:12:17
Speaker
In AI, it's garbage in, garbage out, okay?
00:12:22
Speaker
If you go into ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity or whatever you're using, and you just enter, here's my audience. This is their age. This is their role in the company. This is how, you know, their gender. This is where they live.
00:12:35
Speaker
These are the browsers that they're using. So basically the data that you have that you've been collected, like, you know, collecting like it's a Pokemon, um all that data, you throw it into ChatGPT and you say,
00:12:46
Speaker
give me recommendations for optimizing my landing page. You're going to get garbage recommendations. You're going to get the generic recommendations because it's just reading the web, the web, right? It's just reading what's out there and it's going to give you the generic.
00:13:01
Speaker
Don't forget to only use one call to action button and mention your features. And don't forget to say that you have, you know, ah whatever ah sale on, but If you plug meaningful insights into ChatGPT and say, look, my customers are motivated by self-image.
00:13:20
Speaker
They feel this way right now. They want to feel this way. Here are all the different products and the solutions that they've tried. Here's why it hasn't worked. Here's how they're hoping to achieve these goals.
00:13:32
Speaker
And you throw that into ChatGPT. And then you say, now give me recommendations. That is where the gold comes. is so you should be using tools as your you know helping you expand your superpower as honing your skills your actual superpower should be knowing your customers ins and outs and when you do that you're not leaning on tools as a crutch which is what most of us are doing because we're kind of just like really scared of ai it's going to take our job everything every day something else is happening every day a new tool comes out but if you are strategic
00:14:08
Speaker
and you know your customers really well, then you can leverage these tools in a much better way. um So this is why you should be focusing on it a lot more.
00:14:19
Speaker
Love it. Absolutely. Yeah. The output is only as good as the input and without really unique input, like you said, you're just going to get that generic standard regurgitation that everyone else is going to get if they're just putting in the same broad ah sort of stereotypes or or just generic statements.
00:14:36
Speaker
I love it.
Talia's Dining Recommendation: Beyond Sushi
00:14:37
Speaker
Talia, thank you so much for sharing your insights, a little bit of insights on the framework. I think the real big takeaway for everyone is to really start digging into user-generated content, your Quora, your Reddits.
00:14:49
Speaker
Start seeing how people are naturally, conversationally speaking about your business, about the products and services that you offer. And then, of course, when you're ready to expand that, get the book, learn the framework, understand how to and integrate that all better. Talia, thank you so much for sharing your insights. But...
00:15:05
Speaker
Before I let you go, I got one more insight I got to get from you. Okay. So more than you can chew. I am a foodie myself. My wife and I love to eat at, well, in America, there's James Beard winners, Michelin stars, of course, we like to do.
00:15:19
Speaker
ah So I got ask you, I know you're a world traveler. I know you've probably been to many, many places. If you could give the listeners or viewers one place you could recommend, what would that be?
00:15:31
Speaker
I love that question. So I am a vegan and I'm mostly like plant-based vegan. So kind of on the healthy side.
00:15:42
Speaker
um But recently I was in New York for a conference and I went out for dinner with some really good friends of mine. um One of them is a James Beard winner, by the way.
00:15:54
Speaker
um who they took me to this place called Beyond Sushi in New York. It was phenomenal. Like phenomenal. I was expecting, I don't know what I was expecting. i wasn't expecting much,
00:16:10
Speaker
But, oh my gosh, it was it was so good. The food was was so good. And um most of the people in the restaurant that were sitting at our table were not vegan. They eat meat, they eat fish, everything. And they were like, this tastes like meat. This is like fish. This ist normal this is amazing.
00:16:28
Speaker
So, Beyond Sushi in New York. ah Yeah, totally recommend. I love it. tell you Thanks for that insight as well. So beyond beyond Sushi NYC, I love it.
00:16:42
Speaker
Well, thanks again for joining us. I know you're ah you're you're a busy person. You carved out some time for our listeners and for me. So I'm really appreciative of that. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
00:16:53
Speaker
Absolutely. And I'll catch you on the next More Than You Can Chew.