Emotion-based Optimisation with Talia Wolf

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[00:00:15] Sani: Welcome to NoHacksShow, a weekly podcast in which smart people talk to you about better online experiences. Today we're talking about emotions, specifically how you can use emotions to scale growth and ROI. And my guest knows so much about emotions and emotional targeting that she published a course titled Emotion Cells.

She's also the creator of Emotional Targeting Framework and the founder and CEO of GetUplift, the agency that helps its clients design a funnel that makes clicking on the final CTA feel like a no brainer. Talia Wolf, great to meet you and welcome to NoHacksShow.

[00:00:45] Talia: Thank you so much for having me. That was a really cool intro.

[00:00:48] Sani: Nice to have you. So growth and conversion optimization, they really are very, very broad. And there's so many things you can specialize in. There's the analytical side, there's the experimentation, the testing. What made you choose emotional targeting?

[00:01:02] Talia: Well, emotional targeting came to me because it was my way of finding a meaningful way of optimizing funnels and websites. Um, when I first got started with conversion optimization, we would change random elements on the page. We'd read blog posts, we try and find, you know, what the competitors are doing.

And basically it would be more of like, okay, let's change a call to action button. Let's change a headline. Let's change this image. Let's remove a form field. But there was no real understanding or strategy behind it. Um, when I saw that we were getting okay results and I wanted to actually. Kind of scale and make this something better.

I went back to my drawing board and I started thinking about what is the most important thing I need to know in order to increase conversions. And that meant that I needed to understand how people make buying decisions, right? Because if you can understand how people make buying decisions, Then you can impact them and you can create funnels that speak to those, uh, decisions.

And what I understood from psychology and neuroscientists and really the biggest brands in the world is that the, uh, every decision that we make in life, whether it's a buying decision or really anything in life, is based on emotion. Every decision in B2C and B2B emotion is the core of every decision we make in life.

And so if I want to increase conversions, I need to understand the emotions that my prospects are feeling. What are the challenges? What are their pains? What are they worried about? What do they want to feel? What emotions do they want to feel about themselves or the product? Or anyone else after using a solution, and then I can craft better copy, better design, better funnels and landing pages.

So it all goes back to simply understanding purchasing behavior and understanding how people make decisions and transforming that into, you know, websites that people want to convert to because you're answering them. You're giving them their solutions and you're making it about them and their emotions.

[00:03:12] Sani: Right, so it all goes back to do the research first before you start doing any testing, any experimentation. Here you're researching. The emotional triggers that, that cause a customer to, to, to buy something. So your agency get uplift, uh, tell me about how that started, you know, when did you find it, when did you, when did you start the agency and then what do you do for clients?

[00:03:33] Talia: yeah, GetUplift is my second conversion optimization agency. Um, what we do is we help high growth B2B brands optimize their funnels and their websites, um, and emails. In order to increase conversion. So that means free trials, revenue, depending on what the client needs. And we do that through the lens of emotional resonance and really understanding who their customers are, who they're speaking to.

What their prospects need to hear, see, and feel on a page in order to connect in, you know, in B2B, there's just so much competition. Um, it, the industries are so vast and ultimately B2B companies really struggle with. Knowing what to say, how to say it, creating funnels that really convert. So our entire mission at GetUplift is to help these companies identify who they're really speaking to, what are their emotional triggers, and then how you can optimize every single page in your website or your funnel to increase conversions and reach those free trials that you need or purchases, um, and conversions.

And that's kind of what we've been doing for, um, now seven years.

[00:04:48] Sani: Wow. Uh, seven years. That, that, that's,

[00:04:51] Talia: Well, that's my second company. I've been

[00:04:53] Sani: right, right. Right.

[00:04:54] Talia: optimization like a dinosaur. You and I were just talking before I, I started out before there was anyone in it and there was nothing online. So basically Pepton and I would just like chat between us. There was no one, just

[00:05:06] Sani: That's amazing. That, that is, that, I mean, that, that's literally the earliest possible days of CEO before it was even CRO, right? It was just tweaking websites.

[00:05:15] Talia: Yeah, back in the day, um, when I started, I had to convince companies that they need to do CRO. So I would say, you know, you're spending all this money. Why aren't you optimizing your landing pages? And I'd have to like, my whole slide deck was just about the importance of actually doing optimization. These days, everyone knows it's important, but everyone's doing it wrong.

So now my mission, when I, you know, when I get, when I get on a sales call, is I explain, here's how you're doing optimization right now, why it's not working for you. And here's why you should shift the whole way you're doing it. And it should be customer focused and emotional focused in order to actually have meaningful results.

[00:05:56] Sani: Okay. Here's the question. Was it easier to convince them that they should be doing it at all, or now that they should be doing it properly? What was an easier sell

[00:06:05] Talia: think now that it's, that it should be doing it properly. Um, because yeah, back then the, the idea was we have something that works. Let's just throw money at it. And the idea of changing things was weird with design and stuff. But now most of the companies I speak to, they come to us knowing they have a problem because they have all these things set up and they've got all the automation and the AI and, and the software and everything they need.

But it's still not getting the results that they need. And that's because they're speaking about the product. They're speaking about pricing, they're speaking about features, but they're not actually talking about their customers to their customers. And that's the biggest opportunity in optimization.

[00:06:48] Sani: Right. And, and one thing that, uh, get uplift website mentioned is that you teach clients about emotional targeting. So whatever you find on the website, it goes back into the product itself, right? It's not just optimizing landing pages. Emotions are not just a sales page basically, right?

[00:07:05] Talia: Oh, a hundred percent. So one of the things that we've seen happen time and time again with our clients is that yes, we're working with the marketing team, but more often than not, we then start working with the sales team. We're then working with the product team. We're working with the retention team because we have so much insight about the customers and what they want, that it's easier to retain them.

It's easier to know what next features you should be building for them. And it's easier to know what customer success looks like and what you should say on sales calls and you know, how to respond if someone brings up a certain roadblock, what they want to hear. So it really does impact everything that you do.

And it's the basis of everything.

[00:07:45] Sani: That's the beauty of it. Exactly. So, so from your LinkedIn bio, emotion is the only way to get people to realize they need your solution. I want to talk about that. I want you to explain exactly what a quote means, because let's say you're buying something that you buy every day, every week, is this, is it still an emotional purchase or it's just, I'm used to buying, I don't know, bread or milk or whatever, whatever brand you're buying constantly.

Is that still an emotional purchase or is it just, you know, a habit?

[00:08:12] Talia: Well, it's a habit, but,

[00:08:15] Sani: it's emotional,

[00:08:16] Talia: it's emotional. It's an emotional habit, right? When you go to a shopping market, if we're talking about product, And you need to buy milk, you're automatically going to gravitate to the same product every single time, you know, there's 10 more brands that send, sell the exact same milk, but you're still going to go to that specific product.

And you might think it's about the taste or about the ingredients, but that first initial decision that you made to buy this specific product is still impacting your decision. And back when you made that, it was an emotional decision. So every time you buy this product. You're actually, yes, it's a habit, but that's an emotional decision.

And if you are that other brand and you want to get someone else to buy a different product. So I know that my customer can, that, you know, my potential customer is buying someone else's product and I want to change their habits. I need to speak to their emotions. So it's all about emotions all the time.

[00:09:15] Sani: always, and you mentioned B2B, you work with B2B clients and usually when you say B2B emotions are not the first, second, third or fourth or fifth thing that people think of. So how is it different, the role of emotions in a B2B purchase or B2B website business compared to B2C?

[00:09:34] Talia: Oh man, I'm writing a book about this because everyone. I am, I

[00:09:39] Sani: Okay, okay.

[00:09:40] Talia: I'm writing a book about, um, how to use emotion in B2B. Um, and this is because everyone just thinks emotions don't work for B2B. So if I tell you emotion matters, everyone's like, yes, any commerce, I get it. But in B2B it's businesses to businesses.

We've kind

[00:09:57] Sani: boring to boring

[00:09:59] Talia: I know we somehow convinced ourselves that we're selling to like a building or something like it's not a person behind that screen is a person and emotion impacts B2B buyers, even more than B2C Think with Google recently ran a research that found that B2B buyers are eight times more likely to purchase a product that costs more if they find a personal value in it. So a career advancement or something about themselves that will make them feel more confident.

Um, Emotion impacts B2B buyers tremendously. It is a huge thing that almost every company in, you know, ignores. And ultimately, if you are a B2B marketer, you need to understand what are the emotions that impact. That decision that someone's buying your product and you really need to dive into that with your research as you mentioned, because in B2B marketing, we're always talking about features.

We're also always talking about technology. Everyone now is saying AI. Great. But ultimately. When a customer comes to your website and needs to decide whether they're going to buy from you or your competitor, emotion will define, um, if that happens. Because you all have the same features, you all have more or less the same pricing, you know, if you're good at one thing, then, you know, the other company will do it too.

So your way to stand out is by making it about the customers. So with B2B, emotion is humongous. Like it's so, it's so big and it's just, you know, completely ignored, uh, by B2B marketers.

[00:11:42] Sani: but how is it usually done? Is it true branding of the company, like differentiation in the voice of the company? Like how does it usually work?

[00:11:51] Talia: Well, I think the important thing is understanding that when someone's coming to your website, they're looking for a solution to a problem that they have. So they want to be able to see within a few seconds that you specifically solve their problem. And ultimately they're going to stop on your website.

If you catch. Their attention if you grab their attention and make it about them. So one of the biggest things is by using Messaging it's but with your headlines. It's with your you know, the copy that you're using It's with the visuals and the images that you're using. Are you making it about them? Can someone clearly see the result?

You know, I'm I'm writing an article right now about the all in one message many many many b2b companies if you go to their website like Um, nine out of 10 websites say the all in one platform for finally everything in one platform. Like everyone says that. So messaging is really hard in B2B, but when you understand emotions, then the messaging becomes so much easier.

And then. People will read and get into the features and they'll look into pricing and they'll see that, you know, you have everything they need, but ultimately they will make a decision by the way they feel if you can solve their particular, um, problem.

[00:13:12] Sani: But it's still emotions of an individual working for that company. You're not target. Of course. Absolutely. Now there's a bit of a open ended question. Why do emotions sell so well compared to anything else?

[00:13:25] Talia: Well, I think, um, ultimately it's, it's psychology, right? It's neuroscience. Antonio Damasio, a professor, ran a research years ago with people that have brain damage. These people, um, basically had no ability to feel any emotion. That was their brain damage. So at one point or another, they lost the ability to feel emotion.

And what he discovered, what he uncovered, was that these people could go along their day to day lives doing everything the same, but they couldn't make Any decisions, not even like what sandwich to have. It's a, it's, it's science. It's not, you know, this nice strategy that people like to talk about. It's not a best practice.

This is science. Emotion is ingrained in us. Psychological triggers are ingrained in us. Our brain looks for ways to make decisions quicker. And if everything looks the same, and you know, most companies just copy their competitors. If everything looks the same, the way you make a decision, is by how you feel about the brand.

Now, most of us won't even admit that. We really do think we're rational beings that make rational decisions. But science shows we are irrational. Our brain makes up a decision before we've even been able to, you know, read all the information. So it's not so much a strategy. Or, you know, a tactic. It really is just ingrained in who we are.

And the sooner you are as a marketer that you, you know, the sooner you accept that and start working. Towards identifying those, the better you're going to be and the better results you're going to get,

[00:15:05] Sani: Okay. So let's say if a tech CEO of a huge social media company doesn't want to make decisions and just wears the same t shirt every day, that's because they struggle with emotions, right?

[00:15:17] Talia: I guess.

[00:15:19] Sani: Okay. Okay. I mean, I mean, there might be something there. I guess it is. So give me some examples of the real world examples of positive and negative emotions influencing influencing decision making.

[00:15:32] Talia: Okay. So, um, there are two very, very common and repeatable emotions that people feel, especially in the B2B space when buying a product. Um, the first one is self image. It's how I feel about myself. I feel that I'm not smart enough. I feel that I'm not confident enough in what I do. Um, and I feel that I am not doing a good enough job.

That's just an example how I feel about myself in self image. If your prospects are motivated by that emotion, your goal is to show them how they will feel about themselves. After finding a solution, you will feel more confident. You will be, you know, you'll, you'll know more, you'll be smarter, you'll be more intelligent.

You'll have everything you need, you need at your disposal to really feel confident in what you do. So self image is a big thing. Um, it is also about, you know, when you think about self image, it's even like. Where I am in my career. Are my good enough? Should I be somewhere else? I want to be somewhere else.

Will purchasing this product maybe get me a career advancement? Where will I be? What will, what, you know, how will I figure, how will I actually evolve from this and transform into something else? The second emotional trigger is social image. Social image is so strong and especially in B2B, it's all about what other people think about me.

So do people find me interesting? Do people find me intelligent? Do people think that I'm good at what I do? And how will people feel about me? After I purchased this product, they'll think that I am the go to person in the office about that particular thing. They will see me as the hero of email marketing and so on.

So. Social image really is about me wanting, um, to make people feel different things about me. So when you have prospects that are impacted by social image, you want to talk about how other people will see you. Um, perceive you and feel about you after you purchase the solution.

[00:17:48] Sani: That's a great explanation. And to go back to what we talked about before I hit record, the CXL courses and the mini degrees. That's just a perfect example of what you just described. You know, when someone posts on LinkedIn, I just attained my CRO mini degree, my growth. That's sort of like a welcome to the club moment for people.

And it's a big moment in everyone's career. Yes, that is just a perfect description because I went through that process. I know how it feels. I know other people who have. You want to You want to advance your career and you want to advance the way people perceive you. So just, just great. Uh, and, uh, of course, working with emotions, you need to understand the psychology of the customers.

So is that, uh, user interviews, like how, how do you start there?

[00:18:32] Talia: So really, as you said, it all goes back to research, right? You want to be doing surveys for your visitors and your customers. You want to be running interviews. You want to do, um, you know, review mining, which is something that Joanna Wiebe talks about a lot about how to actually go onto a website and look at all the different reviews that you're getting and your competitors are getting and different products that could be solving the same kind of thing as you like books are getting.

Um, you want to be doing user testing. You want to be analyzing all the sales calls and listening to What are the main questions that people are asking? How do sales people answer those? You want to go for chat transcripts on the website. The more information you can pull, the better. And the idea ultimately is not asking them about, you know, how do you find this website?

I was on this website this morning and I went through 20 steps of a visitor survey just to see what was going to happen and it was asking me like, How fast did this website load for you? What pages did you visit on this website? Where did you come from social media or organic? And I'm like, this is all stuff you can do in Google analytics.

Why are you wasting my time? When you run surveys. For your visitors, or if you're sending a survey to your customers, you need to be asking them questions that are meaningful, that can really tell you how they're feeling right now, or how they want to feel, or what pain your product eliminated, or at least lessened for them.

And that is the only way to uncover real insight. If you're just asking random things, or specific things about your website, you're not going to get that.

[00:20:19] Sani: I love that. I mean, basically the users and the customers, they're talking, or it's easy for them to start talking. When you ask them, are you listening? And are you doing something with that data? That is the real question and what separates the big brands from the smaller ones or successful from unsuccessful brands.

But like you said, the reviews, the reviews of competitors, reviews of books that do the same thing. It's free. It's out there. Now, if you want to use some, use the data for something or not, that that's, that's a new, so, uh, you do the research and how does the testing and experimentation come into play? You have to do the research first before you start doing any meaningful testing, I

[00:20:57] Talia: yeah, a hundred percent. Um, so the way we go about it is that we conduct our research and we're pulling the most meaningful insights that we have. Um, and those are going to impact, you know, what pages we're going to run experiments on. It's going to impact, um, what we're going to test, because, you know, if we talk for a second about conversion optimization, right, the art of conversion optimization is really just three steps.

Identify where the problem is, make a change and test it. So identifying where the problem is easy, right? You go to Google analytics, you find it. If you can figure out GA4, good for you. Um, step three, I just had to, um, step three, deploy a test. You can do it. You know, a developer can do it. You use one of the tools.

There's so many out there. The second step is a puzzle. How do you know what changes to make that will actually have an impact, right? That's the, you know, that's the biggest thing. That is what our research answers. So when we do our research and we do customer surveys and visitor surveys and we get all these insights.

We'll then take all that and go to the, our client's website and start reading through the content and looking at the visuals and looking at, you know, the whole UX of the website and ask ourselves, are we leveraging any of these insights on the website? You know, is any of this here? Are we saying the wrong things?

Are we using stories that people don't even connect to? Are we mentioning things people don't care about? Are we mentioning things in the wrong place? Are we neglecting to mention things? Are we speaking to everyone or are we speaking to that specific person we just identified? So actually identifying in Google analytics, you know, okay, we need to optimize the homepage.

Great. Now let's audit the homepage based on all our insights and ask ourselves, are we telling the right story? You know, do we have the right content on that page? Is it sending people to the right direction? Um, can they take action easily? And then you have an hypothesis. Oh, we are saying these wrong things, or the content here doesn't make sense.

Or we're sending people in, into directions. They don't care about our hypothesis is based on this research that we should use one, two, three, and four in copy and design in UX, uh, we should change the form to this, we should make it a CTA, we should. You should use this kind of social proof and your social proof should include these specific testimonials that address these specific roadblocks that people have mentioned and so on.

It's a whole brief based on actual research and then you can send that to your designer and you can work with a copywriter and you can get them to test it. So it really, it simplifies optimization so much because you actually have a real hypothesis. And it's not, I read in someone's blog post that if I reduce a form field, it will increase conversions.

[00:24:02] Sani: Let's not go there. Let's not go there. But basically, uh, I mean, the, the, the old. Old school way of user personas like 35 plus lives in the city like that. That doesn't give you much emotion and emotional roadblocks give you so much more and makes it easier to optimize the page. I, I, I love everything you said there.

I want to go back to your book. Is this the first book you're writing?

[00:24:29] Talia: It is.

[00:24:29] Sani: It is the first one. Okay, nice. When is it coming out?

[00:24:32] Talia: Oh my gosh. Um, I want to say early next year, I'm just like, I just wrote the outline. Uh, I'm going to send it out to some people that are going to like completely butcher it. And then I'll rewrite it and then I'm gonna write the whole book. I'm hoping end of this year. Um, early next year, um,

[00:24:53] Sani: You're very brave for doing something like that on top of everything else that you're doing with GetUplift and with the conferences you go to. Uh, is there a working title?

[00:25:02] Talia: there is,

[00:25:04] Sani: Can you share it? No, I can't.

[00:25:06] Talia: I don't know. I

[00:25:08] Sani: no. Let's let

[00:25:10] Talia: Um, yeah, I'm, I mean, there's a lot of different working titles. I'm very blessed to have an amazing group around me called the shine crew, which, you know, else she's part of it. Um, we're a group of, um, you know, leaders in our industry and we help each other and brainstorm.

So we recently all met up for one of those weekly, um, brainstorming sessions and yearly planning. And a lot of names were thrown out there. Um, we're, right now I'm playing around with, um, the heart cell. So like

[00:25:48] Sani: hmm. There's not going to be B2B in the title.

[00:25:52] Talia: No, probably in the, um, subtitle.

[00:25:56] Sani: Okay. I think that makes more sense because if you just put a B2B on it, it's a different audience, I think for the book, if, if it's in the title now, will you do a book tour, a podcast book tour?

[00:26:08] Talia: Oh, definitely.

[00:26:10] Sani: we doing another episode

[00:26:11] Talia: Yeah, of course, of course.

[00:26:15] Sani: be in touch and whenever there's a like a first draft or whatever, I'll be very happy to go to it. And with that, I just want to thank you for being an amazing guest. I'm so happy we finally got to do this. I've been following your. Like online presence, like for, I don't know, a long time.

Let me say that because you're everywhere in the optimization space. And thank you for being a guest and to everyone listening to this episode, please consider rating, reviewing and sharing the episode with your friends. And I will talk to you next week.