September 22, 2025 • 46 mins
The key to standing out in a world overrun with AI tools and generic marketing is getting back to the fundamentals of emotional targeting and understanding your customers at a deeper level.
• Technology changes, but people don't. Emotional triggers still drive all purchasing decisions
• Most marketers focus too much on features rather than addressing customer emotions
• Using AI to outsource thinking leads to generic content that fails to convert
• Website traffic has decreased by 50-60% across platforms, making conversion optimization critical
• Two key emotional clusters impact buying decisions: self-image and social image
• Customer research is frequently skipped, but remains the foundation of effective marketing
• Generic messaging leads to commoditization, where businesses all sound the same
• AI-powered search is more conversational and emotional than traditional keyword search
• The best starting point is collecting the voice of the customer data through surveys, interviews, and review mining
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing,
your insider guide to thestrategies top marketers use to
crush the competition.
Ready to unlock your businessfull potential, let's get
started.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Howdy.
Welcome back to anotherfun-filled episode of the
Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host, matt Bertram.
I am recording from up in themountains because Houston is
just horrible for anybody that'slistening in that area it is
like 72 and breezy.
So I wanted to bring onsomebody that I was super
(00:40):
impressed with at SEO Week.
I had not heard from her beforeand she just blew my mind on so
many levels, and I am luckyenough to have her on the
podcast to talk aboutpsychological triggers, how to
communicate with real humans inthe age of AI.
(01:00):
I think everything that is hotright now we're seeing it even
in the downloads of the podcast.
If we're not talking about AI,people are not super interested,
and that was why I published anarticle that somebody else
shared, but I re-shared it onmultiple social media channels
(01:21):
because I thought I was guiltyof this.
It was an MIT study that saidwe've outsourced our brain to AI
.
We're not doing thinkinganymore, and I am so guilty of
like not even sometimes takingthat prompt and even reading it
and like utilizing it and um,this is a year or so ago, but I,
(01:44):
I that that, that that articlejust hit me in the face and, and
you know our numbers and someof the things that I was working
on on pet projects were really,um, not performing the way that
I thought they should.
And when I turned back on mybrain and I started going back
to the fundamentals and Istarted to use the, the, the
(02:06):
copywriting that I learned andthe emotional triggers, things
started working again.
So I had to, like, go back tothe fundamentals and so I wanted
to bring on Talia Wolf, uh, whois the expert in this.
She's speaking all over theworld about this stuff and I am
so glad that she's here with ustoday.
Welcome to the show, tyler.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Thank you for having me.
I love everything you just said.
I think we can finish.
We're done.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well, I would love to get your perspective.
I know I heard you at SEO Week.
You used a Coca-Cola example.
You talked about how people gotto remember that there's
somebody on the other side ofwhatever ad you're doing,
whatever website you have,whatever social media posts that
(02:56):
you make and I've foundpersonally, when I have that ICP
ideal target persona in mind,it lands better.
People engage with it more.
And when I'm posting into a void, it doesn't always work that
well, even when we're looking atCRO on websites.
(03:18):
And so I would love to justkind of get your perspective on
you know where the state of themarket is and what you're seeing
maybe agencies, freelancersdoing the questions you're
getting from conferences, likewhere's everybody at right now?
And you know we talked aboutthis a little prior, but you
know LLMs are not like here yet,like everybody's kind of going
(03:43):
where the puck's going to be,but right now, like people are
still engaging on Google, peopleare all across the internet.
Certainly AI overviews havetaken over, but you know what?
Just tell me kind of the stateof the market as as you see it
today.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
I guess one of the things you know that we're all
saying is the race for the nextbest tool.
I would wager that most peoplefeel less than inadequate and
like they're not.
You know, they don't know,they're not using 22 different
AI tools and they're notcreating landing pages with AI.
(04:21):
You know, in a one minute,whatever prompt, and we're all.
You know, there's a lot ofpeople out there telling you to
comment prompt if you want toget something.
There is a frenzy, for sure,and I think it's happening
because the world is changing,as we know, and people are
(04:42):
afraid for their jobs andthey're just trying to stay on
top of things.
But unfortunately, in the raceto stay, I don't know, in the
know, we are forgettingeverything.
And, as you mentioned, at SEOWeek, I got on stage and I
talked about emotional targetingand my biggest, I would say
(05:08):
saying that was technologychanges but people don't.
And, as marketers, as agencies,as digital marketers, whatever
we're doing, at the end of theday, if you're trying to get
more sales, more leads, ifyou're trying to get more
results, more leads, if you'retrying to get more results, the
(05:29):
number one thing you need to bethinking about is who you're
selling to and why they buy fromyou.
When I ask students for mycourse, so if I ask at
conferences or my clients, whydo people buy from you?
I get a long list of featuresand technology, ai and all sorts
of made up stuff that's to doabout the product.
But, honestly, the reasonpeople buy is emotion.
Every single decision that wemake in life is based on emotion
(05:49):
and as we race to catch up andwe try to reverse, engineer
whatever prompt someone createdto create I don't know something
an image of a cat reading abook we're forgetting those
people.
Image of a cat reading a bookwe're forgetting those people.
We're forgetting that.
As long as you're marketing topeople and not robots behind the
(06:11):
screens, you need to know whoyour audience is, beyond gender,
age, geographical location,their role and what they're
doing at work.
You need to really understandwhat's motivating them to buy
from you, why they buy from you,and that's crucial for any
marketer.
And if I think about where weare today, you opened by saying
(06:35):
we're outsourcing our brains.
Right after SEO week, I spokeat Mailchimp's conference
Forward London and there was ahuge conversation about the two
different ways you can be usingAI.
Right now, you can be using AIto outsource your thinking right
To just basically dumpeverything that you have on it
(06:58):
and hope that it will give yougreat results.
Give you great results.
The problem with doing that, ofusing AI that way, is that our
knowledge of our customers isvery generic.
We only know very basic things.
So when you're going into chat,gpt or Claude or Perplexity,
(07:19):
and saying I don't know, makerecommendations for a landing
page for a dog leash or for awatch or for an accounting
software, it's going to give yougeneric stuff because you're
supplying generic stuff at it.
That's what you're throwing atit.
But if you use it the secondway, which is using AI to hone
(07:39):
your skills, to get better atwhat you're doing and feeding AI
with meaningful research aboutyour customers, who they are,
what they care about, you cancreate beautiful, incredible
things and become the personthat doesn't get replaced by AI.
So that's kind of where I amright now in my thinking.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
You know, one of the things that I heard that
resonated with me and I got todig into it a little bit more,
because I do think that there'sa way through, like prompt
engineering, to get more outputout of you know LLMs, but they
said to me that the reason thatinformation is generic is
because there's a level of likethere's guardrails that the LLMs
(08:26):
don't want to go outside of,right, like so, um, I guess it's
like the temperature gauge ofwhat you're using to make sure
it falls inside, like thetrusted parameter, but it
typically gives you the mediumresult, like the average of
whatever the output is Right,like the average of whatever the
output is right.
So it's not going to give yousomething over the top fantastic
(08:48):
, because it doesn't want to bewrong in the output that gives
you.
So it's giving you basicallythe best mediocre, like middle
of the road data, and so theneverybody's proliferating this
data, so it's raising thegeneral bar.
So if you're doing horriblelike, okay, you're going to get
left behind, but but the gamehasn't changed that much because
(09:10):
you know the bar's just beenraised of what that basic medium
level data is.
You still got to write that,that content that defines who
you are with your insights and Ireally do like what you said
about how you, if you take thoseinsights, that that.
So I'm going through this likeAI course right now from Harvard
(09:31):
and the the biggest thing thatit's saying is all of our data
right, like, if you think aboutit as a marketer, I got my, you
know, sem rush, ahrefs.
Like you know, demand sphere.
Like I'm using all thesedifferent tools, I got, you know
, search Console, ga4, like Igot all this different data in
(09:51):
these different silos and I'm,you know we're starting to pull
them together manually andthat's where kind of NPC servers
come in to pull them togetherto get unified insights.
But but to what you said, Ihave found with customers, more
than anything else, that theydon't really know their target
(10:12):
persona, the level in which wethink they should, and we don't
know our target persona and waywe we could and utilizing these
tools to get those insights.
That then take the skill setswe have to craft a meaningful
message to them is what people Idon't see on average, are doing
(10:39):
data into chat GPT and they'rejust using the generic stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
The output is generic for various reasons.
When a prospect is trying tosolve a problem, they're going
to.
Let's say, only 1% of peopleare using LLMs right now.
Okay, for search.
So let's say they go to Googleand they are searching for some
sort of software or some sort ofof of solution for their
(11:06):
problem.
Okay, if everyone looks andsounds the same and is saying
the same generic stuff, how dopeople make a decision?
So they're coming to yourwebsite and they're checking.
Okay, do they have the rightintegrations?
Yes, do they have the samefeatures?
Yes, everyone has the samefeatures.
Pricing it's in my pricingbracket Great.
(11:28):
Now there's an emotionalcomponent.
There's a piece left that Ineed an answer to.
For example, do they solve myparticular problem?
Do they help people like me?
And you know, have people likeme had the same issues?
Have they been solved?
What if I don't know this?
What if I need help with that?
If you're not closing thatemotional gap, you are losing
(11:51):
that sale, and so are yourcompetitors, right?
So the good news is, if youtake that step forward and you
get to know your customersbetter, you can then feed
ChatGPT, your NELM, withmeaningful insights about your
customers and get really goodrecommendations and you can
start testing stuff and you canhave hypotheses.
(12:13):
So there's a lot of opportunityin there if you go the extra
mile beyond the generic.
But I think unfortunately rightnow that's what everyone's
using.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
I'm seeing that in ads.
I actually had a pretty longconversation with two of my ad
managers and they're kind ofgoing like everybody's seeing
all that stuff.
Like we got to stand out, wegot to do something different
and like I've talked about thison previous podcasts, about how
(12:47):
the personal brand or or thebrand of the company, or the
origin story of like what makesthem different, as well as the
case studies and thetestimonials, do tap on those
emotional heartstrings.
But like, what makes youdifferent Like that's what I'm
seeing is our industry ofdigital marketing, seo, whatever
you want to call it and,however, your position in that
(13:10):
is becoming commoditized.
Your, your position in that isbecoming commoditized.
And, um, like that's just whatI'm seeing is like, well, you're
just as good as this personbecause you do the same thing.
And when people build a website, they're like it's oh, it's SEO
optimized.
Like they said, it's SEOoptimized.
You're saying it's SEOoptimized.
It's SEO optimized.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
And.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
I'm like optimized, it's SEO optimized, and I'm like
it's being put in a bucket of acommodity.
Like I'm curious from you, likeare you seeing that?
And like maybe maybe giveeverybody a quick like
masterclass and you know, a fewminutes on, setting the
foundation of how they shouldsee the world from an ICP
(13:49):
standpoint.
And like, what are those bigemotional triggers?
Because I think people haveforgotten, with all the shiny
new objects, that we need to getback to humans, or humans, and
you need to be communicating tothem.
And yeah, everybodyrationalizes their decisions
with logic, but they make theirdecisions based on emotions.
And so, like I feel like, with50% less traffic to the website,
(14:15):
you better hit on theseemotional cords, like very well,
because you might only get onechance 100%.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Traffic is going down .
Reddit, google, linkedineveryone's keeping the traffic
to themselves right, and RandFishkin talks a lot about this,
about the alligator reports,where you're seeing traffic
going down.
At the end of the day, thefunnel's different and people
aren't coming into the funnelthe same way they used to and
(14:48):
it's not a linear funnel.
It's not enough to just knowyour customer's age or their
persona I actually really do notlike that word persona.
It's not based on what reallymatters.
So if we're thinking about howdo I cater, how do I get more
(15:10):
people to convert, so let's talkabout it.
Traffic's going down, whichmeans that when people do come
to your website, you have toconvert them.
You're not going to convertthem by just talking about
yourself.
You're not going to convertthem by saying you're the
all-in-one platform for, orwe're powered by AI, or the
number one solution for X.
(15:30):
You're going to convert them bysolving their problems, which
means you have to understand thetop three pains that led them
to your website.
You have to know what's keepingthem up at night.
You have to know how they wantto feel after finding a solution
.
So it's not enough to just knowthe features.
(15:52):
Everyone has those features,and if your competitor doesn't
have them today, they're goingto have them tomorrow.
What you need to be focusing onare those emotions, and over the
past decade actually muchlonger we've identified over 223
different emotional triggersthat impact buying decisions.
But there are two clusters ofemotions that are the most
(16:16):
impactful, and what that meansis it's never just one emotion,
it's always a few at play, andthere's two clusters of emotions
that impact buying decisionsthe most.
One is self-image.
Self-image is how I want tofeel after finding a solution,
how I want to feel about myself.
(16:37):
I want to feel proud.
I want to feel more successful.
I want to feel smarter.
I want to feel like a bettermom.
I want to feel like I'msuccessful.
So there are a lot ofself-image emotions involved
when someone's buying a product,whether it's B2C or B2B.
The second cluster of emotionsis social image, and that is
(17:04):
huge and, I would argue,probably the most common in B2B
and SaaS, but definitelyeverywhere, right?
But social image is how doprospects want other people to
feel about them after finding asolution?
I want them to feel that I amthe go-to person in the office.
(17:25):
I want them to think I deservea promotion.
I want them to think that I'msmart, I want them to think that
I'm a great mom.
There are all sorts of differentemotional, social, emotional
triggers that are so dominantwhen we make decisions.
In fact, think with Googlerecently found that B2B
(17:46):
purchases are eight times morelikely to buy a more expensive
product if they see personalvalue.
So think about that.
They will literally go out andthey will be now comparing I
don't know two projectmanagement solutions or two
accounting software programs andif they see a personal value,
(18:07):
even if it's more expensive,they will buy it, which I think
is phenomenal, and we're allignoring that.
So, yeah, especially now thatyou know, google's trained us to
kind of searching keywords.
But LLMs is conversational.
We're going in and we're likeliterally saying this is my
(18:28):
problem and this is who I manageand this person's annoying and
how do I do this?
And I need a tool that can alsodo this and can also do that
And're emotional like I'm.
I'm doing this research now toidentify how emotional LLM
searches, but it's a lot moreemotional, which means that
there's a lot more uh diggingright.
So, um, a recent study I thinkit was by SEMrush found that the
(18:53):
most common information that'sshowing up in LLMs right now is
what shows up on page four, fiveand six in Google, because the
people on page one on Google areSEO optimized, but the people
on pages four, five and six areactually solving someone's
problem.
And because people are in LLMswriting their problems, that's
what's showing up in LLMs.
(19:13):
So if you want to get moretraffic, so that your traffic
does go up and actually convertpeople, you have to be solving
the problem.
So it's just a call for likehey guys, wake up.
You need to actually go back tothe foundations.
Why are people buying from you?
What are their pains, what arethey trying to feel?
And then create content,landing pages, ads, emails
(19:34):
everything has to be about that,so that LLMs will recommend you
, so that you show up in searchand so that you can get that
conversion.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
So, Talia, I want to, I want to make this real for
everybody, because I think thisis so great.
I will let's just use, becausewe know most of the listeners
are agencies and freelancers andsome in-house companies.
Right, what are you seeing?
Or like you could even, like wecould just create, like some
(20:03):
company that's a marketingcompany, right, Because this is
the crazy thing.
I've had two other agencyowners reach out to us to say I
haven't had a call with them yet, but they've reached out to us
to say like hey, like maybe weshould pool resources, Like like
I don't know what that means,Um, but I'm certainly interested
(20:25):
.
I think that everybody'shurting, right?
Like I think everybody'shurting, and so I would love to
kind of maybe use, just like youknow, XYZ company, that's a
digital marketing company.
What do you see?
The common issues that they'redoing?
Or like maybe we do a beforeand after and and let them know
(20:46):
what they should be doing.
Because, to your point, Ithere's a couple of blogs that I
follow and some of them havegotten bought up by some of the
bigger guys and then they justhide all the data.
But it's super conversationalblogs of someone just talking
and they're talking through theissues and I can really connect
with what's happening and I cansee how LLMs could decipher a
(21:10):
lot of that and kind of give youthat data and it solves the
problem.
But you're right, Like I thinkmost of these websites are all
commoditized and are generic andare offering the same things.
And so when someone's trying toget more visibility for SEO or
they have a CRM issue orwhatever it is, how do you
(21:30):
decide between all theseagencies if all these agencies
are also checking the box?
And I would even say one of thethings you said earlier that
had my mind going was like thedeep Harbor issue on the B2B
side, Like so you know, whateverthat commercial was, you never
got fired from hiring IBM.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
I don't know exactly how it goes, but yeah, uh, it's
um, it's an, it's a saying fromthe 70s.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Nobody ever got fired by buying IBM yeah, like that,
like I feel like that's stilltrue today, and even I saw Mike
just went, went over across theriver to like I don't know.
Like I just feel like there'slike companies that are a little
outside the box but focused onresults, but but no one wants to
(22:24):
get fired and they wantcompanies that are safe, and you
were talking about howcompanies need to be viewed, and
so I'm just curious how shouldagencies be positioning
themselves today if they'redealing with these type of
issues traffic loss?
They've checked the SEO listand optimized everything.
(22:46):
They're ranking at the top ofGoogle or somewhere in that
range.
I guess they're running ads.
I see a lot of them I love,where SEO companies run a ton of
SEO ads but they're not rankingon SEO, and I'm kind of like,
should an SEO be your callingcard?
That's just me, I don't know,but what should agencies be
doing?
Or what do you see agenciesdoing wrong?
(23:08):
I'd love to bring it down to alevel that people could tangibly
execute on, because I thinkthat there is a lot of change
going on and people arestruggling and everybody's
talking about right on LinkedInthat 50% of agencies are going
to be gone in three years, youknow, and it's scaring everybody
.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, I run an agency .
That's scary, definitely scary.
That's scary, definitely scary,um I mean, how do you unpack
that?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
I think there's a lot in there, right?
Whatever you want, whatever youwant, I think, go in any
direction you want with it.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
What I mean what I mean by that?
Is our agency's about to change?
Yeah, because things aredifferent.
And again, like this takes meback to our the conversation.
We where we started, which ishow are you using AI?
Are you outsourcing your brainand you're just leveraging it to
(24:05):
think for you, or are you usingAI to you know, hone your
skills, become better at whatyou're already doing?
I think the agency world isdefinitely changing.
It's going to change.
The way you hire people insideyour agency has to change.
(24:25):
You have to be hiring peoplethat are prompt engineers that
know how to use AI, are promptengineers that know how to use
AI, not because you need to bean AI first company, but because
, a as an agency, you have toreduce cost and, b the way that
your output for your clients hasto be a little different.
(24:47):
So if you're serving like hugeenterprises, chances are they're
always going to need you.
They're always going to needmost of your work because
they're going to need people tocome in and do the actual work.
But if you're a smaller agency,you need to think about the
ways that you are serving yourclients, and I think a lot of
(25:10):
that is to do with rethinkingnot just your services, because
that's a given, but just how youoperate internally.
But not because we're headlesschicken running around worried
about all work, but becausethings are changing.
So what is like why should Iinvest with you as a company?
(25:31):
Like, why should I invest withyou as a company?
Like, why should I pay you now?
Right now, most like AI can'tdo most of the stuff that
agencies do for us.
Okay, like, can they?
Yes, if you find a really good,prompt engineer and you're like
this is an incredible personthat can just do all this stuff
for me, yes, but generallyspeaking, right now you can't
(25:54):
really like fire your agency andget one person to do everything
with AI.
It's just it's going to takesome time.
But, yes, you should bethinking about your services,
how you do things internally,the tools that you're providing
your clients, but what youshouldn't be doing is switching
(26:14):
everything into AI and runningaround and like firing everyone.
And, yes, like, I'm gettingthese emails too, and I think
there's a lot of differentagencies that are thinking about
, okay, how do I become a bitbigger?
How do I get you know, add moreservices into our bucket?
(26:35):
But I do think, at the end ofthe day, ai is going to do all
the jobs that were not, thatdon't require a lot of thinking.
Right, like all the things thatyou can automate and do faster.
But if you want to stay inadvance, it's not about using AI
(26:58):
better.
It's about honing your ownknowledge and becoming that
person that steers strategy,because strategy comes from
within and understanding humansis important.
And, again, as long as you'reselling to humans and not robots
, you need to understandemotions.
You need to understand howpeople buy.
You can use tons of tools, butyou shouldn't be using them as a
(27:21):
crutch.
So if you want to stay in thegame I guess is the right way to
put it then you have to becomebetter, smarter, you have to be
thinking differently.
And, again, it's not a race fortools.
It's a race for having a provenprocess, being able to
(27:45):
replicate it, being able tospeak about it in a very
distinct way and also reallyhelp companies execute it in a
good way, and just being thatperson that's smart in the room.
And I think, when it comes toSEO agencies I mean, mike King
(28:12):
talks about this all the timeright, like the way we measure,
seo should change the way wemeasure the things that we do
should change For me.
I'm a CRO agency.
We help brands increaseconversions.
Like we run experiments.
We measure our successliterally by did this sell or
did it not?
(28:32):
With SEO, it's different, and Ithink that for a very long time,
seo was measured by traffic.
Here's a pretty graph oftraffic going up.
You can no longer do that andyou need to understand that and
you need to be able to explainwhy that's happening and why
conversion matters.
Back in 2015, I think I waspregnant with my first kid and I
(28:56):
got on stage in London forSearch Love and I gave a talk
about emotional targeting andconversion optimization and and
it was a search conference and Iliterally most of the feedback
(29:16):
was this has nothing to do withSEO.
Why was this?
Why was this person on stage?
Conversion has nothing to dowith SEO.
And I think I got up at an SEOweek and I was like guys, if you
don't know this, there's no SEOanymore.
This is the foundation ofeverything.
(29:38):
It's not about traffic.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
You know, I feel like when companies come to us,
they're trying to solve aproblem.
They're you know they're tryingto get.
Maybe the large majority of,let's say, seo companies are
trying to generate more leads orincrease the bottom line, and a
lot of the people working inthe agency and we've had to talk
(30:01):
to our team is it's not aboutrankings, it's not about being
first position as Google.
It's like is this selling?
Like, are these leads thatyou're seeing actually the kind
of leads that they want?
How do we lead score?
I feel like, maybe okay, ifit's a year engagement, the
first six months is getting itto rank and getting people
(30:24):
coming to the site, and then thesecond half of it, or whatever
timeframe you want to put, threemonths, three months, you know,
is CRO Like it automaticallyswitches to CRO.
In my mind of like how weshould be looking at the project
.
If we're like managing services, seo for a client, we start to
focus on CRO and and now withthe traffic drop, it's like all
(30:48):
about CRO.
It's like put out theinformation you want to put out.
The LMs are going to find it,people are going to find it, the
search, you know, the AIoverviews are going to find it
and now that they come to yourwebsite, you have to convert
them.
You have to run the split test.
You have to, you know you haveto lead score.
You have to set up heat mapping.
I mean, what are the things thatyou see as like the biggest, um
(31:11):
, you know, biggestopportunities?
Like I always see with clients,like retargeting is like a big
thing, like come in.
I'm like you're spending allthis money on ads or doing SEO,
like let's set up someretargeting to bring them back.
Like that's like one of the bigthings for me, that that I look
at to say, hey, like let's geta little bit more out of this
(31:31):
funnel.
It might be like a leaky funnel, that terminology, but I feel
like CRO is so important.
I would love for you to kind ofshare some, some secrets or
some best practices, or evenjust things that you see
companies doing.
Over and over again.
You're like, hey, you just needto fix start here.
You know, here's thefoundational stuff.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
I think.
Well, the start here is alwaysresearch.
Like that is probably thenumber one thing everyone should
be doing, which is runningsurveys, doing customer
interviews, review mining onReddit, uh, social listening,
mining for conversations, andstarting to gather voice of
(32:14):
customer research, like reallyunderstanding what people are
talking about, what they'recomplaining about, what they
love, what they hate, whatthey're missing, what's not
working for them.
The second step is auditingyour website from a different
lens.
That isn't just do I have onecall to action?
Is my call to action the samecolor on the page?
(32:36):
Did I remove my carousel?
Of course you need to have youknow.
You need to do a heuristicanalysis.
Of course you need to run heatmaps and user recordings, but
we're not asking ourselves themost basic questions, Like am I
making this page about myself orabout my customer?
(32:57):
Can my customer clearly seetheir emotional outcome and the
outcome that they care about onthe page?
Can my prospect clearly seetheir pains reflected back at
them, like what they're goingthrough, what they're struggling
with, what they've tried, whatthey haven't, what's working,
what's not?
Actually, strategically askingyourself what's not working,
(33:19):
because in conversionoptimization, the biggest
problem isn't identifying wherethe problem is.
You've got GA4 for that.
It's why, why aren't peopleconverting?
And people aren't convertingfor various reasons.
So you have to do that research.
You have to figure out ifeverything in your messaging,
your design, your colors, thevisuals that you're choosing,
(33:41):
your menu, your blog posts, arethey all resonating on an
emotional level.
And that's where I would startasking myself am I even serving
and solving problems?
Because that's the place tostart and that's where I would
start asking myself, like, am Ieven serving and solving
problems?
Because that's the place tostart and that's how we're
helping people.
All of our clients arecompanies that have various
(34:04):
types of ICPs, and we're lookingat the website and we're asking
ourselves you know not just howare things doing in terms of
features and pricing, but, okay,when someone comes here, can
they clearly see that thisproduct was built for them?
Can they clearly see that we'resolving the same problems as
someone else?
Um, that there's people likethem who've who've experienced
(34:28):
the same stuff?
You have to be really lookinginto the value and those
emotions and you have to startwith the research.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
I feel like the research piece gets skipped over
a lot, like when companies andthe smaller company you work
with, the more they just want toskip over that right.
They just want to like I justneed more, I just need more ads,
I just need higher rankings.
I just like let me just shovemore people through this funnel
(35:03):
and see if it works, you know.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
That's the hamster wheel of optimization, right?
Because you're under a pressurecooker Cooker and pressure
Pressure cooker, you're underlike pressure.
I'm going to use that.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
You're under pressure .
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Under pressure.
You don't have time forresearch.
You're just like testing stuffand you're changing button
colors and you're adding pop-upsand you're reducing form fields
and you're throwing spaghettiat the wall.
And you're changing buttoncolors and you're adding pop-ups
and you're reducing form fieldsand you're throwing spaghetti
at the wall and you're copyingyour competitors and you're
sounding like everyone andyou're throwing tools at the
stuff and you're just kind ofrunning and running and running,
(35:41):
um, and it feels like you can'tactually stop for a second and
revisit the strategy.
And that's where most of us are.
The research feels like, oh,who has time for that?
That's like four to six weeksof just asking questions.
And the other day I was talkingto someone who's a researcher
and she said I spent threemonths researching this and I
(36:04):
was like, wow, that sounds fun.
And she's like it was fun butno one wanted to hear about it
Because everyone's like, oh,what is she doing?
Like we need to make money.
But the insights I was goingover the insights with her and
they're incredible.
She's managed to shine a lighton the specific things that
(36:26):
their company can really dobetter and really helps other
people with that theircompetitors don't.
But nowhere on the website isthat to be found?
You can't see that unless youdig and you spend six months
using that platform and you'relike, oh, eureka, I can do this,
but you could literally saythat on the homepage and you
(36:47):
would get so many more peopleconverting on the homepage and
you would get so many morepeople converting.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
You know, I wish we had more time because I w I feel
like we're just getting intothe to the meat of this
conversation, because I've foundwith a lot of the big B2B
enterprises that I work with, uminternet hasn't been a thing
for them until recently.
(37:11):
Like they just been eating offof their logo for so long.
Right, they have salespeople.
That logo gets them in the door.
The trust that's already beenbuilt gets them in the door.
The websites were just a thingthat was there and I feel like
that's changing in.
The buyers and the people thatare helping the decision makers
(37:32):
out are doing this onlineresearch and they're they're
starting from a such a you know,a basic level and and you know
it depends on your industry,right, like if you're you know
doing sas, like they're on topof everything and and cutting
edge, but a lot of theseenterprises are not um of
(37:54):
everything and cutting edge.
But a lot of these enterprisesare not executing on all these
levels, right, and they're noteven looking for leads.
They don't want leads.
They got salespeople for that,right.
I have another podcast that I do.
It's all about combiningmarketing and sales.
That's the whole topic of thepodcast, because salespeople
don't look at marketing peoplein the best light historically.
(38:19):
But the buyer's journey ishappening now online.
What is it like?
I don't know what the data is.
Today you have a better handleon that.
Maybe 75% or more of thebuyer's journey.
Before someone buys, they'vealready made that decision,
they've already come down totheir selection and now they're
just calling to get thatverification and see if there's
(38:41):
any red flags.
They've already done all theselection online and it's not
even happening on the websiteanymore.
That's the scariest thing isit's all across the internet,
it's on Reddit.
It's like the scariest thing islike it's.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
It's all across the internet.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, it's on LinkedIn.
Yeah, it's like like peopledon't even get their news
anymore, like I was actuallyhaving to verify some friends
news.
They've been following some ofthese crazy trials I'm not going
to go into them of what's goingon and they're like so-and-so
died, and I was like I don'tthink they die, like there's
misinformation, like I was likelike I don't think that happened
(39:14):
, like um, you know and so so I,I don't.
Like all I can tell people isyou got to control how people
view you, what you're saying andand how you're being compared
to others.
And and then, yes, when peoplecome to your website, you, you
better know who you're talkingto and what you're saying to
(39:36):
them, and and and connectquickly, because the attention
spans of people are what is it?
Uh, I remember there was a studyby Microsoft quite a few years
ago.
My mom, my mom, worked forMicrosoft, so but it was like
human Americans have a less of atension span than a goldfish.
Okay, it was when the studycame out.
Okay, and that was before TikTOK.
(39:57):
Okay, that was before theseshorts, and now like constant.
So I mean, in this world, youknow it's, it's it's really
critical to get to the point andknow who you're speaking to and
have them raise their hand andand get them to take action.
I mean, if, if there was likeone unknown secret, right, like
(40:19):
one big takeaway that you had,what, what would you want to
communicate to people that are,that are out there, that are
struggling with this and they'rethey're pulling all the levers,
they're pushing all the buttons, they're changing up the stuff
to try to get the conversions,which I think a lot of times, if
you don't measure it to yourpoint of A B testing, uh, you
(40:39):
can get in a detrimental place,like we we've actually had to
set up on client websites wherewe're log tracking everything
that happens, because they'll goin there and they'll start to
change stuff and we won't knowwhat they did and then we'll
have to like reverse it becausewe're like, so I don't know,
I've dealt with a lot ofcraziness with with you got a
(41:00):
lot of different people, evenlike marketing it.
You know sales all trying to getsomething out of like what they
want from the website and avoice like you know how do you
speak to them and then likewhat's like one big secret that
people need to be doing?
Speaker 3 (41:19):
I think I think the biggest advice I can give right
now is that if you feel like youneed to keep running after the
ai frenzy and like figure outwhat tool to use next, stop.
You do have time to do theresearch.
You should be doing theresearch, um, and the only way
(41:41):
to get results is by doing that.
So yeah, I know it's unsexy,it's annoying, it takes time,
it's not easy to do, um, I'vebeen doing this for like 15
years now, but that's how weincrease conversions for our
clients and that's how weconsistently do it, and and
we're going to keep doing that,because we find hidden gems and
(42:05):
we understand and we help thesebusinesses transform everything
that they do, starting from thesmallest thing like an ad, all
the way to, like, their entirecustomer journey.
And it feels like you can'ttake the time to do it, but if
you don't do it now, I don'tthink you're ever going to get
to it.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I love that.
So, Talia, tell us a little bitmore about your company, how
they find out more.
I know you're very active onLinkedIn and you have some decks
floating out there too.
Uh, there's some great, greatinformation.
I would love for you to justkind of um uh, talk more about
um uh, where people might beable to find you and and and
(42:44):
your company and what it does.
Uh, for those of you watchinguh get uplift, uh, uh, and you
can see how uh her name isspelled.
Last name woof Uh, so it'sreally easy to remember.
And uh, she's all over theinternet, but why don't you just
uh, share, share with everyone?
Speaker 3 (43:02):
Yeah, so, um, I have, I run get uplift, which is a
conversion optimization agency,and we help brands optimize
their funnels and their customerjourneys using emotion.
Um, I developed the emotionaltargeting framework and I
recently wrote a book calledemotional targeting which is out
now, and I also have thewebsite, taliawolfcom.
(43:23):
So on taliawolfcom you can findthe book and courses and all
sorts of like do it yourselfkind of DIYing, and on
getupliftco is the agency, sothat's where you can get like
all the consulting and all sortsof like do-it-yourself kind of
DIYing.
And on getupliftco is theagency, so that's where you can
get like all the consulting andall the help we've like done for
you services for conversionoptimization.
(43:43):
Yeah, you can find me onLinkedIn, on Instagram, just
connect, ask questions.
I love that and, yeah, that'sme Awesome.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Well, definitely give me those links and we'll put
them in the show notes.
I need to check out the bookmyself.
It was something that you hadshared and it's on my reading
list, for sure, and everyonethat's out there.
If you're listening and you arestruggling with what's going on
, I think the big takeaway hereis don't change shiny objects
(44:15):
which you know.
You know we're in marketing,you know that.
Go back to the tried and trueprinciples.
Understand you're talking tohumans and really conversion
optimization and what Ms Wolfhere is doing is so important
that it should probably be yourprimary focus.
(44:36):
And so, if you're not doingthis, go check out her courses,
read her book, understand whatshe's doing, reach out to her,
because this is what businessesneed.
What you know ran fish skin.
It was like the slide that justhit me was like 58.5% of
traffic across the board hasdropped.
Okay, so we're like 50 to 60%of all traffic's dropped to your
(44:59):
website.
You better learn how to convertquickly, and so I would reach
out to Talia and check out herstuff, and that's why I wanted
to bring her on and, andhopefully you can see she is the
expert you should be contacting.
So, talia, thank you so muchfor coming on.
Until the next time, everyone,my name is Matt Bertram.
(45:19):
I would ask you to like,subscribe, follow, share.
I'm really trying to move overto YouTube, so we're going to be
working on that, but leave us areview on the podcast.
I know that the sound qualityis not always perfect, but
hopefully today it's better.
You know, talia, everybodyleaves the bad reviews, right.
(45:40):
Yes, there's, something slimefrom bad reviews too, though
Well, there's great feedbackfrom that, so hopefully
everybody can see I'm on aquality mic here, even remote,
and I got a hard plugin, so I Ido hear you, you know, if you'd
(46:03):
like more guests, like Talia,you know, please subscribe and
like.
That just helps us get a betterguess and do more of what we do
until the next time.
My name is Matt Bertram.
This is the unknown secrets ofinternet marketing.
Bye, bye for now.
This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing,
your insider guide to thestrategies top marketers use to
crush the competition.
Ready to unlock your businessfull potential, let's get
started.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Howdy.
Welcome back to anotherfun-filled episode of the
Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host, matt Bertram.
I am recording from up in themountains because Houston is
just horrible for anybody that'slistening in that area it is
like 72 and breezy.
So I wanted to bring onsomebody that I was super
(00:40):
impressed with at SEO Week.
I had not heard from her beforeand she just blew my mind on so
many levels, and I am luckyenough to have her on the
podcast to talk aboutpsychological triggers, how to
communicate with real humans inthe age of AI.
(01:00):
I think everything that is hotright now we're seeing it even
in the downloads of the podcast.
If we're not talking about AI,people are not super interested,
and that was why I published anarticle that somebody else
shared, but I re-shared it onmultiple social media channels
(01:21):
because I thought I was guiltyof this.
It was an MIT study that saidwe've outsourced our brain to AI
.
We're not doing thinkinganymore, and I am so guilty of
like not even sometimes takingthat prompt and even reading it
and like utilizing it and um,this is a year or so ago, but I,
(01:44):
I that that, that that articlejust hit me in the face and, and
you know our numbers and someof the things that I was working
on on pet projects were really,um, not performing the way that
I thought they should.
And when I turned back on mybrain and I started going back
to the fundamentals and Istarted to use the, the, the
(02:06):
copywriting that I learned andthe emotional triggers, things
started working again.
So I had to, like, go back tothe fundamentals and so I wanted
to bring on Talia Wolf, uh, whois the expert in this.
She's speaking all over theworld about this stuff and I am
so glad that she's here with ustoday.
Welcome to the show, tyler.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Thank you for having me.
I love everything you just said.
I think we can finish.
We're done.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well, I would love to get your perspective.
I know I heard you at SEO Week.
You used a Coca-Cola example.
You talked about how people gotto remember that there's
somebody on the other side ofwhatever ad you're doing,
whatever website you have,whatever social media posts that
(02:56):
you make and I've foundpersonally, when I have that ICP
ideal target persona in mind,it lands better.
People engage with it more.
And when I'm posting into a void, it doesn't always work that
well, even when we're looking atCRO on websites.
(03:18):
And so I would love to justkind of get your perspective on
you know where the state of themarket is and what you're seeing
maybe agencies, freelancersdoing the questions you're
getting from conferences, likewhere's everybody at right now?
And you know we talked aboutthis a little prior, but you
know LLMs are not like here yet,like everybody's kind of going
(03:43):
where the puck's going to be,but right now, like people are
still engaging on Google, peopleare all across the internet.
Certainly AI overviews havetaken over, but you know what?
Just tell me kind of the stateof the market as as you see it
today.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
I guess one of the things you know that we're all
saying is the race for the nextbest tool.
I would wager that most peoplefeel less than inadequate and
like they're not.
You know, they don't know,they're not using 22 different
AI tools and they're notcreating landing pages with AI.
(04:21):
You know, in a one minute,whatever prompt, and we're all.
You know, there's a lot ofpeople out there telling you to
comment prompt if you want toget something.
There is a frenzy, for sure,and I think it's happening
because the world is changing,as we know, and people are
(04:42):
afraid for their jobs andthey're just trying to stay on
top of things.
But unfortunately, in the raceto stay, I don't know, in the
know, we are forgettingeverything.
And, as you mentioned, at SEOWeek, I got on stage and I
talked about emotional targetingand my biggest, I would say
(05:08):
saying that was technologychanges but people don't.
And, as marketers, as agencies,as digital marketers, whatever
we're doing, at the end of theday, if you're trying to get
more sales, more leads, ifyou're trying to get more
results, more leads, if you'retrying to get more results, the
(05:29):
number one thing you need to bethinking about is who you're
selling to and why they buy fromyou.
When I ask students for mycourse, so if I ask at
conferences or my clients, whydo people buy from you?
I get a long list of featuresand technology, ai and all sorts
of made up stuff that's to doabout the product.
But, honestly, the reasonpeople buy is emotion.
Every single decision that wemake in life is based on emotion
(05:49):
and as we race to catch up andwe try to reverse, engineer
whatever prompt someone createdto create I don't know something
an image of a cat reading abook we're forgetting those
people.
Image of a cat reading a bookwe're forgetting those people.
We're forgetting that.
As long as you're marketing topeople and not robots behind the
(06:11):
screens, you need to know whoyour audience is, beyond gender,
age, geographical location,their role and what they're
doing at work.
You need to really understandwhat's motivating them to buy
from you, why they buy from you,and that's crucial for any
marketer.
And if I think about where weare today, you opened by saying
(06:35):
we're outsourcing our brains.
Right after SEO week, I spokeat Mailchimp's conference
Forward London and there was ahuge conversation about the two
different ways you can be usingAI.
Right now, you can be using AIto outsource your thinking right
To just basically dumpeverything that you have on it
(06:58):
and hope that it will give yougreat results.
Give you great results.
The problem with doing that, ofusing AI that way, is that our
knowledge of our customers isvery generic.
We only know very basic things.
So when you're going into chat,gpt or Claude or Perplexity,
(07:19):
and saying I don't know, makerecommendations for a landing
page for a dog leash or for awatch or for an accounting
software, it's going to give yougeneric stuff because you're
supplying generic stuff at it.
That's what you're throwing atit.
But if you use it the secondway, which is using AI to hone
(07:39):
your skills, to get better atwhat you're doing and feeding AI
with meaningful research aboutyour customers, who they are,
what they care about, you cancreate beautiful, incredible
things and become the personthat doesn't get replaced by AI.
So that's kind of where I amright now in my thinking.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
You know, one of the things that I heard that
resonated with me and I got todig into it a little bit more,
because I do think that there'sa way through, like prompt
engineering, to get more outputout of you know LLMs, but they
said to me that the reason thatinformation is generic is
because there's a level of likethere's guardrails that the LLMs
(08:26):
don't want to go outside of,right, like so, um, I guess it's
like the temperature gauge ofwhat you're using to make sure
it falls inside, like thetrusted parameter, but it
typically gives you the mediumresult, like the average of
whatever the output is Right,like the average of whatever the
output is right.
So it's not going to give yousomething over the top fantastic
(08:48):
, because it doesn't want to bewrong in the output that gives
you.
So it's giving you basicallythe best mediocre, like middle
of the road data, and so theneverybody's proliferating this
data, so it's raising thegeneral bar.
So if you're doing horriblelike, okay, you're going to get
left behind, but but the gamehasn't changed that much because
(09:10):
you know the bar's just beenraised of what that basic medium
level data is.
You still got to write that,that content that defines who
you are with your insights and Ireally do like what you said
about how you, if you take thoseinsights, that that.
So I'm going through this likeAI course right now from Harvard
(09:31):
and the the biggest thing thatit's saying is all of our data
right, like, if you think aboutit as a marketer, I got my, you
know, sem rush, ahrefs.
Like you know, demand sphere.
Like I'm using all thesedifferent tools, I got, you know
, search Console, ga4, like Igot all this different data in
(09:51):
these different silos and I'm,you know we're starting to pull
them together manually andthat's where kind of NPC servers
come in to pull them togetherto get unified insights.
But but to what you said, Ihave found with customers, more
than anything else, that theydon't really know their target
(10:12):
persona, the level in which wethink they should, and we don't
know our target persona and waywe we could and utilizing these
tools to get those insights.
That then take the skill setswe have to craft a meaningful
message to them is what people Idon't see on average, are doing
(10:39):
data into chat GPT and they'rejust using the generic stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
The output is generic for various reasons.
When a prospect is trying tosolve a problem, they're going
to.
Let's say, only 1% of peopleare using LLMs right now.
Okay, for search.
So let's say they go to Googleand they are searching for some
sort of software or some sort ofof of solution for their
(11:06):
problem.
Okay, if everyone looks andsounds the same and is saying
the same generic stuff, how dopeople make a decision?
So they're coming to yourwebsite and they're checking.
Okay, do they have the rightintegrations?
Yes, do they have the samefeatures?
Yes, everyone has the samefeatures.
Pricing it's in my pricingbracket Great.
(11:28):
Now there's an emotionalcomponent.
There's a piece left that Ineed an answer to.
For example, do they solve myparticular problem?
Do they help people like me?
And you know, have people likeme had the same issues?
Have they been solved?
What if I don't know this?
What if I need help with that?
If you're not closing thatemotional gap, you are losing
(11:51):
that sale, and so are yourcompetitors, right?
So the good news is, if youtake that step forward and you
get to know your customersbetter, you can then feed
ChatGPT, your NELM, withmeaningful insights about your
customers and get really goodrecommendations and you can
start testing stuff and you canhave hypotheses.
(12:13):
So there's a lot of opportunityin there if you go the extra
mile beyond the generic.
But I think unfortunately rightnow that's what everyone's
using.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
I'm seeing that in ads.
I actually had a pretty longconversation with two of my ad
managers and they're kind ofgoing like everybody's seeing
all that stuff.
Like we got to stand out, wegot to do something different
and like I've talked about thison previous podcasts, about how
(12:47):
the personal brand or or thebrand of the company, or the
origin story of like what makesthem different, as well as the
case studies and thetestimonials, do tap on those
emotional heartstrings.
But like, what makes youdifferent Like that's what I'm
seeing is our industry ofdigital marketing, seo, whatever
you want to call it and,however, your position in that
(13:10):
is becoming commoditized.
Your, your position in that isbecoming commoditized.
And, um, like that's just whatI'm seeing is like, well, you're
just as good as this personbecause you do the same thing.
And when people build a website, they're like it's oh, it's SEO
optimized.
Like they said, it's SEOoptimized.
You're saying it's SEOoptimized.
It's SEO optimized.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
And.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
I'm like optimized, it's SEO optimized, and I'm like
it's being put in a bucket of acommodity.
Like I'm curious from you, likeare you seeing that?
And like maybe maybe giveeverybody a quick like
masterclass and you know, a fewminutes on, setting the
foundation of how they shouldsee the world from an ICP
(13:49):
standpoint.
And like, what are those bigemotional triggers?
Because I think people haveforgotten, with all the shiny
new objects, that we need to getback to humans, or humans, and
you need to be communicating tothem.
And yeah, everybodyrationalizes their decisions
with logic, but they make theirdecisions based on emotions.
And so, like I feel like, with50% less traffic to the website,
(14:15):
you better hit on theseemotional cords, like very well,
because you might only get onechance 100%.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Traffic is going down .
Reddit, google, linkedineveryone's keeping the traffic
to themselves right, and RandFishkin talks a lot about this,
about the alligator reports,where you're seeing traffic
going down.
At the end of the day, thefunnel's different and people
aren't coming into the funnelthe same way they used to and
(14:48):
it's not a linear funnel.
It's not enough to just knowyour customer's age or their
persona I actually really do notlike that word persona.
It's not based on what reallymatters.
So if we're thinking about howdo I cater, how do I get more
(15:10):
people to convert, so let's talkabout it.
Traffic's going down, whichmeans that when people do come
to your website, you have toconvert them.
You're not going to convertthem by just talking about
yourself.
You're not going to convertthem by saying you're the
all-in-one platform for, orwe're powered by AI, or the
number one solution for X.
(15:30):
You're going to convert them bysolving their problems, which
means you have to understand thetop three pains that led them
to your website.
You have to know what's keepingthem up at night.
You have to know how they wantto feel after finding a solution
.
So it's not enough to just knowthe features.
(15:52):
Everyone has those features,and if your competitor doesn't
have them today, they're goingto have them tomorrow.
What you need to be focusing onare those emotions, and over the
past decade actually muchlonger we've identified over 223
different emotional triggersthat impact buying decisions.
But there are two clusters ofemotions that are the most
(16:16):
impactful, and what that meansis it's never just one emotion,
it's always a few at play, andthere's two clusters of emotions
that impact buying decisionsthe most.
One is self-image.
Self-image is how I want tofeel after finding a solution,
how I want to feel about myself.
(16:37):
I want to feel proud.
I want to feel more successful.
I want to feel smarter.
I want to feel like a bettermom.
I want to feel like I'msuccessful.
So there are a lot ofself-image emotions involved
when someone's buying a product,whether it's B2C or B2B.
The second cluster of emotionsis social image, and that is
(17:04):
huge and, I would argue,probably the most common in B2B
and SaaS, but definitelyeverywhere, right?
But social image is how doprospects want other people to
feel about them after finding asolution?
I want them to feel that I amthe go-to person in the office.
(17:25):
I want them to think I deservea promotion.
I want them to think that I'msmart, I want them to think that
I'm a great mom.
There are all sorts of differentemotional, social, emotional
triggers that are so dominantwhen we make decisions.
In fact, think with Googlerecently found that B2B
(17:46):
purchases are eight times morelikely to buy a more expensive
product if they see personalvalue.
So think about that.
They will literally go out andthey will be now comparing I
don't know two projectmanagement solutions or two
accounting software programs andif they see a personal value,
(18:07):
even if it's more expensive,they will buy it, which I think
is phenomenal, and we're allignoring that.
So, yeah, especially now thatyou know, google's trained us to
kind of searching keywords.
But LLMs is conversational.
We're going in and we're likeliterally saying this is my
(18:28):
problem and this is who I manageand this person's annoying and
how do I do this?
And I need a tool that can alsodo this and can also do that
And're emotional like I'm.
I'm doing this research now toidentify how emotional LLM
searches, but it's a lot moreemotional, which means that
there's a lot more uh diggingright.
So, um, a recent study I thinkit was by SEMrush found that the
(18:53):
most common information that'sshowing up in LLMs right now is
what shows up on page four, fiveand six in Google, because the
people on page one on Google areSEO optimized, but the people
on pages four, five and six areactually solving someone's
problem.
And because people are in LLMswriting their problems, that's
what's showing up in LLMs.
(19:13):
So if you want to get moretraffic, so that your traffic
does go up and actually convertpeople, you have to be solving
the problem.
So it's just a call for likehey guys, wake up.
You need to actually go back tothe foundations.
Why are people buying from you?
What are their pains, what arethey trying to feel?
And then create content,landing pages, ads, emails
(19:34):
everything has to be about that,so that LLMs will recommend you
, so that you show up in searchand so that you can get that
conversion.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
So, Talia, I want to, I want to make this real for
everybody, because I think thisis so great.
I will let's just use, becausewe know most of the listeners
are agencies and freelancers andsome in-house companies.
Right, what are you seeing?
Or like you could even, like wecould just create, like some
(20:03):
company that's a marketingcompany, right, Because this is
the crazy thing.
I've had two other agencyowners reach out to us to say I
haven't had a call with them yet, but they've reached out to us
to say like hey, like maybe weshould pool resources, Like like
I don't know what that means,Um, but I'm certainly interested
(20:25):
.
I think that everybody'shurting, right?
Like I think everybody'shurting, and so I would love to
kind of maybe use, just like youknow, XYZ company, that's a
digital marketing company.
What do you see?
The common issues that they'redoing?
Or like maybe we do a beforeand after and and let them know
(20:46):
what they should be doing.
Because, to your point, Ithere's a couple of blogs that I
follow and some of them havegotten bought up by some of the
bigger guys and then they justhide all the data.
But it's super conversationalblogs of someone just talking
and they're talking through theissues and I can really connect
with what's happening and I cansee how LLMs could decipher a
(21:10):
lot of that and kind of give youthat data and it solves the
problem.
But you're right, Like I thinkmost of these websites are all
commoditized and are generic andare offering the same things.
And so when someone's trying toget more visibility for SEO or
they have a CRM issue orwhatever it is, how do you
(21:30):
decide between all theseagencies if all these agencies
are also checking the box?
And I would even say one of thethings you said earlier that
had my mind going was like thedeep Harbor issue on the B2B
side, Like so you know, whateverthat commercial was, you never
got fired from hiring IBM.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
I don't know exactly how it goes, but yeah, uh, it's
um, it's an, it's a saying fromthe 70s.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Nobody ever got fired by buying IBM yeah, like that,
like I feel like that's stilltrue today, and even I saw Mike
just went, went over across theriver to like I don't know.
Like I just feel like there'slike companies that are a little
outside the box but focused onresults, but but no one wants to
(22:24):
get fired and they wantcompanies that are safe, and you
were talking about howcompanies need to be viewed, and
so I'm just curious how shouldagencies be positioning
themselves today if they'redealing with these type of
issues traffic loss?
They've checked the SEO listand optimized everything.
(22:46):
They're ranking at the top ofGoogle or somewhere in that
range.
I guess they're running ads.
I see a lot of them I love,where SEO companies run a ton of
SEO ads but they're not rankingon SEO, and I'm kind of like,
should an SEO be your callingcard?
That's just me, I don't know,but what should agencies be
doing?
Or what do you see agenciesdoing wrong?
(23:08):
I'd love to bring it down to alevel that people could tangibly
execute on, because I thinkthat there is a lot of change
going on and people arestruggling and everybody's
talking about right on LinkedInthat 50% of agencies are going
to be gone in three years, youknow, and it's scaring everybody
.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, I run an agency .
That's scary, definitely scary.
That's scary, definitely scary,um I mean, how do you unpack
that?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
I think there's a lot in there, right?
Whatever you want, whatever youwant, I think, go in any
direction you want with it.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
What I mean what I mean by that?
Is our agency's about to change?
Yeah, because things aredifferent.
And again, like this takes meback to our the conversation.
We where we started, which ishow are you using AI?
Are you outsourcing your brainand you're just leveraging it to
(24:05):
think for you, or are you usingAI to you know, hone your
skills, become better at whatyou're already doing?
I think the agency world isdefinitely changing.
It's going to change.
The way you hire people insideyour agency has to change.
(24:25):
You have to be hiring peoplethat are prompt engineers that
know how to use AI, are promptengineers that know how to use
AI, not because you need to bean AI first company, but because
, a as an agency, you have toreduce cost and, b the way that
your output for your clients hasto be a little different.
(24:47):
So if you're serving like hugeenterprises, chances are they're
always going to need you.
They're always going to needmost of your work because
they're going to need people tocome in and do the actual work.
But if you're a smaller agency,you need to think about the
ways that you are serving yourclients, and I think a lot of
(25:10):
that is to do with rethinkingnot just your services, because
that's a given, but just how youoperate internally.
But not because we're headlesschicken running around worried
about all work, but becausethings are changing.
So what is like why should Iinvest with you as a company?
(25:31):
Like, why should I invest withyou as a company?
Like, why should I pay you now?
Right now, most like AI can'tdo most of the stuff that
agencies do for us.
Okay, like, can they?
Yes, if you find a really good,prompt engineer and you're like
this is an incredible personthat can just do all this stuff
for me, yes, but generallyspeaking, right now you can't
(25:54):
really like fire your agency andget one person to do everything
with AI.
It's just it's going to takesome time.
But, yes, you should bethinking about your services,
how you do things internally,the tools that you're providing
your clients, but what youshouldn't be doing is switching
(26:14):
everything into AI and runningaround and like firing everyone.
And, yes, like, I'm gettingthese emails too, and I think
there's a lot of differentagencies that are thinking about
, okay, how do I become a bitbigger?
How do I get you know, add moreservices into our bucket?
(26:35):
But I do think, at the end ofthe day, ai is going to do all
the jobs that were not, thatdon't require a lot of thinking.
Right, like all the things thatyou can automate and do faster.
But if you want to stay inadvance, it's not about using AI
(26:58):
better.
It's about honing your ownknowledge and becoming that
person that steers strategy,because strategy comes from
within and understanding humansis important.
And, again, as long as you'reselling to humans and not robots
, you need to understandemotions.
You need to understand howpeople buy.
You can use tons of tools, butyou shouldn't be using them as a
(27:21):
crutch.
So if you want to stay in thegame I guess is the right way to
put it then you have to becomebetter, smarter, you have to be
thinking differently.
And, again, it's not a race fortools.
It's a race for having a provenprocess, being able to
(27:45):
replicate it, being able tospeak about it in a very
distinct way and also reallyhelp companies execute it in a
good way, and just being thatperson that's smart in the room.
And I think, when it comes toSEO agencies I mean, mike King
(28:12):
talks about this all the timeright, like the way we measure,
seo should change the way wemeasure the things that we do
should change For me.
I'm a CRO agency.
We help brands increaseconversions.
Like we run experiments.
We measure our successliterally by did this sell or
did it not?
(28:32):
With SEO, it's different, and Ithink that for a very long time,
seo was measured by traffic.
Here's a pretty graph oftraffic going up.
You can no longer do that andyou need to understand that and
you need to be able to explainwhy that's happening and why
conversion matters.
Back in 2015, I think I waspregnant with my first kid and I
(28:56):
got on stage in London forSearch Love and I gave a talk
about emotional targeting andconversion optimization and and
it was a search conference and Iliterally most of the feedback
(29:16):
was this has nothing to do withSEO.
Why was this?
Why was this person on stage?
Conversion has nothing to dowith SEO.
And I think I got up at an SEOweek and I was like guys, if you
don't know this, there's no SEOanymore.
This is the foundation ofeverything.
(29:38):
It's not about traffic.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
You know, I feel like when companies come to us,
they're trying to solve aproblem.
They're you know they're tryingto get.
Maybe the large majority of,let's say, seo companies are
trying to generate more leads orincrease the bottom line, and a
lot of the people working inthe agency and we've had to talk
(30:01):
to our team is it's not aboutrankings, it's not about being
first position as Google.
It's like is this selling?
Like, are these leads thatyou're seeing actually the kind
of leads that they want?
How do we lead score?
I feel like, maybe okay, ifit's a year engagement, the
first six months is getting itto rank and getting people
(30:24):
coming to the site, and then thesecond half of it, or whatever
timeframe you want to put, threemonths, three months, you know,
is CRO Like it automaticallyswitches to CRO.
In my mind of like how weshould be looking at the project
.
If we're like managing services, seo for a client, we start to
focus on CRO and and now withthe traffic drop, it's like all
(30:48):
about CRO.
It's like put out theinformation you want to put out.
The LMs are going to find it,people are going to find it, the
search, you know, the AIoverviews are going to find it
and now that they come to yourwebsite, you have to convert
them.
You have to run the split test.
You have to, you know you haveto lead score.
You have to set up heat mapping.
I mean, what are the things thatyou see as like the biggest, um
(31:11):
, you know, biggestopportunities?
Like I always see with clients,like retargeting is like a big
thing, like come in.
I'm like you're spending allthis money on ads or doing SEO,
like let's set up someretargeting to bring them back.
Like that's like one of the bigthings for me, that that I look
at to say, hey, like let's geta little bit more out of this
(31:31):
funnel.
It might be like a leaky funnel, that terminology, but I feel
like CRO is so important.
I would love for you to kind ofshare some, some secrets or
some best practices, or evenjust things that you see
companies doing.
Over and over again.
You're like, hey, you just needto fix start here.
You know, here's thefoundational stuff.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
I think.
Well, the start here is alwaysresearch.
Like that is probably thenumber one thing everyone should
be doing, which is runningsurveys, doing customer
interviews, review mining onReddit, uh, social listening,
mining for conversations, andstarting to gather voice of
(32:14):
customer research, like reallyunderstanding what people are
talking about, what they'recomplaining about, what they
love, what they hate, whatthey're missing, what's not
working for them.
The second step is auditingyour website from a different
lens.
That isn't just do I have onecall to action?
Is my call to action the samecolor on the page?
(32:36):
Did I remove my carousel?
Of course you need to have youknow.
You need to do a heuristicanalysis.
Of course you need to run heatmaps and user recordings, but
we're not asking ourselves themost basic questions, Like am I
making this page about myself orabout my customer?
(32:57):
Can my customer clearly seetheir emotional outcome and the
outcome that they care about onthe page?
Can my prospect clearly seetheir pains reflected back at
them, like what they're goingthrough, what they're struggling
with, what they've tried, whatthey haven't, what's working,
what's not?
Actually, strategically askingyourself what's not working,
(33:19):
because in conversionoptimization, the biggest
problem isn't identifying wherethe problem is.
You've got GA4 for that.
It's why, why aren't peopleconverting?
And people aren't convertingfor various reasons.
So you have to do that research.
You have to figure out ifeverything in your messaging,
your design, your colors, thevisuals that you're choosing,
(33:41):
your menu, your blog posts, arethey all resonating on an
emotional level.
And that's where I would startasking myself am I even serving
and solving problems?
Because that's the place tostart and that's where I would
start asking myself, like, am Ieven serving and solving
problems?
Because that's the place tostart and that's how we're
helping people.
All of our clients arecompanies that have various
(34:04):
types of ICPs, and we're lookingat the website and we're asking
ourselves you know not just howare things doing in terms of
features and pricing, but, okay,when someone comes here, can
they clearly see that thisproduct was built for them?
Can they clearly see that we'resolving the same problems as
someone else?
Um, that there's people likethem who've who've experienced
(34:28):
the same stuff?
You have to be really lookinginto the value and those
emotions and you have to startwith the research.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
I feel like the research piece gets skipped over
a lot, like when companies andthe smaller company you work
with, the more they just want toskip over that right.
They just want to like I justneed more, I just need more ads,
I just need higher rankings.
I just like let me just shovemore people through this funnel
(35:03):
and see if it works, you know.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
That's the hamster wheel of optimization, right?
Because you're under a pressurecooker Cooker and pressure
Pressure cooker, you're underlike pressure.
I'm going to use that.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
You're under pressure .
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Under pressure.
You don't have time forresearch.
You're just like testing stuffand you're changing button
colors and you're adding pop-upsand you're reducing form fields
and you're throwing spaghettiat the wall.
And you're changing buttoncolors and you're adding pop-ups
and you're reducing form fieldsand you're throwing spaghetti
at the wall and you're copyingyour competitors and you're
sounding like everyone andyou're throwing tools at the
stuff and you're just kind ofrunning and running and running,
(35:41):
um, and it feels like you can'tactually stop for a second and
revisit the strategy.
And that's where most of us are.
The research feels like, oh,who has time for that?
That's like four to six weeksof just asking questions.
And the other day I was talkingto someone who's a researcher
and she said I spent threemonths researching this and I
(36:04):
was like, wow, that sounds fun.
And she's like it was fun butno one wanted to hear about it
Because everyone's like, oh,what is she doing?
Like we need to make money.
But the insights I was goingover the insights with her and
they're incredible.
She's managed to shine a lighton the specific things that
(36:26):
their company can really dobetter and really helps other
people with that theircompetitors don't.
But nowhere on the website isthat to be found?
You can't see that unless youdig and you spend six months
using that platform and you'relike, oh, eureka, I can do this,
but you could literally saythat on the homepage and you
(36:47):
would get so many more peopleconverting on the homepage and
you would get so many morepeople converting.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
You know, I wish we had more time because I w I feel
like we're just getting intothe to the meat of this
conversation, because I've foundwith a lot of the big B2B
enterprises that I work with, uminternet hasn't been a thing
for them until recently.
(37:11):
Like they just been eating offof their logo for so long.
Right, they have salespeople.
That logo gets them in the door.
The trust that's already beenbuilt gets them in the door.
The websites were just a thingthat was there and I feel like
that's changing in.
The buyers and the people thatare helping the decision makers
(37:32):
out are doing this onlineresearch and they're they're
starting from a such a you know,a basic level and and you know
it depends on your industry,right, like if you're you know
doing sas, like they're on topof everything and and cutting
edge, but a lot of theseenterprises are not um of
(37:54):
everything and cutting edge.
But a lot of these enterprisesare not executing on all these
levels, right, and they're noteven looking for leads.
They don't want leads.
They got salespeople for that,right.
I have another podcast that I do.
It's all about combiningmarketing and sales.
That's the whole topic of thepodcast, because salespeople
don't look at marketing peoplein the best light historically.
(38:19):
But the buyer's journey ishappening now online.
What is it like?
I don't know what the data is.
Today you have a better handleon that.
Maybe 75% or more of thebuyer's journey.
Before someone buys, they'vealready made that decision,
they've already come down totheir selection and now they're
just calling to get thatverification and see if there's
(38:41):
any red flags.
They've already done all theselection online and it's not
even happening on the websiteanymore.
That's the scariest thing isit's all across the internet,
it's on Reddit.
It's like the scariest thing islike it's.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
It's all across the internet.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, it's on LinkedIn.
Yeah, it's like like peopledon't even get their news
anymore, like I was actuallyhaving to verify some friends
news.
They've been following some ofthese crazy trials I'm not going
to go into them of what's goingon and they're like so-and-so
died, and I was like I don'tthink they die, like there's
misinformation, like I was likelike I don't think that happened
(39:14):
, like um, you know and so so I,I don't.
Like all I can tell people isyou got to control how people
view you, what you're saying andand how you're being compared
to others.
And and then, yes, when peoplecome to your website, you, you
better know who you're talkingto and what you're saying to
(39:36):
them, and and and connectquickly, because the attention
spans of people are what is it?
Uh, I remember there was a studyby Microsoft quite a few years
ago.
My mom, my mom, worked forMicrosoft, so but it was like
human Americans have a less of atension span than a goldfish.
Okay, it was when the studycame out.
Okay, and that was before TikTOK.
(39:57):
Okay, that was before theseshorts, and now like constant.
So I mean, in this world, youknow it's, it's it's really
critical to get to the point andknow who you're speaking to and
have them raise their hand andand get them to take action.
I mean, if, if there was likeone unknown secret, right, like
(40:19):
one big takeaway that you had,what, what would you want to
communicate to people that are,that are out there, that are
struggling with this and they'rethey're pulling all the levers,
they're pushing all the buttons, they're changing up the stuff
to try to get the conversions,which I think a lot of times, if
you don't measure it to yourpoint of A B testing, uh, you
(40:39):
can get in a detrimental place,like we we've actually had to
set up on client websites wherewe're log tracking everything
that happens, because they'll goin there and they'll start to
change stuff and we won't knowwhat they did and then we'll
have to like reverse it becausewe're like, so I don't know,
I've dealt with a lot ofcraziness with with you got a
(41:00):
lot of different people, evenlike marketing it.
You know sales all trying to getsomething out of like what they
want from the website and avoice like you know how do you
speak to them and then likewhat's like one big secret that
people need to be doing?
Speaker 3 (41:19):
I think I think the biggest advice I can give right
now is that if you feel like youneed to keep running after the
ai frenzy and like figure outwhat tool to use next, stop.
You do have time to do theresearch.
You should be doing theresearch, um, and the only way
(41:41):
to get results is by doing that.
So yeah, I know it's unsexy,it's annoying, it takes time,
it's not easy to do, um, I'vebeen doing this for like 15
years now, but that's how weincrease conversions for our
clients and that's how weconsistently do it, and and
we're going to keep doing that,because we find hidden gems and
(42:05):
we understand and we help thesebusinesses transform everything
that they do, starting from thesmallest thing like an ad, all
the way to, like, their entirecustomer journey.
And it feels like you can'ttake the time to do it, but if
you don't do it now, I don'tthink you're ever going to get
to it.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I love that.
So, Talia, tell us a little bitmore about your company, how
they find out more.
I know you're very active onLinkedIn and you have some decks
floating out there too.
Uh, there's some great, greatinformation.
I would love for you to justkind of um uh, talk more about
um uh, where people might beable to find you and and and
(42:44):
your company and what it does.
Uh, for those of you watchinguh get uplift, uh, uh, and you
can see how uh her name isspelled.
Last name woof Uh, so it'sreally easy to remember.
And uh, she's all over theinternet, but why don't you just
uh, share, share with everyone?
Speaker 3 (43:02):
Yeah, so, um, I have, I run get uplift, which is a
conversion optimization agency,and we help brands optimize
their funnels and their customerjourneys using emotion.
Um, I developed the emotionaltargeting framework and I
recently wrote a book calledemotional targeting which is out
now, and I also have thewebsite, taliawolfcom.
(43:23):
So on taliawolfcom you can findthe book and courses and all
sorts of like do it yourselfkind of DIYing, and on
getupliftco is the agency, sothat's where you can get like
all the consulting and all sortsof like do-it-yourself kind of
DIYing.
And on getupliftco is theagency, so that's where you can
get like all the consulting andall the help we've like done for
you services for conversionoptimization.
(43:43):
Yeah, you can find me onLinkedIn, on Instagram, just
connect, ask questions.
I love that and, yeah, that'sme Awesome.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Well, definitely give me those links and we'll put
them in the show notes.
I need to check out the bookmyself.
It was something that you hadshared and it's on my reading
list, for sure, and everyonethat's out there.
If you're listening and you arestruggling with what's going on
, I think the big takeaway hereis don't change shiny objects
(44:15):
which you know.
You know we're in marketing,you know that.
Go back to the tried and trueprinciples.
Understand you're talking tohumans and really conversion
optimization and what Ms Wolfhere is doing is so important
that it should probably be yourprimary focus.
(44:36):
And so, if you're not doingthis, go check out her courses,
read her book, understand whatshe's doing, reach out to her,
because this is what businessesneed.
What you know ran fish skin.
It was like the slide that justhit me was like 58.5% of
traffic across the board hasdropped.
Okay, so we're like 50 to 60%of all traffic's dropped to your
(44:59):
website.
You better learn how to convertquickly, and so I would reach
out to Talia and check out herstuff, and that's why I wanted
to bring her on and, andhopefully you can see she is the
expert you should be contacting.
So, talia, thank you so muchfor coming on.
Until the next time, everyone,my name is Matt Bertram.
(45:19):
I would ask you to like,subscribe, follow, share.
I'm really trying to move overto YouTube, so we're going to be
working on that, but leave us areview on the podcast.
I know that the sound qualityis not always perfect, but
hopefully today it's better.
You know, talia, everybodyleaves the bad reviews, right.
(45:40):
Yes, there's, something slimefrom bad reviews too, though
Well, there's great feedbackfrom that, so hopefully
everybody can see I'm on aquality mic here, even remote,
and I got a hard plugin, so I Ido hear you, you know, if you'd
(46:03):
like more guests, like Talia,you know, please subscribe and
like.
That just helps us get a betterguess and do more of what we do
until the next time.
My name is Matt Bertram.
This is the unknown secrets ofinternet marketing.
Bye, bye for now.
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