Heart Before Cart

In business, we often assume we're stuck because we need a better strategy, another tool, or one more tactic. But what if the real problem isn't a lack of knowledge? What if it's fear? In this episode of Heart Before Cart , I explore the ACT Matrix , a powerful framework from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) that helps founders, marketers, and growth teams understand why they...

Before every Amazon purchase, before hiring a company or even that impulse purchase at Target (that you definitely didn't walk in planning to make), there are 2 questions running in the back of your head (and you probably don't even know they're there). How am I going to feel about myself if I do this? How are other people going to see me? In other words, your self-image and your so...

AI might be able to scale your content, but it can't tell you what your customers really need to hear. We just proved it ( again ) with a recent skincare client of ours… Their setup: great product (with TONS of 5 ⭐ reviews), strong organic following, high-volume paid traffic… but they had a conversion problem that wouldn't move no matter what they tested. Our deep Emotional Targeting Au...

3 weeks before launch, we threw out my book cover and started over. This is Part 2 of the story behind my book, Emotional Targeting . Last week I talked about how I wrote the book.  This week, Jessica Noel (my COO) interviews me about the marketing side of it... how we launched it, how we're still selling it a year later and the strategy behind it. Some of it worked really well. Some of it co...

A year ago this week, I published my book, Emotional Targeting . The book was based on 10 years of work, hundreds of clients and thousands of A/B tests. What most people don't realize... I A/B tested the book itself before it was even a book. In Part 1 of our 2-part book publishing series, my COO Jessica Noel interviews me on the messy process of writing Emotional Targeting. We get into: → Wh...

Marketing teams are splitting into two groups. One group is using AI to produce more: More content. More tests. More channels. More dashboards. More noise. The other group is doing something much harder: They’re slowing down long enough to rebuild the foundation. In this episode, I break down: Why “doing more” feels productive (but usually isn’t) The hidden cost of AI-driven marketing Why most tea...

Everyone keeps saying marketing has changed forever. Traffic is disappearing. AI Overviews are replacing clicks. Attribution is getting messier. And marketers everywhere are trying to figure out what actually matters now. In this episode of Heart Before Cart, I sat down with Sam Oh, VP of Acquisition at Bitly, to talk about what growth, CRO, AI, and customer journeys actually look like inside one...

Your website used to have one job: convince your visitor to buy.  But, in the last few years your website has picked up a second job, and you may not have even realized it.  Your website is no longer the first step in the customer journey.  It may be the second, third, or even fourth place your potential buyer visits.  Now your buyer is researching you through:  AI  Reddit YouTube reviews  TikTok...

Analytics and attribution have changed. Buyers are making decisions on Reddit, through AI summaries, YouTube videos, LinkedIn posts, reviews, private communities, and conversations with peers long before they ever land on your website. And marketers are still obsessing over traffic, bounce rates, and attribution reports like it’s 2019. In this episode, Dana DiTomaso (Kickpoint) and I unpack what t...

CRO has ( definitely ) changed.  I’ve been working in optimization for well over a decade, and this is the biggest shift I’ve seen.  CRO used to be about optimizing what you owned and what you controlled – from your landing pages to your emails.  But now, people are making a decision about you without ever visiting your website, receiving one of your emails, or going through your ad funnel… (They’...

2021 feels like a lifetime ago. And in a lot of ways, it is. But when it comes to landing pages… some things haven’t changed as much as you’d expect. I’m still seeing the same patterns. The same decisions. The same mistakes showing up across pages that should be converting, but aren’t. And it’s not because people aren’t trying. It’s because these issues are easy to overlook when you’re focused on...

We recorded this episode years ago (2021). But I’m still seeing mobile pages making these mistakes, even though: Mobile traffic has only increased Attention spans are shorter than ever Yet landing pages are still designed with mobile as an afterthought. That’s a problem. A BIG problem. In this episode, we revisit one of our most-watched breakdowns, because so many are forgetting about how humans a...

Zero click marketing is changing how people buy, and most brands are behind. In this episode, we break down what’s actually happening and what to do next. Most marketers are feeling it: Less traffic. Fewer clicks. Less control over the customer journey. It’s happening to everyone, but do you know why it’s happening or what to do instead? In this episode of Heart Before Cart , I sit down with Amand...

Your video content isn’t underperforming because of your hooks, editing, or SEO. It’s underperforming because it’s built for algorithms… not humans. Most creators are stuck optimizing for views. Better hooks. More edits. More content. But despite all of that effort, they’re still struggling to turn attention into subscribers, leads, and sales. In this episode of Heart Before Cart, Talia Wolf break...

Are we still optimizing for humans… or are we now optimizing for machines first? In this episode of Heart Before Cart , Talia Wolf sits down with Slobodan Manić the creator of No Hacks to unpack one of the biggest shifts happening in marketing right now: AI agents, search engines, and machine systems are increasingly shaping what people see, trust, and choose before they ever land on your website....

“Keep it short.” “People don’t read.” “Cut the fluff.” In this episode of Heart Before Cart , Talia challenges one of the most common beliefs in marketing and explains why copy length has nothing to do with best practices and everything to do with your customer. Because the truth is simple. People will read thousands of words or nothing at all depending on where they are in their decision process....

Going forward, Emotional Targeting is going to be the most important and real competitive advantage you have. Brands that stay focused only on analytics, funnels, and on-site optimization… Will struggle to survive in a world where people rarely visit their sites. In this episode of Heart Before Cart , Talia explains why the real driver of conversions isn’t data, features, or A/B tests, it’s emotio...

If you’re driving traffic to your demo page… but not getting enough bookings, this might be why. In this episode of Heart Before Cart, Talia breaks down one of the most common mistakes B2B brands make with their demo pages and how to fix them.  You’ll learn: Why time is a higher-friction commitment than a free trial The real decision happening on your demo page What most brands get wrong (with rea...

The oldest sales technique in the world is connected to a powerful psychological trigger called the Endowment Effect. Door-to-door salespeople used it all the time. They didn’t stand on the porch listing features. They walked into your living room, plugged in the vacuum, and started cleaning. Because once it felt like yours… Asking them to leave felt like a loss. Today, that same principle shows u...

AI is powerful, when you use it to build. Not when you use it to think for you. In this episode of Heart Before Cart , Talia shares why she’s reduced her use of ChatGPT and Gemini almost completely and what she does instead.  Because the uncomfortable truth is that AI can make you feel productive… but quietly becomes a massive time suck. If you’ve ever spent hours “refining” prompts only to end up...

In this episode of Heart Before Cart, Talia breaks down the difference between tactical testing and strategic testing, and why changing elements on your page won’t fix what’s actually broken. You’ll learn: Why most A/B tests fail to move the needle How to identify the real problem preventing people from converting The 4-question framework to build tests that actually solve something RESOURCES → Ch...

Most brands assume the safest move in a competitive market is to follow the crowd. In this episode of Heart Before Cart, Talia breaks down a real A/B test for one of the largest moving companies in the U.S. and why doing the opposite of their competitors felt risky, but paid off. As competitors raced to position themselves as the cheapest option, customer research revealed something very different...

Not everyone reads your website the same way… yet most pages are written as if they do. The result? You’re actively telling the majority of your potential buyers to go away.  In this episode of heart before cart, Talia breaks down the 4 types of readers that come to every site:  How they read How they make buying decisions  And what this means for your messaging, headlines, subheads, and design. I...

Hundreds of cognitive biases affect your customers’ buying decisions, often without us even noticing. In this episode, Talia dives into one of the most common and powerful of them all: The bandwagon effect, and explains how you can leverage it ethically in your marketing to help buyers feel safer choosing you. RESOURCES → Check out my FREE workshop: https://taliawolf.com/workshop → Get my NEW book...

After dissecting 100 B2B homepages, Talia breaks down the 3 biggest mistakes brands are making on their homepage and the one thing they need to do, to fix it.  The bottom line? It isn’t a design or UX problem, it isn’t a traffic problem - it’s a customer-centricity problem.  Across industries, the same 3 problems showed up again and again:  unclear or generic messaging that focuses on the company...