Heart Before Cart

Your product might be perfect for your customer. But if they can’t see that it’s for someone like them, they’re probably not going to buy. In this episode of Heart Before Cart , I sit down with Sonia Thompson , founder of Frictionless Growth Lab, to talk about one of the most important questions customers ask when deciding whether to buy: “Is this for someone like me?” We talk about why most perso...

What if the best way to get people interested in your product is to stop talking about your product? One of the biggest viral campaigns of the past few weeks did exactly that. “Oreo Gate” got more than 10 million views, had people choosing sides, arguing in the comments, making response videos, and even other brands joining the conversation. And almost none of that attention was actually about the...

Thinking about redesigning your website? Before you change the colors, layout, navigation, buttons, or overall look and feel, you need to figure out what’s actually broken. Most teams rush straight into a redesign based on what looks good, what everyone else is doing, or what could be cool.  And now, with AI, it’s easier than ever to redesign an entire website faster than ever before. But if you d...

What color should your call-to-action button be? Red? Green? Orange? If you're asking that question, you might be starting in the wrong place. There isn't one button color that magically increases conversions for every business. Color absolutely influences how people think, feel, and make decisions. In this episode of Heart Before Cart , we're taking color psychology one step furthe...

Everything you think you know about color psychology might be wrong.  We've all seen the infographics claiming that blue means trust, red creates urgency, and green represents health.  But what if that's not actually how color psychology works? In this episode of Heart Before Cart , I break down one of the biggest misconceptions in marketing and explain why choosing colors based on gener...

Spider-Man has had different actors, different stories, and different versions across generations, yet people keep showing up. Why? Because the thing that makes Spider-Man matter isn’t really the superpowers. It’s Peter Parker. In this video, I break down one of the biggest marketing lessons hiding inside Spider-Man: your product might be the superpower, but your customer’s life is the story. Too...

We like to think we're rational decision-makers.  We compare options, make pros and cons lists, and convince ourselves we're making the most logical choice.  But research tells us something very different: most buying decisions are driven by psychology, not logic. In this episode of Heart Before Cart , I break down five of the most powerful cognitive biases that shape customer behavior a...

Marketing is changing faster than at any other point in its history.   With AI taking the world by storm it’s changed the way we work, attribution is becoming harder and harder, and the divisions between product, brand, growth, and customer experience are quickly crumbling.  In this episode of Heart Before Cart , I am joined by Arielle Johncox who spent over a decade in marketing and business stra...

If you’re still relying on the Google Ads strategies you used a few years ago… my guess is, you aren't seeing the same results.  Because Google Ads have fundamentally changed (which means your strategy needs to change as well). In this episode of Heart Before Cart , I sit down with Jyll Saskin Gales , bestselling author of Inside Google Ads and former Google employee, who helps business owner...

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....