Many organizations are focused on increasing sales, without taking the time to consider why people buy from them. However, if you want to boost your conversions, it’s crucial to understand the emotional triggers that drive people to purchase your product — or defect to your biggest competitor. 

To help the Elementor community with this topic, we held a webinar with renowned Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) expert Talia Wolf. Recently listed as one of the most influential experts in CRO, she has helped some of the biggest companies in the world boost their revenue. During the webinar, Talia shares checklists, key questions to ask, and a step-by-step guide on growing your conversions through emotional targeting. 

In this post, we’ll summarize Talia’s main points and share some insights from our Q&A session with her. Let’s get to it!

The Role Emotions Play in Driving Conversions

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of users who take a desired action. This action might be completing a form, purchasing a product, or subscribing to your newsletter. 

There is a common misconception that CRO simply means moving elements around your landing page to drive conversions. However, Talia explains that effective CRO requires a deep understanding of how people make decisions. You can use this insight to deliver the best possible value to the customer, which can help incentivize engagement.

Whenever she starts working with a new client, Talia asks, “Why do you think customers choose to buy from you and not from your high-converting competitors?” She reveals that most clients assume the answer lies within their product’s innovative new features or competitive pricing — but this isn’t how customers make purchasing decisions.

The typical customer doesn’t care that you’re number one in your industry, or that you’ve just released an exciting new feature. Customers care about the why. More specifically, when you’re trying to convert potential leads into sales, Talia recommends focusing on the desired outcome and value for the customer.

To help drive conversions, Talia developed the “emotional marketing” methodology. This methodology identifies over 223 different emotional triggers that impact the decision-making process.

Leveraging these emotional triggers is the key to a successful CRO. To ensure that you’re using them effectively, Talia suggests asking yourself the following questions: 

  • What pain does my customer feel before finding a solution?
  • What are the emotional triggers that drive the decision-making process?
  • What are the customer’s hesitations and concerns?
  • How do they want to feel after finding a solution?

The answers to these questions are the key to creating high-converting copy and landing pages. If you don’t immediately have all the answers, don’t panic. In our webinar, Talia shares an actionable, four-step plan to help answer them.

How To Leverage Emotion To Boost Conversions (4 Key Tips)

After discussing why emotions play such a pivotal role in driving purchasing decisions, Talia shares a plan for boosting your conversions using the power of emotional targeting. Here are four tips she offers for creating a high-converting experience.

1. Start With the Customer

Talia’s main message is to always place the customer at the heart of the CRO experience. Therefore, it’s unsurprising that her first piece of advice is to perform meaningful, customer-centric research. 

Some of the top questions she asks when performing customer research on behalf of her clients include: 

  • What was going on in your life/day that made you search for a solution?
  • When you weren’t using this solution, how did you solve this problem? 
  • If you could no longer use this solution anymore, what would you miss the most?
  • What’s the number one thing you’d mention to a friend if you wanted to convince them to give our company or product a try?

These answers can help you develop a deeper understanding of your target audience. Obtaining this information positions you to create more compelling and emotionally-driven customer experiences. 

2. Use a Formula To Add Emotion To Your Copy

Talia points out that you won’t always have the option to redesign your website for CRO. Perhaps you don’t have the resources or time required for a complete overhaul, or maybe you’re working with a client who is resistant to redesigning their site. However, this doesn’t have to prevent you from performing successful CRO.

Talia shared the story of a client with an unusual landing page consisting of 3,000 words. She decided that the best way to increase CRO was to add even more words to this landing page.

She produced some copy that clearly expressed the target audience’s pain points and communicated how much better the customer would feel after converting. By strategically leveraging these emotional triggers, Talia managed to boost signups by 41 percent and increase the company’s revenue by 15 percent. She achieved these results without a complete redesign. 

To create this kind of high-converting copy, Talia recommends using the following formula: 

Feature + Desired Outcome = Emotional-Centric Copy

This means you should take the feature that you’re trying to sell, and then add the desired outcome. The result is emotional-centric copy that places the focus firmly on the customer.

3. Create a Design That Amplifies the Emotion of Your Message

Although a complete redesign isn’t always necessary, the design should amplify your messaging. Talia recommends that you create your messaging first, and then shape your visuals around that content. 

Talia notes that, on average, people see about 40,000 messages every single day. Between pop-ups, notifications, ads, and more, there’s a lot of ‘visual noise’. Many designers and marketers are eager to experiment with new ideas and design trends as a way to stand out from the crowd. However, this risks further overwhelming visitors.

In this climate, Talia recommends prioritizing your target audience over the urge to try exciting new ideas. In particular, she encourages her clients to reduce visual noise by going back to the basics. 

In the webinar, Talia shares her top tips for simplifying your design. First, she suggests using high contrast between images and page copy. She also recommends ensuring that your landing page’s hero images don’t distract from the conversion-driving Call To Action (CTA) or from the copy itself:

She also emphasizes the importance of using a single CTA per page and giving your content space to breathe by including white space. Talia feels there isn’t enough white space anywhere online:

Talia also stresses the significance of choosing brand imagery that supports your CRO’s emotional message. It’s smart to opt for visuals that people can relate to. This means fewer images of products and more pictures of happy friends, co-workers, and families.

4. Create a Pre-Flight Checklist

After completing the above steps, you’ll be in a solid place to boost your conversions. However, to ensure you’re maximizing your sales, you can use Talia’s “pre-flight checklist’”

Before launching any new marketing or promotional content, try asking yourself the following:

  • Am I making it all about myself, or about the customer? 
  • Can the people who visit my site see and feel the emotional outcomes they desire? 
  • Am I using emotion in both my copy and my visuals?
  • Can potential customers immediately see the why?

By making the customer the focus of your content, you provide a better experience for them while also getting the results you want. Talia wraps things up by reminding attendees to stop concentrating on their own goals — and starting concentrating on helping their customers achieve their goals.

Q&A: Insights From Talia Wolf on Boosting Conversions With Emotions

Here are a few of the questions our viewers asked Talia, along with her insightful answers.

Q: When Dealing With CRO, What Is an Optimal Approach That Reduces Biases and Helps Us Make Sound Decisions?

Talia agrees that biases are everywhere, and are therefore difficult to avoid. However, she recommends tackling this problem by using data to inform your decisions.

Raw data can be a powerful tool for remaining impartial. “It’s important to test, as testing will always tell you the truth,” she says. Wherever possible, it’s a smart idea to gather data using multiple analytics platforms and look for repeating themes. 

Talia also tries to involve as many people in the decision-making process as possible, particularly via customer feedback and surveys. “I know it’s impossible to avoid biases altogether,” she admits. “All I can do is be aware of them and test them.”

Q: What Are the CRO Guidelines for Local Service Businesses, Especially in Lead Generation?

Talia recommends emphasizing the fact that you’re local and part of the community. This can be a powerful emotional trigger for potential customers. It’s where messaging comes in, as your website’s copy is essential for presenting your brand as part of the local community. 

If you’re performing local marketing, it’s particularly important to ensure that you’re driving the right traffic to your website. “I feel when you’re doing local marketing, driving the right people to your site is usually the challenge,” Talia says. You can monitor your traffic sources using analytics platforms, such as Google Analytics. 

Connect With Consumers on an Emotional Level To Boost Your Conversions and Revenue

Talia’s key message is that customers don’t care what you’re selling. Rather, they care about the outcome and value. As Talia points out, once you understand your audience’s emotional triggers, you can craft an experience that compels them to click on that ‘buy now’ button.

Our conversation with Talia was a powerful reminder that your marketing should always focus on the customer, and not on your product’s cool new features or discounted pricing. For more from Talia, you can check out her conversion optimization GetUplift website or follow her on Twitter.

Do you have any questions about using emotions to drive conversions? Let us know in the comments section below!