Lilach Bullock was one of two speakers at the Israel Networking Hub online event “Getting Found. Getting Clients. Your Digital Strategy,” hosted by Lesley Kaplan and published on YouTube on 16 January 2026. Sarah Raanan, a content marketing strategist, opened with her 2026 content forecast. Lilach then gave a talk on how to turn a website, sales page, ad or email into a lead generating asset without more traffic. Her argument in one line: everyone is obsessed with more visitors, more followers and more likes, and almost nobody converts the traffic they already have, even though small changes to layout, colour, headlines and calls to action can double or triple sales. The recording is embedded below, followed by the key takeaways, a summary of both talks and a cleaned transcript. Lilach joined from Eilat, on holiday, which is why she is in short sleeves in January.
Watch on YouTube: Getting Found. Getting Clients. Your Digital Strategy. The host’s site is lesleykaplan.com/israel-networking-hub. Lesley also hosts the Monday Motivation Spotlight, where Lilach was a guest in December 2025: that episode and transcript are here.
Key takeaways
- Conversion optimisation means changing your website, sales page, ads or newsletter to raise the percentage of visitors who take the action you want. You choose the action, you set the goal, and you cannot optimise for two goals at once. If you sell something expensive that nobody buys cold, optimise for the email opt-in first.
- Collect data before you change anything. Without heat maps, session recordings and your own numbers you are guessing, or copying someone else who is guessing. Lilach’s tools: Hotjar (heat maps and session recordings, now with AI summaries), Microsoft Clarity (free, flags rage clicks and dead clicks), VWO (AI that spots where conversion is leaking and suggests what to test) and Intellimize (AI personalisation that shows different visitors different pages and learns which converts).
- Know your four buyer types. Methodical buyers read everything and buy on trust, not price, but slowly. Competitive buyers skim for the price. Spontaneous buyers love interactive content and decide fast (Temu is built for them). Humanistic buyers are emotional and want the human elements, so your About page matters.
- Test one small change at a time, wait long enough to measure, and if you test nothing else, test headlines. Split test email subject lines the way Kit does: send two versions to 30 percent of the list and the winner to the other 70 percent.
- Booking.com and Amazon run hundreds of tests a month. Booking.com’s fixes for hesitant, comparison-shopping visitors were scarcity (“only 2 rooms left”), removing all risk (“free cancellation, pay later”), social proof and a clear call to action, in colours that are not their brand colours.
- Apply the six principles of persuasion everywhere: scarcity, reciprocation, consistency (a small commitment first, then the funnel), social proof, authority and liking. Clarity, usability, load time, a pop-up (exit intent is her favourite) and clear calls to action beat pretty design every time.
Sarah Raanan: the 2026 content forecast
Sarah Raanan, who has marketed her own businesses online since 2008, opened with seven predictions and a warning about “everything is dead” December posts. Use AI as a strategic partner, not a replacement for your voice, because audiences, especially younger ones, can already sense AI content and scroll past it, which makes imperfect, human content your edge. We are in a “trust recession,” so proof is the new currency: testimonials, reviews, case studies and screenshots, gathered as a habit. Stop saying nothing: series-based content, strong perspectives with nuance, personality over polish, conversational frameworks, searchable captions and questions people want to answer. Meta’s feeds are now roughly half content from accounts you do not follow, ranked on saves, meaningful comments and watch time rather than follower counts, so small accounts can win reach again. Long form is back (YouTube, podcasts, Substack, LinkedIn newsletters), with Pinterest, Threads and LinkedIn quietly delivering. Offers are being squeezed to the two ends: a quick low-risk yes, or a premium “handle it for me” solution, with the mushy middle struggling. And build a content system that suits your brain, because engagement is a muscle and five minutes of real interaction beats an hour of scheduled posting.
Lilach Bullock: convert what you already have
Lilach’s talk applies to a website, a sales page, ads, emails and newsletters alike. She defines conversion optimisation, sets expectations (it takes time, it is an art as well as a science, every audience is different) and makes the case that it is the highest-return work in a business because it grows revenue without buying more traffic. She has built courses on digital selling and website conversion for large companies on that basis. The rest of the talk is method: collect data first; understand the four buyer types; decide what one thing you are optimising for; work out how long to wait before judging a test; change one thing at a time; keep the customer at the centre; and never set a page and forget it, because you would never do that with an ad. If you want the written version of that method, start with how website conversion optimisation works step by step and the ways to improve a conversion rate that hold up in practice.
What to test: page layout (be the puppet master; if your newsletter box is at the bottom of the page you have told everyone it is not a priority), colours (including CTA colours and coloured blocks, not just bold text), and above all headlines. The Booking.com case study shows the shape of it: high intent visitors with high anxiety, hesitating and comparing, so the page removes risk, adds scarcity and social proof and makes the CTA unmissable, in pinks, oranges, blues and greens that are nowhere in the brand palette. She then walks through the six principles of persuasion with examples, including Temu’s free-gift reciprocation model, using her own press and TED coverage as authority on her site, and the About page as one of the most visited pages on any service business site. On page basics she ranks clarity, usability, load time, pop-ups and calls to action above design, and defends pop-ups: nobody says they love them, but if the goal is an email list they convert far higher than no pop-up, and exit intent is the one to start with. Those basics are the same ones in the five things every landing page needs and how to build a landing page that converts. She closes with the tools above and one instruction: focus on the customer, study the data, A/B test, and keep optimising.
Frequently asked questions
What did Lilach Bullock talk about at the Israel Networking Hub event?
How to convert the traffic, followers and likes you already have into leads and sales, instead of chasing more. She covered what conversion optimisation is, why you must collect data before changing anything, the four buyer types (methodical, competitive, spontaneous and humanistic), how to run split tests one change at a time, a Booking.com case study, the six principles of persuasion, why pop-ups convert even though people say they hate them, and the tools she uses: Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, VWO and Intellimize.
What is conversion optimisation, in Lilach Bullock’s definition?
Making changes to your website, sales page, ads or newsletter to increase the percentage of visitors who buy, sign up or take whatever action you have chosen. It takes time, it is as much art as science, every audience is different, and you test one small change at a time so you know what worked. Small changes can double or triple sales.
Who hosted the event and when was it recorded?
Lesley Kaplan, founder of the Israel Networking Hub and ImpactIL, hosted the online event. It was published on YouTube on 16 January 2026 and runs for about 68 minutes. Sarah Raanan spoke first on the 2026 content forecast; Lilach Bullock spoke second on website conversion. Breakout rooms were not recorded.
Full transcript
Cleaned and condensed from the recording’s auto-generated captions. Filler, tech trouble and crosstalk removed, obvious caption errors fixed, meaning kept. Three speakers: Lesley Kaplan (host), Sarah Raanan and Lilach Bullock. Sarah’s talk is condensed; Lilach’s is transcribed in full. Breakout rooms were not recorded. Lines are attributed only where the speaker is clear.
Lesley: Good morning everybody and welcome to the Israel Networking Hub. I’m Lesley Kaplan. Many of us have met in person, and many of you came to our Jerusalem business conference two months ago. For the last 30 years I have been helping business owners build and brand their business through one-to-one strategy coaching, to be more productive and more profitable, as well as running networking groups through the Israel Networking Hub. Before we kick off, I’d like our speakers to say a few words. Sarah, many of you know. She’s a content marketing strategist. Sarah, what are you talking about today?
Sarah: Thank you. I’m seeing so many familiar names in the chat and so many new ones. My name is Sarah Raanan, from Ra’anana. I’m a content marketing strategist, and I figured it would be helpful to talk about what marketing and content creation are going to look like in the coming year.
Lesley: Fabulous. And welcome to Lilach, who is in Eilat at the moment, taking time from her vacation to be with us. Lilach is a senior business and marketing strategist, speaker and entrepreneur. Lilach, a couple of words on what you’re talking about today.
Lilach: Hi everyone, and thank you so much for inviting me. I’m here from sunny Eilat, so I’m in short sleeves, and it’s lovely, but we go home later today. I’m going to be talking about how you can turn your website, or your sales page, or your ads, or your emails, into a lead generating asset without more traffic. Every one of us is obsessed with having more traffic, more likes, more followers. Instead I’m going to show you how to convert what you already have, so that rather than constantly driving new business, you convert what you have into a lead and sales machine. I hope you stay to the end, where I’ll be sharing all my tips and tricks.
Lesley: Amazing. Thank you as always to our sponsors, Egert and Cohen Insurance, for sponsoring all the Israel Networking Hub’s activities, in person and online. Our first speaker is Sarah Raanan, talking about the content forecast, your 2026 survival guide, because the rules are changing. Sarah helps her clients with strategy, creating and managing content so that it feels authentic. Sarah, take it away.
Sarah (condensed): We are doing the content forecast, your 2026 survival guide, because the rules are changing yet again. This is my perspective, not gospel. Every December the marketing world loses its collective mind: reels are dead, Instagram is dead, stories are dead, even email is dead, and then they point you to their high-follower account and their secret formula. Things change, and some things fizzle out like Clubhouse, but nothing comes all of a sudden. The only constant is change. I have marketed my businesses online since 2008, when I opened a Facebook page for portrait photography in America.
Section one, the robot in the room. We are seeing an insane leap in AI content, especially AI video. AI is helping us research and produce, but there is now more content than anyone could consume, and younger audiences, my 13-year-old included, have developed a sense for AI content and scroll past it. So this is your year to embrace the imperfect moments, your perspective, your quirks, your rants, your behind the scenes, because that is your edge over polished, choreographed AI video. By the end of 2026, authentic content will be highly favoured. Use AI as a strategic partner; it is not a replacement for your voice.
Section two, proof. There is a phrase going round, the trust recession: a period where customers are much less likely to believe what businesses say. They think “you are trying to sell to me” before “you are trying to help me,” so decisions take longer. Testimonials and recommendations can shave weeks off the decision cycle. People have been burnt too many times by “best ever,” “number one,” “limited time.” They want receipts. And everyone is overwhelmed and has decision fatigue, which often ends in buying nothing. Eighty-nine percent of buyers say testimonials are the most effective content in influencing a purchase. So make gathering and sharing proof part of your regular content: your Google Business Profile reviews, case studies with permission, anonymised screenshots of client conversations, and behind the scenes of your process.
Section three, stop saying nothing. Most content is generic advice in cookie-cutter formats with zero substance. Before you post, ask why you are putting it out and what you want people to do next. My predictions for what will perform in 2026: series-based content, because once someone sees part three they go back for the rest; standing for something, with nuance (“consistent posting matters, and what consistent means depends on your capacity, platform and audience” rather than “post daily or fail”); personality over polish; tips and frameworks in conversational language; captions written for search, because every platform is now a search engine; and content that sparks conversation, with questions people want to answer. Every post does not need to be a TED talk, it needs to give people a reason to care. A rough mix: 30 percent lead generation, 50 percent sales, showing value and making offers, and 20 percent nurturing existing connections.
Section four, Meta. In late 2025 and early 2026 Meta started using AI to decide what you see, and about half your feed is now accounts you do not follow. The platforms focus on how people interact with your content, saves, meaningful comments, watch-through, rather than your follower count. That means a small account posting content people engage with has more chance of reach than a big account people scroll past. And a share to WhatsApp counts as a share. If you have neglected Instagram or Facebook, revisit them with fresh eyes and create content designed to be saved or shared: tutorials, frameworks, templates, behind the scenes.
Section five, long form is back. After years of “15 seconds or less,” YouTube, podcasts, blogs, Substack, LinkedIn articles and newsletters are gaining traction, because people bombarded with surface content crave depth. If people had no attention span nobody would binge four hours of Netflix. The businesses that win will use short form to drive people to long form. Three platforms quietly delivering: Pinterest, which works like Google for visual search and where content lives for months; Threads, where the algorithm is generous while it builds a user base; and LinkedIn, where carousels, articles and newsletters are performing exceptionally well. Add one long form channel if you do not have one.
Section six, offers. The middle ground is being squeezed. People want either a quick, low-risk purchase they can say yes to immediately, or a comprehensive premium “handle this for me” solution. A low-price workshop that solves one specific problem is an easy decision; a broad monthly programme where nobody is sure what it solves is the mushy middle that struggles to convert. Look at your offers and restructure any that sit in the middle.
Finally, systems. Content volume is higher than ever and trying to do it all at once is the fastest path to burnout. Engagement is a muscle; if you have not been in the comments for a while, build it back gradually. Five minutes of real interaction beats an hour of scheduled posting. Build a system that works for your brain: separate creative work from production, track what you have created, store it so you can repurpose it. Recap: use AI as a strategic partner, proof is the new currency, stop saying nothing, create content that sparks conversation, add one long form channel, price at the extremes and avoid the mushy middle, and build systems that work for you. The businesses that thrive will not be the ones chasing every trend; they will be the ones who understand their audience, prove their value and build systems. I’m Sarah Raanan on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook, and I’d love to be social media friends.
Lesley: Thank you very much, Sarah, that was very interesting. There are questions in the chat and Sarah will go through them. A couple of announcements. Save the date for our next online event: the Israel Networking Hub is partnering with Israel Story, one of the world’s most popular Jewish podcasts, and we have Zev Levi on Tuesday 3 February, a free event with breakout rooms on podcasting, storytelling, branding and building your audience, leading into a three-part series with Israel Story specialists. Many of you have already joined ImpactIL, our social impact project, where the Pro Circle shares skills with future generations, the education field, spouses of reservists and the social sector; you can give your skills, sponsor, or donate. Join our Pro Circle community, our free Facebook group, and if you have an inspiring story, email me to be a guest on the Monday Motivation Spotlight, which drops every Monday on YouTube and Spotify. And my two books, Small Business Success Toolbox and Guide, and Empower Talks with Women Entrepreneurs, are on Amazon and my website. Now I’m spotlighting my friend Lilach Bullock. Lilach is no stranger to most of you. She’s a senior business and marketing strategist, she used to have her own agency, she has won many awards, and she was recognised by Forbes as one of the top 20 women social media power influencers. Take it away.
Lilach: Thank you so much, Lesley. Today I’m going to talk about how you can convert your website, or in fact anything. A lot of what I’m talking about applies to your website, your sales page, ads, emails, newsletters. Sometimes I’ll say website and sometimes sales page, but the whole process, the best practices, tips and tools, apply to everything.
The official term is conversion optimisation. We are all obsessed with wanting more likes, more followers, more leads, more sales. What about, instead of chasing more, converting what we already have? Today I’m going to show you how to convert your existing traffic, followers and likes into more leads and sales. Who here wants more leads and sales? Amazing. Conversion optimisation simply means making changes to your website, sales page, ads or newsletter to increase the percentage of visitors who convert, buy, or take any desired action. It is for you to choose that action. It could be signing up to your email list, it could be purchasing something, and you have to set those goals.
First things first: conversion optimisation takes time, and you have to set realistic expectations. It does not happen overnight. It is as much an art as a science, and every website and audience is different. Think of a website as a shop: if nobody in there is buying, you have an empty shop. That is why it is so important to know your numbers. And the beauty of this process, and why I’m obsessed with it and so passionate about it that I have created courses for large companies on digital selling and website conversion, is that you can double, triple, sometimes quadruple your sales overnight by making really small changes. It can transform and scale your business.
So where do you start? First, collect data and know your numbers. This is the most important part, because without it you are guessing, or copying other people who are playing blind. You need to know who you are optimising for, how people behave on your website, and who forms your audience. The more data you have, the better you know what changes to make. There are lots of tools, and I’ll share my favourites at the end. The easiest way is heat maps on your website, and with AI we can now take spying to a whole other level. I love spying.
Now, you have different types of buyers: humanistic, methodical, competitive and spontaneous. We need to know our buyers before we do anything else. Statistically, a lot of people are methodical buyers. They study every element of your page and every piece of information, and they are typically slower. They will not buy immediately; they will come back multiple times, sometimes seven or ten. They read everything. We like these buyers because they do not buy on price, they buy on trust and on feeling confident you can solve their problem. The problem is they take a long time and the sales process is longer. Competitive buyers only look for relevant information, they skim, and they only care about price. If you are not the cheapest, you will not sell to competitive buyers unless you can convince them another way. Spontaneous buyers love interactive content. If you know Temu, the consumer site selling everything for the home, you will have seen quizzes and spinning wheels, because they know their buyers are spontaneous. Everybody loves spontaneous buyers, they are the quickest and they do not care so much about price, but they are the minority. What most people have is humanistic buyers. These are emotional visitors, again unlikely to decide quickly. Price matters, but they also look for the human elements on your page. If you have an About page, they want to see it.
How do you start? First, determine what you want to test. Everyone says, I want more sales and I want more people on my newsletter. But you cannot optimise for both at the same time. You have to prioritise. If you sell a high-end product that people are unlikely to buy from your website, sales page or ad, prioritise optimising for the newsletter or some form of opt-in. You also need to decide how long to wait to measure results, and this is where a lot of people go wrong. It could depend on your sales process, on seasonality, on the type of person. Conversion optimisation is about making one small change at a time, because if you make many changes you will not know what is working. Everything you do should be customer centric: think of the customer first. And it is continual. Think about your ads: when you spend money on ads you optimise them all the time. Everyone is obsessed with ROI from ads. You want the click-through cost as low as possible, and if you have a webinar you want as many bums on seats as possible. It is the same for your website, your newsletter, your sales pages, everything. We must not set it and leave it. We want to be constantly improving so performance keeps growing.
Split testing is the easiest way to do this, and the most common, particularly with ads, where you will usually run several ads to compare. It is easy: two identical pages, and you change really small things. What can you test? Page layout is really important, because where you position things matters. You want to be the puppet master. You are the director. Do not let your visitor decide where they go. I hate the word manipulate, but that is basically what marketing is at the end of the day. You direct them, and you do that with page layout. For example, whenever I see someone position their newsletter at the end of a page or far down, that tells me the newsletter is not a priority for them. So position things where you want them to go. Colours as well: experiment with different colours, on your CTAs and on blocks. If you test nothing else at all, test headlines. My email tool, ConvertKit, now called Kit, and a lot of email tools do this, lets you split test the subject line: 15 percent get one headline, 15 percent get the other, it works out which got the most opens, and sends the remaining 70 percent the winner. That is split testing, and we can do it with everything from ads to newsletters to emails to websites to sales pages.
Let’s do a case study: Booking.com, which is how I booked this holiday in Eilat. It’s a great website. Booking.com, like Amazon, and I have worked with Google and Amazon in the past on website conversion, will run something like 400 tests in a month, sometimes more. I’m not suggesting you do that, but I want to show you some of what they did. Their problem was high intent visitors with high anxiety. Users were hesitating, browsing but not pushing through, opening another window to compare, delaying. The sales process was too long and they wanted to shorten it. They also had too many similar choices, so people were overwhelmed and the risk felt high: worried they would regret it, worried they could get a cheaper price, worried the hotel would not suit them. So how did they fix it? Notice, first, that they changed the colours, and none of these colours are their brand colours. When it comes to converting, do not feel beholden to your brand colours. And rather than just changing colours, they put wording in coloured blocks and changed the size of them. It is these tiny details that make the biggest impact: pink, orange, blue, green, none of them brand colours, all of them working. Then look at the messaging. They ticked the scarcity box: only so many rooms left. They removed all the risk: free cancellation, pay later. They solved every reason to be nervous about paying now. They have social proof, reviews, and a really clear CTA. If you have a shop or you want to convert your existing assets, look at Amazon and Booking.com. They are the kings of conversion optimisation, they are obsessed with it, and if you look again in a month or three months you will see the pages, especially the checkout, have changed again in tiny ways. You can learn a lot from them.
Ultimately what we are doing is persuading, and there are six principles of persuasion we should apply to our business in every way, from ads to newsletters to copy to website to sales pages to our regular emails. Scarcity, which Booking.com did really well: only a few left, limited time offer, final sale. These give the push needed to decide. Reciprocation: visitors are much more likely to buy if you give them a benefit first, a free gift or valuable information. Temu is the king of this. You can be turned off by how many free things there are. Their model is to get you in for free, hook you, you pay barely anything, then they upsell; they rarely make money on the first sale. It depends on your business model. Consistency: get visitors into a funnel by having them commit to something small, downloading a guide or signing up, and then push them through with your email newsletters, especially if you sell services or anything expensive, because they will not buy without trust. Social proof, which Sarah also spoke about: show that other people love your products or services with reviews, on your site, on review sites, on Facebook. Think about where you can position reviews to make the yes easier. Authority: showcase endorsements and testimonials. On my website I have been featured in hundreds of publications, from Forbes to TED talks to TV and radio, and I position all of that on the site to build authority and trust. And liking: connect with visitors on a human level and give them a reason to like you, particularly if you are a service business, because people want to know who is behind it. In all my research, the About page is often one of the most visited pages, so make it as strong as possible so it converts.
What makes a great website? Clarity. There is nothing worse than landing on a website and there is no clarity, it is not what they expected, it does not quickly explain what you do and how you solve their problem. Usability: nothing worse than not being able to find something. People’s attention spans are short. We want leads quick, sales quick, our problem solved quick, and if you cannot give the answer quickly and easily they leave, and you spent all that time getting them there. That is why load time matters too. Pop-ups: most people hate them. I experiment with pop-ups a lot, turning them on and off. OptinMonster was one of the first pop-up tools, over ten years ago, and I worked with them on a case study. Nobody says “I love pop-ups” apart from the person who owns the pop-up, but they are very effective. They turn some people off, but they convert much higher. If your goal is building an email list, you must use a pop-up, because you will gain more subscribers than without one. My favourite is the exit intent pop-up: when you move towards the X to close the tab, it knows you are leaving and tries to capture you first. And your calls to action must be clear, otherwise your website or sales page is just a page that looks pretty. Notice I have not mentioned design. Design is important, but these are the priority. You can have the most beautiful website in the world, but if it does not convert it is wasting everybody’s time.
Tools. Hotjar has been around a very long time and I have used it personally. It does two things really well: heat maps, so you can see where people hover, and session recordings, so you can watch a video of what people do on your website. Spy software, and I love it. And now, instead of watching hours of recordings, it gives you faster insight, which saves so much time. Microsoft Clarity is free and a great starting point if you are not ready to invest. It has heat maps and session replays, and it automatically flags rage clicks and dead clicks. Sadly I have to explain that: people, bots and sometimes competitors click on things for the sake of it, on ads too, and you do not want that in your data. It also shows group behaviour patterns. VWO is AI conversion optimisation: it analyses user behaviour, identifies where conversion loss is likely happening, suggests what to test and where, and helps you prioritise instead of guessing. If you are new to this it takes away a lot of the guesswork. And if you want to take it to another level, Intellimize is an AI-driven personalisation tool that does what the others do and then automatically personalises pages for different visitors. If you have four types of users you can show each of them something different, which is very powerful in the consumer space, and it learns which experiences convert best for each audience. Booking.com and Amazon will be using tools like this. It optimises layouts, headlines and CTAs and runs continuous experiments in the background, so it replaces manual A/B testing.
To sum up, and I could talk for hours on this: focus on the customer first, study the data before you optimise, use A/B testing on different elements of your site or ads or copy, continually optimise for conversions to grow and scale your business, and always remember relevance, value and a call to action. And enjoy the results. I’m Lilach Bullock, and this is how you can work with me. Thank you so much.
Lesley: Fabulous, thank you Lilach. Ladies and gents, we have come almost to the end. Thank you for joining us at the Israel Networking Hub. We’ve learned a lot. I’m Lesley Kaplan, we will see you on 3 February for our podcasting event, and thank you again to our sponsor Egert and Cohen Insurance.
