New Killer Copy, Straight from Your Customers

Hey everyone,

Welcome back for another bite to chew on. 

You know there’s a lot of focus on stuff like video editing and graphic design when it comes to creative. 

But sometimes not enough attention is paid to messaging. 

Probably because writing truly great copy is very, very hard - while writing just okay copy is relatively easy. 

So the temptation is to default to okay copy and then focus on the rich content of your ad instead.  

But the truth is the right messaging can make or break your creative. 

A killer headline, the proper angle - something that hits right at the heart of your target audience’s pain point - can turn an average ad into a top performer.

So the question is how? Not everyone is David Ogilvy.

The solution - turn your customers into your copywriters.  

Today we’ll tell you how we discovered this tactic and how you can crowdsource killer copy from your first-party data. 

On the Menu

• First up - The game-changing headline

• Second - How to collect user feedback  

• Third - How to use it

Tool of the Week

If you’re an eCom operator, then you want to spend your time doing things that drive growth and profit. 

Moving the needle. Finding Alpha. Discovering key unlocks. 

You know - the good stuff. 

Here’s something you DON’T want to worry about - US State sales tax compliance.

The rub is you don’t have a choice.

If you’re selling DTC in the US, then you must collect and remit sales tax in every single state. 

EXCEPT - they all have different sales thresholds, rules, and processes. 

None of this has been standardized. None of it is intuitive. 

You might be tempted to ignore sales tax because it seems impossible to navigate, but that means creating a massive tax liability for future you and your business. 

Enter → Kintsugi

They take sale tax compliance and automate it from start to finish. 

And it’s not just a slick SaaS platform either. They also give you access to US tax experts and “TaxGPT” AI to help answer any of your questions along the way. 

So if you’re in eCom and you’re ready to take your tax compliance from nightmare to afterthought check out their free tier to get started. 

“Lose weight like you’re 20”

This is the gamechanging headline that really taught us how valuable customer comments can be. 

It came from a post-purchase survey where we asked "What's the one main problem you're trying to solve?".

One customer replied with a long story about how she was able to quickly lose weight in her 20s, but found it a lot harder in her 50’s.

This kind of angle had occurred to us before but never expressed quite so succinctly. We decided to take what she told us and put it in an ad.

Boom - instant top performer 💥 

Talk about a learning experience. 

Obviously, we have always paid attention to user feedback, but this was a whole new level of value. 

Instead of wracking our brains for great hooks, angles, and headlines whenever we develop another batch of ads - 

Now we can get ahead of the game by deep-diving into comments, reviews, and replies. 

Here’s how we do it…

Collecting customer feedback

There are more than a few places you can look for killer customer copy. 

Here are the key ones: 

• Customer reviews

• Social media/community comments

• Advocate interviews 

• BONUS - competitor ads or social accounts

• BONUS 2 - Reddit threads

Customer reviews

You have a strong post-purchase review flow going, right? 

Then you have a rich source of feedback to pull from. 

If you’re a smaller brand, you should be actively assessing every single review that arrives. 

It will become easy to spot the best stuff. Make a habit of capturing it ASAP, even if it’s something as simple as a screenshot folder you keep on your desktop. 

In fact, we know some brands that share their favorite reviews in a dedicated company Slack channel. 

Your team will then celebrate the wins, but also will naturally discuss what makes a review interesting or compelling. 

If you're bigger and don’t have time to check every review, you’ll need to develop a collection process →

• Download your 5-star reviews over a certain period (3-6 months)

• Input them into a document or spreadsheet

• Ensure you can sort them by important factors like product or SKU

• Skip over the very basic stuff like “I like it!” or “Works good!”

• Pay attention to longer, more in-depth reviews

• Upload your document or spreadsheet to ChatGPT and it can help you sort, summarize, and detect patterns 

Social Media / Community comments

People can be brutally honest on social. 

You’ll still find your advocates here, but also the doubters and people who might be disappointed in something. 

Both good and bad comments can be useful, especially if you uncover messaging that challenges common anxieties and doubts that pop up. 

The bad stuff should be elevated to your social/community manager or your customer service team. Implement a standard for capturing things that are noteworthy, even if it’s saving a link or a screenshot.

If you are lucky enough to have a community built around your brand, don’t just lurk on threads - actively solicit feedback as a founder now and then. 

Advocate interviews

Related - you can gather great insight with some simple 15-minute outreach calls or video chats. 

Dig into your sales data a bit and create a list of some of your best customers over the last 6-12 months. 

Contact them directly and ask if they’d be willing to discuss what they like about the brand.

Offer an incentive if needed, but often you’ll find customers like this are just happy to interact with you. 

Also - don’t structure the call too much. Arrive with a basic framework in mind, but sometimes the best, most surprising feedback can come through open-ended discussion. 

Be sure to ask the person if you can record the call, making it easier to review. 

If it’s a video call, sometimes you can turn those into testimonial-style ads (be sure to get permission here).  

BONUS - competitor ads and social media

This is technically not YOUR customer data, of course, but…

It can be useful to take a look at what your target audience is saying to (or about) other key players in your niche. 

Focus on requests, anxieties, gaps, and complaints. See if you can position your messaging to fix, leverage, or answer them. 

BONUS 2 - Reddit fishing

Again, this is a bit outside of “first party data”, but we have found that Reddit can be a rich source of user or target audience feedback as well. 

One tactic we’ve tried since is grabbing Reddit threads and turning them into TikTok stories using an AI-generated voice. 

This may not work for you, but it gives you a sense of how you can get creative with this kind of information. 

Using customer feedback

So you’re going to have to filter out a lot of stuff. 

User feedback is always good, but not all of it is useful when you’re copy-hunting. 

As mentioned, you can skip over the common, obvious, or low-effort stuff.

“They’re greaaaat!” may work for Tony the Tiger, but you will need more meat on the bone to move the needle. 

Here are some factors to look out for: 

Persona matching

If you have a story, comment, or review that really nails a pain point/the perspective of a key persona, you’ve likely struck gold. 

Anything that includes personal details (think: I can really picture this person) can often be directly deployed as an ad. 

Transformation events

“I tried this and it changed the way I…” 

Copy that mentions a SPECIFIC change (for the better) as a result of your product can hit home with potential customers with similar challenges or aspirations. 

Conversion events 

A lot of people in your funnel are on the fence about whether to buy or not. 

A thing that can push them over the edge is hearing about how someone who previously doubted your product has been converted into a true believer. Especially if their doubts are similar. 

Spot trends

Sometimes it won’t be about finding that golden nugget in a specific review or comment. 

Instead, it might just be about a certain reason or pain point that crops up over and over again, which will give you solid a direction to work from. 

Ride waves

On a macro scale, customers will sometimes latch on or compare you to something that is trending in general. 

Leveraged properly, this can help you grab attention and ride the awareness wave associated with that trend.  

Double down

Some of the best customer feedback can be lifted, in whole or in part, to build ads or make headlines. 

But if you find a good angle that seems to resonate - like the Ozempic comment above - you can double down by deploying it a variety of ways. 

For example:

That relatively simple Ozempic comment led to dozens of winning variations for us. 

Sum it up

If you are painstakingly coming up with fresh hooks, angles, concepts, and headlines by yourself all the time, then you’re doing it wrong. 

Your customer feedback is a treasure trove of copy and messaging. 

Your audience is literally telling you exactly what they want, what they like, what works, and why they think so. 

So get out there and crowdsource some award-winning copywriting. 

And then double down whenever you find something that hits. 

You won’t even need the budget to hire Ogilvy, either.  

Before you go…

Are you gearing up for a big Q4? 

Looking for ways outside of the typical Meta and retention tactics to smash your BFCM goals? 

If so you should swing by our free fireside chat on September 25th.  

We’re hosting Danil Saliukov and Thiago Nogueira of Insense with Nick Shackelford of Brez to talk about how brands can maximize their creator content across both paid and organic channels. 

This will include:

• Paid social trends including the latest tips for Meta - Whitelisting and TikTok Spark

• How to source UGC at scale

• Tips for seeding and affiliate campaigns for Q4

And more. 

Don’t miss out! Register for free here.

All the best, 

Ron and Ash