u/JMALIK0702

Every project I take on, landing page, advertorial, presell page, ad scripts, starts with the same process. I don't touch copy until this is done. It takes about 3 hours and it consistently produces better results than any amount of creative brainstorming.

It's called Voice of Customer research. VoC. The process of going through hundreds of customer reviews, forum posts, and social media comments to understand how your buyer actually talks about their problem, what they've tried before, what they're afraid of, and what finally convinced them to buy.

Here's the exact process:

Phase 1: Collect the raw material (45 min)

I gather reviews from 4 sources:

• The brand's own product reviews (5-star, 3-star, and 1-star, each tells a different story)
• Competitor reviews on Amazon (same product category, this is where the richest language lives because Amazon reviewers are incredibly detailed)
• Reddit threads about the problem the product solves (search the relevant subreddit for the condition or pain point)
• Facebook group conversations (search for the product category in relevant health/wellness groups)

I aim for 200-400 data points total. Copy them into a document, one review per line. Don't summarize, keep the exact words. The exact words are the whole point.

Phase 2: Mine for themes (60 min)

I read through every single entry and highlight 5 things:

Pain language, how they describe the problem BEFORE finding a solution. Not the clinical version. The emotional, specific, real version. "I was afraid to pick up my grandkids" hits different than "joint discomfort."

Purchase triggers, what specific incident pushed them to finally buy. After months or years of dealing with the problem, what was the tipping point? Usually it's a specific moment, not a general desire. "My daughter's wedding was 3 months away and I couldn't walk without limping."

Skepticism patterns, what almost stopped them from buying. "I've been burned by supplements before." "I didn't trust the marketing." "The price seemed too high for something that probably won't work." These become objections the copy needs to address.

Outcome moments, not "it works great." The specific, tangible moment they realized it was working. "I woke up and my hands didn't ache for the first time in years." "I made it through a whole yoga class without having to stop." These become the proof elements.

Language patterns, specific phrases that show up repeatedly. If 30 people use the word "exhausted" but zero people use the word "fatigue," the copy should say "exhausted." Your customer's vocabulary is more persuasive than your copywriter's vocabulary.

Phase 3: Build the theme map (45 min)

I organize the highlights into 6-10 distinct themes, ranked by:

• Frequency (how often it appears)
• Emotional intensity (how strongly people feel about it)
• Uniqueness (is this specific to this product category or generic?)

The top 2-3 themes become the foundation for everything, the headline, the opening hook, the mechanism angle, the proof structure, and the CTA.

Phase 4: Match themes to funnel stages (30 min)

• Theme #1 (highest frequency + intensity) → drives the headline and opening of the presell/landing page
• Themes #2-3 → drive the mechanism section and proof stack
• Skepticism patterns → drive the objection handling and guarantee language
• Outcome moments → drive the testimonials and CTA language

The entire piece of copy is built on what the customer already told you they care about. Not what the brand wants to say. Not what the copywriter thinks sounds good. What the customer actually said, in their own words.

Why this works better than brainstorming:

I've done this process on 20+ brands now. The winning headline has come from the VoC data every single time. Not once has the brand founder's preferred angle matched the top VoC theme. Not once.

Founders think about their product the way they built it, ingredients, formulation, quality. Customers think about the product the way they experience it, through the lens of their pain, their fear, their specific Tuesday morning when everything hurt.

The gap between those two perspectives is where great copy lives.

This isn't my proprietary invention or anything, VoC research has been used in direct response copywriting for decades. The great DR writers all did some version of it. I just systematized it for the health and wellness niche because that's where I work.

If you write copy for any health or DTC brand, try this once. Even a shorter version, just go read 100 Amazon reviews for a product in your category and highlight the language that jumps out. You'll find angles you never would have brainstormed.

Landing pages, advertorials, presell pages, ad scripts. I've been in the weeds on Meta ads performance for these brands for about 3 years now.

The conversation I keep having with brand founders in 2026 goes like this: "Our CPMs are way up, our ROAS is down, we need better ads."

And I get it. When costs rise, the instinct is to make the creative work harder. Test more hooks. Try more UGC creators. Rotate faster.

But here's what the data keeps showing me across the 10+ brands I'm actively working with: the brands that recovered their ROAS this year didn't do it with better ads. They did it with better post-click experiences.

Here's the math that keeps coming up:

Brand A: spent $15K testing 30 new ad variations. Best performer beat the control by 11% on CTR. ROAS improved by 0.2x. Net effect: marginal.

Brand B: took $5K of that budget and rebuilt their landing page to include a mechanism section, restructured their proof stack, and fixed the ad-to-page message match. Same ads they were already running. ROAS improved by 0.9x.

Brand B spent less, changed nothing about the ads, and got 4x the ROAS improvement.

This pattern isn't a one-off. When CPMs rise, the cost of every click goes up. Which means the VALUE of every click goes up too. Every visitor your page fails to convert is now more expensive than it was last year.

The response shouldn't be "get more clicks." It should be "convert more of the clicks you're already paying for."

Specifically what I've seen move the needle when CPMs are high:

Adding a presell step. Instead of ad → product page, you put an editorial-style article between the ad and the checkout. This article educates, builds trust, and pre-frames the product. Cold traffic that goes through a presell converts at 2.5-4.5x the rate of traffic sent straight to a product page. Same traffic. Same ads. Different journey.

Fixing message match. The ad promises one thing. The landing page talks about something else. When every click costs $3-5 instead of $1-2, this disconnect is a much more expensive problem. Aligning the page to the ad's promise, opening with the same pain point, using the same language, typically moves CVR by 30-50%.

Adding a mechanism section. Most health brand pages list ingredients. Very few explain why those ingredients work differently from what the customer has already tried. A 150-word section that gives the reader a new way to understand their problem, before introducing the product, is consistently the highest-leverage copy change I make.

None of this requires new ad creative. None of it requires a bigger budget. It requires looking at the part of the funnel that most brands ignore when costs rise.

I know the "just make better ads" advice is everywhere right now. I'm not saying creative doesn't matter, it absolutely does. But if your landing page converts at 1.2% and you improve your ad CTR by 15%, your ROAS barely moves. If your landing page goes from 1.2% to 2.8%, everything changes.

When CPMs go up, the highest-ROI move is almost always below the click, not above it.

Like the title stated, I am actually working with an ex VC in the US, though I already had good connections with him and that's why, he passes on people from his network who might be looking for services that we provide.

Not all of them convert but majority of them do, but I noticed that the companies coming through him are automatically "Hot leads" if I talk in terms of CRM, but these are not the typical hot leads, like they do not have an urgent issue that they need resolved, or in plain terms they are not coming in panic mode, rather they are actually looking to scale with a partner or have an idea they want to test out.

I have heard for people like these are called enablers, who either consults these companies or have a really strong connection with someone in their decision making teams and they work with agencies on a rev share basis, sending over leads or getting them intros to these brands.

I wonder if this is an actual sales channel for anyone here, I am planning to work on something concrete to find and meet more of these people but I am not sure where do I look for them apart from LinkedIn.