They typed it into Reddit for free, in their own words. This prompt goes and reads it, then hands you their ranked complaints and the angles you can test this week.
Think about the last sales page you wrote. You guessed at what was worrying your customer, wrote a version you half liked, and then waited to find out if any of it landed.
Meanwhile someone with that exact problem was typing the whole thing out on Reddit at 11 at night. The complaint they'd never say to your face. The clumsy phrase they used when they finally described what they wanted.
That's the copy. It's sitting in public threads with timestamps and upvotes on it, and you can go read it before you write a single line.
Fill in 3 things: what you sell, who buys it, and 2 or 3 Reddit communities where those people post. If you don't know your communities yet, scroll down, the first bonus prompt finds them.
You are my customer research assistant. I sell [what you sell, in one or two sentences] to [who buys it and what they are trying to get done]. Read the most active recent threads in these Reddit communities: [r/community], [r/community], [r/community]. Look at posts from the last 6 months, sorted by top, and read the comments underneath, not only the original posts. That is where people say the honest version. Give me 4 things, in this order. 1. Problems. The 6 to 8 complaints that come up most often. Rank them by how many separate threads each one showed up in, and say the number. 2. Objections. The 5 or 6 reasons people give for not buying something like what I sell, or for regretting it after they did. 3. Their words. A swipe file of 15 to 20 phrases copied exactly as people typed them, typos and all. Do not clean them up or make them sound better. The typos are the point. 4. Angles. 8 to 10 hooks I could test. For each one, give me the line in their language, the problem it speaks to, and the link to the thread it came from so I can go read it myself. Rules. Quote, do not paraphrase. Every angle needs a real link. If you cannot find a real thread for something, leave it out and tell me what you left out. Do not write any of this in marketing voice.
Go where your customers complain. A wedding photographer wants r/weddingplanning, where the brides are, over a photography community full of other photographers. Not sure? The first bonus prompt below finds them for you.
Be specific about who buys from you. "Busy moms" gets you nothing. "Moms of 2 kids under 5 who work full time and have 20 minutes to cook" gets you the real threads. Then give it a minute, reading takes a while.
This is the step people skip. AI can produce a quote that sounds exactly right and came from nowhere. Click into 3 threads and find the words on the page. If a link goes nowhere, throw that angle out and tell it to try again.
Keep the phrasing as it came, clumsy grammar included. The line that reads slightly wrong is usually the one that works, because that's how a person said it out loud.
The AI needs to be able to search the web for this. In Claude, web search is on by default on the paid plans. In ChatGPT, look for the search or browse toggle before you send it. If it comes back with 5 general observations and no links, search was off.
The first one is for when you have no idea where your people are. The second is for the day after, when you have a page of angles and a caption to write.
Run this before the main prompt. It comes back with real community names you can paste straight into the brackets.
Why the last line matters. Most people search their own industry and land somewhere full of competitors swapping tips. Your customers are in a different room, using different words, and that room is the one you want.
I sell [what you sell] to [who buys it]. Find me 5 Reddit communities where those buyers post regularly. For each one, give me the name, roughly how many members it has, and one recent thread title that shows my kind of customer talking about my kind of problem. Skip any community where the people posting are selling what I sell. I want the room my customers are in.
Take a single angle from the research, with the quotes that sit behind it, and get 3 versions you can put out today.
Why the last line matters. Left alone, AI polishes a real sentence until it sounds like every other ad. The whole value of the research is the rough edge, so tell it to leave the rough edge alone.
Here is one angle from my Reddit research, with the quotes behind it: [paste the angle and its quotes]. Write 3 versions of [a Facebook ad / an Instagram caption / an email subject line] using the words from those quotes. Keep their phrasing even where it is clumsy. Do not smooth it out, do not make it sound professional, and do not add words like transform, effortless, or elevate.