Copywriting: The Research Phase

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Research is said to be one of the most important stages of copywriting, and that's absolutely true.

Before writing persuasive copy, you have to understand who you're speaking to and why that person would be interested in what you're selling.

Research allows you to discover all of this, along with what might prevent someone from making a purchase.

This way, you can craft a message that addresses real needs instead of relying solely on your assumptions (source: "Building An Insights Engine," Harvard Business Review.

Here's a practical method you can use to conduct research before writing any sales copy.

Study the Product or Service

Before you start writing, you have to understand exactly what you're selling, because you can't convince someone to buy a product if you can't explain why it would be useful to them.

To truly understand a product, you need to identify what difference it can make in a customer's life and the situations in which it can genuinely help them.

If you only know its technical features, you'll end up writing copy that explains how the product works without making it clear why it's worth buying, and people aren't willing to put in that mental effort themselves (source: "What Customers Want From Your Products", Harvard Business School).

Start by answering these questions:

• What does the product do? Explain how it works in simple terms.
• What problem does it solve? Identify the difficulty the customer wants to overcome.
• What specific result does it promise? Clarify what someone can achieve by using it.
• What makes it different from the alternatives? Look for a genuine difference that could make it a better choice.
• What evidence proves it works? Check whether documented results or credible testimonials are available.
• What are its limitations? Understand what it cannot do so you don't promise unrealistic results.

From experience, I can tell you that reading reviews from people who have already purchased the product is also useful when answering these questions.

Pay particular attention to what customers appreciate after using it.

Sometimes you'll discover that the benefit people mention most frequently is the very one you considered the least important.

Research Your Audience

This is probably the most important stage.

Your goal is to understand how the people you want to sell to think, and to do that, you need to understand what they're going through and what they hope to achieve.

There are five specific areas you should investigate.

• Problems: What makes the customer's everyday life difficult? Try to understand which situations they would like to change.
• Desires: What result do they really want to achieve? Try to discover how their life would change if they succeeded.
• Fears: What are they afraid might happen? They might be worried about wasting money or being disappointed.
• Objections: What's preventing them from buying? Perhaps they think the price is too high or aren't convinced the product is right for them.
• Previous attempts: What solutions have they already tried? Understanding why they weren't satisfied helps you identify the expectations a new offer needs to address.

You don't necessarily have to find five different answers for every customer, because people can share the same problems while having very different motivations.

Think about an English course.

One person might want to learn the language to get promoted at work, while another might simply want to speak without feeling embarrassed.

The product is the same, but the reason people might buy it changes.

That's why it's important not to rely solely on your own impressions but to look for information directly in places where people talk about their experiences.

Where can you find this information?

• Forums and online communities such as Reddit and [Quora]((https://quora.com/): Look for discussions about the problem your product is designed to solve. Focus especially on conversations where someone asks for help or shares a negative experience. The replies contain useful information because other people explain what they've tried and why a particular solution didn't satisfy them.
• Product reviews on platforms such as Amazon, Trustpilot, and Google: Look only at negative reviews, because most positive reviews are fake, and what you really need to understand is which expectations weren't met.
• Social media comments: On YouTube and TikTok, you can find particularly detailed conversations beneath videos covering specific topics. Pay close attention to how people describe their difficulties.
• Google searches: Type the problem you want to investigate into the search bar and observe the suggestions Google displays as you type. Also examine related searches when they're available. This information can help you identify new questions worth investigating. Remember, however, that a Google search suggestion doesn't automatically prove that a problem matters to your entire audience, so one practical piece of advice I'd give you is not to stop researching as soon as you find an interesting phrase; keep going until you start recognizing recurring problems.

Collect Voice of Customer (VOC) Data

In copywriting, Voice of Customer means collecting the words people spontaneously use to describe their experiences.

This matters because the language customers use can be very different from the language companies use.

A company selling English courses, as in our earlier example, might talk about "developing communication skills," while someone interested in the course might instead say, "I understand English when I hear it, but when I have to speak, I completely freeze up."

The second statement describes a real situation that readers might immediately recognize from their own lives.

People tend to pay more attention to information they recognize as relevant to their own circumstances (source: "Attitude Importance and the Accumulation of Attitude-Relevant Knowledge in Memory," Stanford University).

If readers come across a sentence that describes exactly what they struggle with every day, using the same words they would use themselves, they might have one more reason to keep reading.

How do you collect these phrases?

Whenever you find an interesting testimonial, copy it into a document without changing the wording.

Next to the quote, record where you found it so you can retrieve the original context whenever you need it.

After collecting several testimonials, read through them carefully and look for expressions that appear most frequently.

You have to choose the ones that best represent what you've discovered.

Here's a hypothetical example using our usual English course:

• Customer's statement: "I understand English when I hear it, but when I have to speak, I completely freeze up."
• Potential ad headline: "Do you understand English but freeze up when it's time to speak? Discover how to practice conversations and speak with more confidence."

As you can see, the message comes directly from a difficulty described by the customer, which means you don't need to invent a problem to grab their attention; you simply have to learn to recognize one that already exists.

Analyze Your Competitors

Studying your competitors helps you understand how products similar to yours are presented.

Obviously, this doesn't mean copying what others are doing, but rather observing the promises they use to attract attention and how they try to convince people to buy.

I recommend starting by analyzing between five and ten competitors, including both direct and indirect competitors.

Direct competitors are companies that sell a product similar to yours and target the same audience.

Indirect competitors, on the other hand, are companies that offer a different solution to satisfy the same need (if you own a coffee shop, home coffee machines are an indirect competitor).

A customer might choose one of these alternatives instead of buying your course.

Where can you find competitors?

The easiest place to start is Google.

Search for the category your product belongs to; for example, you could type "online English course for professionals."

Open the websites of companies that appear in the search results and check whether they're targeting an audience similar to yours.

You can find additional competitors by looking at which companies people mention in online discussions about the problem you want to solve.

Also pay attention to the alternatives people recommend when someone asks which product to buy.

What should you analyze?

Once you've identified your competitors, visit their websites and look for pages where they introduce their products and explain why people should buy them.

Focus especially on sales pages and FAQ sections, because these often reveal which concerns companies are trying to address before customers make a purchase.

For each competitor, try to understand the following aspects.

• Main headline: What's the first promise visitors read? Try to understand which result is being emphasized.
• Offer: What exactly is being sold? Check the price as well to understand how the product's value is presented.
• How it works: How does the company explain the way its product helps customers? Check whether the explanation is easy to understand.
• Evidence: Does the company provide testimonials or verifiable results? Try to understand how it supports its claims.
• Objections: Which concerns does the company try to address? Pay particular attention to answers to questions that might prevent a purchase.
• Sales arguments: Which problem receives the most attention? Which audience desire is used to position the product?

As you conduct this analysis, look for things competitors don't explain or that you think they explain poorly.

For example, you might notice that several English courses promise to help students speak fluently but don't explain how their conversation exercises are structured.

If your course offers a concrete method for practicing spoken English, you can consider whether that difference deserves greater emphasis in your marketing.

The important thing is that every advantage you present must be genuine and demonstrable.

How to Use the Meta Ad Library

Another useful tool is the Meta Ad Library, a public database where you can browse advertisements running across Meta's platforms (Facebook and Instagram).

To use it, find your competitors' Facebook pages, then look for the "Transparency" section under the "About" tab, where you should find access to the Ad Library.

Review all their ads, especially older ones that are still running, because those are theoretically the ones that have delivered the best results (otherwise, the companies would have turned them off already).

Read the ad copy and observe which promise is used to grab attention.

If the ad contains a video, try to identify which problem is introduced in the opening seconds.

Also check where the ad's link leads and visit the landing page to see how the sales message continues.

This helps you understand which approaches the company is using.

Study the Market's Level of Awareness

A fundamental concept in the copywriting of Eugene Schwartz is that not everyone has the same level of awareness of the problem a product can solve.

Some people haven't even realized they have a problem, while others are already looking for a solution.

These differences matter because an advertising message must start with what the reader already knows.

Schwartz identifies five levels of awareness:

• Unaware: The person doesn't recognize the problem yet or doesn't consider it important enough to look for a solution. In this situation, you first have to help them recognize a situation that might apply to them.
• Problem Aware: The person knows they have a problem but doesn't yet know of a suitable solution. In this case, you can talk directly about the problem, demonstrating that you understand it and explaining why addressing it could be worthwhile.
• Solution Aware: The person recognizes the problem and knows that products or methods exist to address it, but hasn't decided which solution to use. Your job is to explain how your approach works and why it might be suitable for their situation.
• Product Aware: The person already knows about your product but isn't convinced they should buy it. There's no need to start over with a general explanation of the problem; you just have to focus on the concerns that might prevent them from making a decision. If you have genuine testimonials from students who had similar doubts, you can use them to make your explanation more concrete.
• Most Aware: The person knows the product and already understands why it could be useful. They're close to buying but might need a few final details, so in this case, your message can be much more direct.

Why Are These Levels Important?

Because they help you decide where to begin your copy.

Imagine talking to someone who has never heard of your now-famous English course.

If you immediately ask them to buy it, you might not give them enough information to understand why they should.

On the other hand, if you're addressing someone who already knows about the course and just wants to enroll, there's no point in forcing them to read a lengthy explanation of the problem.

It's somewhat similar to what Google keeps urging us to do with our content: someone searching for "how to do marketing" doesn't want to find articles where the author explains what marketing is and walks through its history; they want to learn how to do it through a process that's as practical and straightforward as possible.

It's a completely different story for someone searching for "what is marketing," because we can assume they're looking for informational content, so giving them some background on the history of marketing might be perfectly appropriate.

The principle to follow is to start with what readers already know and guide them toward the information they need to make a decision.

Organize Everything Into a Research Document

Create a simple system that allows you to quickly retrieve what you've discovered, because even excellent research is of little use if you can't find the information when you start writing.

I recommend keeping all your material in a single document, whether that's Google Docs or another program you're comfortable using.

How to Organize the Document

Start by creating a section dedicated to the product, explaining what it does and what result it can help customers achieve, then add the evidence you'll need to support any promises you might make.

Next, create a section dedicated to your audience, where you collect the problems that come up most frequently in the conversations you've analyzed, making sure to leave room for concerns that might prevent people from buying.

In another section, save your customers' original statements, which I strongly recommend leaving exactly as they are.

If you want to add your own interpretation, write it separately so you can distinguish the customer's actual words from your observations.

Finally, create a section dedicated to competitors, where you record each company's website link along with a brief explanation of any advertising message you found interesting.

Turn Your Research Into Sales Angles

Once you've completed your research, you have to turn the information you've gathered into arguments you can use in your copy.

In copywriting, these arguments are called sales angles, which are simply different ways of presenting a product, since the same product can appeal to people for different reasons.

Your job is to choose which reason to emphasize based on the audience you're targeting.

Let's look at three possible approaches.

Angle 1: Frustration

This angle starts with a difficulty the customer is already experiencing: "Have you studied English for years but still freeze up when you have to speak?"

The sentence can grab the attention of someone who recognizes that situation, so after introducing the problem, you can explain how the course gives them opportunities to practice speaking.

Angle 2: Desire

Here, you start with a result the customer would like to achieve: "Imagine walking into your next meeting in English feeling more confident."

In this case, you're helping readers picture a situation they'd like to experience, and the rest of the message should explain how the course can help them get closer to that result.

Angle 3: Objection

Finally, you start with a concern that might prevent someone from buying: "Don't have an hour a day to study English? Start with 15 minutes."

The sentence speaks to someone who wants to improve their English but worries they don't have enough time, so the message immediately introduces a feature of the course that could make the purchase more appealing.

How Do You Choose the Best Angle?

Go back to your research document and check which problems people mention most frequently and which seem to matter most to your audience.

If many people say they don't have time to study, you could start by testing an angle focused on lesson length, while if the fear of speaking in front of others comes up most often, you could begin with the difficulty of having conversations.

Remember, however, that the frequency with which a problem appears in reviews doesn't, by itself, prove that a message built around it will generate more sales.

Research allows you to develop reasonable hypotheses, but to understand which angle works best, you have to test it, perhaps by creating two versions of an ad, each using a different angle.