How do you write ad copy that speaks to customer pain points?

Why doesn’t announcing your product work?

Because a launch announcement is about you. Your customer is busy thinking about their own problem.

I worked with a clothing brand that had a range cut for a specific body shape, and it was underselling. The launch campaign had basically said “new range launched”, and that was it. The women it was made for had spent years walking out of the ninth store with nothing, or buying things they’d always have to alter. That’s the frustration. So the message should be closer to this question. What would it look like to never alter clothes again?

It’s the same in every category I work in. No one wants recovery, even though that’s what a sports supplement sells. They want the results of recovery. Nobody wants a course either. If you tease a new digital product with “we’re building a course”, you’ve lost them, because actually no one wants a course.

The profit sits in the pain. Your ads and your landing pages both need to say it plainly.

How do you find the pain in the first place?

Ask your customers, and then play the part of your customer yourself.

For the asking, put this question in your next customer survey: “Describe, in as many words as possible, your biggest frustration with buying [your category].” Then look at how long the answers are. You can use the length of someone’s answer to work out how big a pain point they’re experiencing. Read the long ones by hand, because they’re full of the phrases your ads should be using.

Keep open questions to a minimum. The more open questions you have, the less data you’ll get back, because every one makes people stop and think. Put them at the end of the survey, after the quick multiple-choice ones.

For the second part, sit down and talk through the buying decision as your customer, out loud. When we were working out how to explain an online course to people over 55, I role-played a 75-year-old customer. What would confuse me? What would put me off? What would I need to hear to give it a go? That’s the work. Embodying the persona of the customer. It feels a bit silly. Do it anyway.

What does pain-led copy actually sound like?

Specific. It names the moment the customer feels it.

With an endurance supplement, the obvious line is about faster recovery. The real fear sits somewhere else. These runners are lying in bed dreading the fact that tomorrow they’ve got to do another run. Underneath that is a bigger worry, that after months of training they won’t make the start line. Copy that names that moment lands, because the reader recognises their own night.

Then show the transformation. Where are they after? Waking up ready for the next session. Standing on the start line. The product comes in last, as the thing that gets them from one to the other.

How should you talk about the product itself?

In terms the buyer already understands, and in a way that makes it feel easy.

For the over-55s course, “online course” was a barrier on its own. To a lot of that audience it sounds technical. So it became classes you follow along with, which is something they already know. Then one line took the difficulty away. If you’ve ever been on a Zoom call, you can do this course.

Technology works the same way. I’d almost never lead with AI. Everyone uses it now, so it doesn’t set you apart, and leading with it loses buyers. Lead with the business problem and the result, like time saved, profit, or building enterprise value. Say that, and people go, oh, that’s actually what I want. They don’t want AI. It’s just the method you happen to use.

What order should you put it in?

1. Find the pain, with the survey question and by playing your customer.
2. Write the hook in their words, naming the moment they feel it.
3. Show the after, what life looks like once the frustration is gone.
4. Bring in the product as the method, described in terms they already know.
5. Repeat the same pain and outcome at the top of the landing page, so the ad and the page tell one story.

If your current ads open with the product name, start with those. Rewrite the first line around the frustration and see what happens before you touch anything else.