Turning review themes into ad copy

Reviews are written in your customer's words

Ad copy written from the inside starts with the team's list of what is special. Reviews start with what customers noticed, in the words they chose, about the moments that mattered to them. A hook needs that material.

Reading rivals' reviews adds a second layer. You learn what the whole category gets praised and criticised for, which tells you which claims every brand can make and which are yours alone. If every shop in your market is praised for fast delivery, leading with delivery speed will not separate you. If only your customers mention the handwritten note in the parcel, that is worth testing.

Collecting the reviews

Start with three rivals, the ones you lose sales to (see choosing which rivals to compare). Then gather reviews from every public place they appear:

• Independent review platforms where the brand has a profile
• Google Business Profile reviews, which matter most for service firms and local trades
• Product reviews on the brand's own product pages
• Marketplace listings, if the brand sells there

Pull the same sources for your own business. Record the date you collected each set, the star rating and the review text. Recent reviews matter more than old ones, so if a brand has a long history, weight the latest year or so more heavily, and note anything that looks like it relates to a past problem that has since been fixed.

Stick to public pages. Do not create accounts to see gated reviews, and respect each site's terms and robots.txt if you collect at any volume. For the wider principles, see monitoring competitor websites ethically.

Clustering reviews into themes

A theme is a recurring thing customers talk about: delivery, packaging, sizing, aftercare, how quickly a quote came back, how the tradesperson left the site. Read a sample first and draft a list of candidate themes, then tag every review with one or more of them. Keep the list short. Ten to fifteen themes is usually enough; anything that appears only once or twice goes into an “other” bucket.

For each brand and each theme, record two things: how often it comes up, and whether it comes up as praise or complaint. A simple grid works well, with brands across the top, themes down the side, and a note in each cell such as “often, mostly praise” or “sometimes, mixed”. Copy two or three short verbatim lines into each cell. The verbatims are what you will write from later.

What to look for in the grid

• Praise you own: themes where your customers are positive and rivals' customers are quiet or negative. This is your strongest ad angle.
• Shared praise: themes every brand is praised for. Useful as reassurance in body copy, weak as a headline.
• Rival complaints: recurring frustrations with a competitor. Do not attack the rival by name with these; instead, make sure your own ads and pages answer that worry directly.
• Your complaints: themes where your own reviews are negative. Fix these before you advertise around them.

Writing hooks in the customer's own language

Once you have the praise you own, write hooks that lift the customer's phrasing rather than polishing it into marketing speak. If several reviews say a sofa is “actually comfy enough to fall asleep on”, that line is more persuasive than “premium comfort engineered for relaxation”.

1. Pick one theme from the praise-you-own column.
2. Read every verbatim in that cell and underline repeated words and phrases.
3. Write five to ten hooks that use those words, short enough for a headline or the first line of a social ad.
4. Write a supporting line for each that explains why it is true (the material, the process, the guarantee).
5. Test a few against your current best ad, and treat the result as evidence, not proof. One test tells you about that audience at that time.

Paraphrasing customer language into your own hook is fine. Quoting a specific review word for word, especially with the reviewer's name or initials, is different. Ask the reviewer's permission, quote them accurately and in context, and do not trim a mixed review so it reads as glowing. Never quote a rival's reviews in your ads.

The rules: fake reviews and comparisons

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 changed the rules on reviews. Schedule 20, paragraph 13, bans submitting or commissioning fake consumer reviews, and reviews that conceal they were incentivised; the rules apply from 6 April 2025 (legislation.gov.uk). The CMA published guidance for businesses that publish reviews, CMA208, on 4 April 2025 (gov.uk). Read it before you change how you collect or display reviews.

In practice this means the reviews you build hooks from have to be genuine, and if you ever offered an incentive for a review, that has to be disclosed. It also means you should not seed your own review profile to create a theme you would like to advertise.

If an ad contrasts you with an identifiable rival, the CAP Code applies. Rule 3.33 says comparisons must be between products meeting the same needs or intended for the same purpose, and rule 3.34 says they must objectively compare material, relevant, verifiable and representative features (CAP Code section 3). Comparisons must not mislead or denigrate. Most review-led copy does not need to name a rival at all: lead with your strength and let the reader draw the contrast.

Keeping it going

Review themes shift. A rival fixes its delivery problem, or your own new product line attracts a fresh complaint. Re-run the grid each quarter, compare it with the last version, and note which themes moved. The reviews watch loop, which will do this on a schedule, is in build and not on sale. Until then, use a spreadsheet and a quarterly calendar reminder.

An Intel loop scores trust signals, including where reviews are displayed, for your site and three rivals, with quoted evidence.