Review themes → ad hooks

Why it matters

Reviews are the one place customers describe your product unprompted. The phrases they repeat, such as a fitting that went smoothly, a reply that came back quickly, or a parcel that arrived well packed, are usually stronger hooks than anything written in a meeting. Rivals' reviews add a second layer: complaints about them are openings for you, and praise for them shows the standard you are measured against.

The reviews watch loop is in build and not on sale. When it ships it will gather and group these themes on a schedule. The method below works by hand now, and it stays inside the law: you quote real reviews and never write or buy them.

What you need

• - Your recent public reviews (Google, Trustpilot or your platform's own), copied with star rating and date
• - The same for up to three rivals
• - Your current ad copy, to see which themes you already use
• - A clear line on what you are allowed to claim: no promises the product cannot keep

Setup

1. Collect the most recent reviews for you and each rival, keeping the star rating, date and text. Mix positive and negative; the complaints matter as much as the praise.
2. Remove anything that identifies a private individual beyond a first name. You need the words, not the person.
3. Label each batch clearly (OURS, RIVAL A, RIVAL B) and paste them into the prompt below.
4. Check each proposed hook against a real quote. If you cannot point to the review behind it, drop it.
5. Test two or three hooks against your current best ad rather than replacing everything at once.

The prompt

Paste this into any capable model, followed by the evidence you gathered in the setup.

You are helping a UK business turn customer reviews into ad hooks.
Below are reviews in batches labelled OURS and RIVAL A, RIVAL B, RIVAL C. Each has a star rating, a date and the review text.
Do this:
1. Find the themes that recur in OUR reviews (what customers praise and what they complain about). For each, give a count of reviews that show it and quote two of them.
2. Do the same for each rival.
3. List the gaps: themes rivals are praised for that rarely appear in our reviews, and themes rivals are criticised for that our reviews praise. Quote both sides.
4. Write eight to twelve short ad hooks for us. Each hook must reuse or closely follow wording from one of OUR reviews, and you must quote the review it came from.
5. Rate each hook for effort (low/medium/high: does it need new creative or proof?) and likely impact (low/medium/high), with one line on why.
Never write a hook that implies a review, rating or endorsement that is not in the evidence. Never suggest inventing or incentivising reviews.
Rules:
- Quote the evidence for every point, word for word, and say where it came from (which rival, which page or ad, which date I captured it).
- Label each point OBSERVATION (you can see it in the evidence) or HYPOTHESIS (your reading of why). Never present a hypothesis as a proven cause.
- Never invent a figure, a date, a price or a result. If the evidence does not show it, write "not in the evidence".
- Use British English and plain words.

Reviews:
[paste the reviews here]

Doing it by hand today

By hand, this is a quarterly job: copy the latest reviews into one document, read them twice, and highlight phrases that come up more than once. The prompt speeds up the grouping, but your judgement decides which hooks are true of your business.

Stay inside the rules on reviews. Since 6 April 2025, UK law bans submitting or commissioning fake consumer reviews and reviews that hide that they were incentivised, and the CMA has published guidance for businesses that publish reviews. Quoting a genuine review in an ad is fine; inventing one is not.

When the reviews watch loop ships, it will keep this grouping current. Until then, the free Insight Report is a quick check on whether your site shows reviews as clearly as your rivals do.