From customer reviews to brief: know your customer and write a message that sells
Most weak ads don't fail because of the filming; they fail because they speak to "everyone." The reviews your customers wrote contain the words that sell, and this guide shows you how to extract them and turn them into a brief a creator can film from.
Abdulrahman Yaqut · Last updated:
Start from your customers' reviews, not your competitors' ads: collect at least 100 reviews, extract 3 to 5 personas, each with a motivation, fears, and a desired outcome, and keep customers' phrases exactly as written. Then pick one persona and write a five-part brief for it: the persona, the problem, the suggested hook, the transformation, and the call to action.
An age bracket is not a customer
The most common mistake in ad writing is confusing a demographic with a persona. A demographic is a statistic: "a mother in her thirties living in Riyadh." A persona is a full story: "Nawal noticed her hair thinning after giving birth. She tried three products that didn't work, she's wary of trying a fourth, and only the experience of a mother like her will convince her."
A demographic leads you to film a generic video for all mothers. A persona leads you to write a message for Nawal specifically, and that message is what stops the scroll and sells. Every good persona has three things: the reason she started looking, the fear holding her back, and the outcome she hopes for.
Research in the right order: five stages
Order matters here, because the first thing you see shapes your thinking:
- Brand reputation: imagine you're a customer searching for the product for the first time. What do they see on Google, YouTube, and TikTok? Write down everything they might come across.
- Reviews: collect 100 or more reviews from your store, Google Maps, the big marketplaces, and comments on your accounts. The treasure is in customers' words exactly as they wrote them.
- Personas: map two kinds: the personas your current ads target, and the real personas that show up in the reviews. The gap between them is your opportunity.
- Your past performance: review three periods: the last 30 days, the last 6 months, and the longest period available. Look for patterns, not a single ad.
- Competitors, last: only now open your competitors' ads. If you start with them, you'll copy their ideas instead of building on your own customers.
Extract personas with AI in minutes
AI is excellent at analyzing hundreds of reviews and weak at writing the final ad. Use it here for analysis only. Save the reviews in an Excel file and upload it to Claude or ChatGPT with this prompt:
"You are an ad copywriter analyzing customer reviews. From the attached data: 1) Create 3 to 5 personas, each with a name that reflects their problem, an approximate age, and a one-line description, and write a short story for each persona: what they feared, what they wanted, and what made them buy. 2) For each persona, quote two or three phrases from the reviews verbatim that express their problem or desire. 3) End with a summary of about 60 words on the largest group, the shared motivations, and the biggest unmet desire."
Review the output with a critical eye: delete any persona that isn't backed by real phrases from the reviews, because AI tools can invent patterns that don't exist. And the further you fall below 100 reviews, the weaker the patterns.
Every customer phrase is a potential hook
The verbatim phrases you extracted are the most valuable part of the research. A customer who wrote "Finally, a perfume that lasts until the end of the workday" handed you a ready-made ad hook in language people like them understand. Gather the 10 strongest phrases and treat them as a hook list for your next tests.
For more on writing hooks, read the guide to hooks.
Turn the research into a five-part brief
Research is useless if it doesn't reach the creator as one clear page. A good brief includes:
- One persona you're speaking to, not five.
- The core problem the product solves for them.
- The suggested hook in 3 or 4 words, ideally taken from customer phrases.
- The transformation: how their situation changes after the product.
- The call to action: what you want them to do after watching.
The details of writing the brief itself, such as length, video type, and off-limits points, are in How to write a brief that gets you a video that sells.
Repeat the research every three months
Customers change: new personas appear in recent reviews, old fears fade, and new competitors enter the market. Set aside time every three months to repeat the research for each key product, and update your persona file and briefs accordingly.
Once the brief is ready, pick the creator closest to your persona with AI search: type something like "a mother who calmly talks about her experience with a hair product" and you'll get recommendations ranked by fit.