Copywriting is an essential part of every design initiative. After all, the ultimate goal of design is to communicate a specific message to users and guide them through the user journey. There’s hardly a more effective way to do that than with actual words.

But how do you actually create a meaningful, captivating copy that grabs users’ attention and helps your conversion rates?

One way to approach this challenge is to use a message-mining technique. It’s a relatively simple method that can 10X the effectiveness of your copy — and believe me, I’m not exaggerating.

What is message mining?

In simple words, message mining is a process of sourcing the Internet and other available sources to understand how your target audience perceives your offerings, as well as similar products or services and the language they use.

You later use this information to build your own copy.

Message mining works because:

• Customers are better at explaining the product value (as they perceive it) than you are
• You create copy in words your customers actually use, so your copy resonates with them more
• You learn a lot about your customers and their needs along the way
• It’s quick and doesn’t require any unique expertise or heavy investments

Types of copy

Before jumping into message mining, let’s first understand a few distinct types of copies. This understanding will be handy throughout the message mining process.

Having worked in copywriting for several years now, I’ve recognized three primary categories of copies based on their target focus:

1. Motivation-based copies

A motivation-based copy answers ‘why’ potential customers want to try your offering. We use motivational copy to reinforce the reason to buy our product or service.

Motivation copies can be segmented further based on their focus points. I’ll use the example of a financial planning product to talk of these:

• Desired outcomes — “Financial independence gives freedom” will boost customers’ motivation to take necessary steps to get a reward
• Pain points and problems — “Worried if you’ll have enough cash until the end of the month?” would remind visitors of their problem and make the solution more desirable
• Purchase prompts — “Start saving for retirement now” would be a more powerful message than, say, “Register now”

2. Value-focused copies

A value-oriented copy is about the messages highlighting why your solution helps satisfy the motivation (or solve the problem) and how it’s better than the alternatives available.

This type of copy reinforces why your product is the right choice. Value copies have three subcategories, too, and I’ll refer to the financial planning product again:

• Unique benefits and advantages — “Made for an ordinary American” would showcase the straightforwardness of the product over your competitors
• Delightful product features — “AI-driven insights, automatic 401k saving, all savings personalized for you!” lists our best functionalities
• Dealbreaker needs — “Integrates with all major banks!” will assure people we cover all their essential banking needs

3. Anxiety-based copies

Anxieties are reasons potential customers might not proceed through the user journey. These include uncertainties, potential objections, and perceived risks.

A great anxiety-based copy will address these anxieties and make users feel safe when taking the next steps.

For example, if you identify that most potential customers worry about your credibility, use claims such as “Trusted by XYZ companies” or mention key partners you work with.

Process of message-mining

Now, let’s examine message mining more closely to see how it can help us create copy that addresses our users’ motivation, value, and anxiety.

Step 1. Make a list of keywords

Start with creating a list of meaningful keywords to help you find quotes from your customers later.

These keywords might be related to your particular brand and product, the product type, competitive brands, etc.

For our financial planning example, these could be:

• Competitors — Mint, YNAB
• Product type — financial planner, saving app, budgeting app

Step 2. Research the voice of customers on the internet

The second step is to use the keywords to look for customer quotes online. To do this, look at online reviews and complaints (on Amazon, Trustpilot, Yelp, etc.) or online forums (like discussions on Reddit).

You can also look at specific products (your or your competitor’s) and the problem.

For example, if you are building a language learning app, don’t just look at discussions about Duolingo or Babbel, but also research how users talk about language learning itself.

For our financial planning product, this could include search queries such as “challenges of saving for retirement.”

Step 3. Collect it all into a spreadsheet

Whenever you find a relevant quote, collect it immediately.

I recommend using a Google Form to collect quotes into a spreadsheet. It will make it easier to categorize and prioritize your voice of customer data.

Feel free to borrow this Google Form template to simplify the process:

I recommend collecting 20-30 quotes for each subcategory. That should give you roughly 200 to 300 quotes. The more, the better.

But, of course, if you are short on time or working on a niche product, working with 50 quotes is better than ideating copy out of thin air.

Here’s an example I found when looking for YNAB reviews to understand the customer’s voice regarding financial planning products:

Exact quote — “Our net worth has almost doubled in the 4 years my wife and I have been using YNAB, and we have high confidence that we are well-funded for emergencies and routine (but significant) expenditures that will occur. Biggest thing YNAB gives you is control and confidence. You know where every penny (or pence!) is, you can be deliberate about how it’s used, and you’ll know you are prepared financially for the eventualities that life will throw your way.”

Main topic — Net worth and confidence

Message category —Value

Type of message — Desired outcome

Source — https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/10dh0hg/comment/j4let7y/?utmsource=share&utmmedium=web3x&utmname=web3xcss&utmterm=1&utmcontent=sharebutton

Step 4. Categorize and prioritize

If you pasted the quotes directly to a spreadsheet or other place, it’s time to categorize them, that is, assign the topic theme and categories.

If you used the Google Form I shared, your quotes should already be categorized, but you should double-check for cohesiveness.

To categorize, I try to think along three lines:

1. Relevance — How strongly does the quote relate to motivation/value/anxieties?
2. Brand alignment — Is the voice of the customer in this quote similar to the brand voice I want to develop?
3. Frequency — How often was this or a similar message repeated?

The next step is to prioritize the quotes you mined. I suggest you categorize them like this:

1 – Main messages to use

2 – Messages that might work in some cases

3 – Messages to ignore

There is no need to be scientific; you can use your gut feeling here.

That’s why I recommend one person do the initial message mining—it makes further prioritization easier if one person has the context of all collected quotes in the back of their head.

Do the prioritization for each subcategory so that each has at least a few quotes scored as 1.

Step 5. Swipe notable copy

Lastly, consider borrowing exact quotes from your customers.

No one can create a better copy for your users than the users themselves. If you spot some truly memorable and powerful quotes, swipe them and put them in the backlog of copy to use on your website.

Let’s examine the copy we found in the third step more closely and look for fragments we could swipe:

Our net worth has almost doubled in the 4 years my wife and I have been using YNAB, and we have high confidence that we are well-funded for emergencies and routine (but significant) expenditures that will occur. Biggest thing YNAB gives you is control and confidence. You know where every penny (or pence!) is, you can be deliberate about how it’s used, and you’ll know you are prepared financially for the eventualities that life will throw your way.

Out of this single review, we can borrow three powerful messages:

• Direct quote: “Our net worth has almost doubled in X years I have been using [product]”
• Value prop: “Get high confidence that you are well-funded for emergencies”
• Value prop: “Learn where every penny is”

See? You don’t even have to write the copy yourself. You can just copy-paste the words of your target group.

Writing a meaningful copy

After the message mining exercise, you should have a list of quotes and key messages revolving around the motivations, values, and anxieties, and some quotes to use directly.

That’s a perfect start.

Now, whenever you need to write a copy, look for related subcategories and either reuse collected quotes or write your own copy based on the main themes of the messages you captured.

For example, if you need to write a feature list, look at all value-related quotes and reuse them in your copy.

If you need to address anxieties on your checkout page, address the most frequently mentioned uncertainties, objections, and perceived risks.

The odds are that this copy won’t be perfect from day one. You may need to edit it, test it with users, rewrite it based on results, and repeat. Copy is just one of those elements that should be regularly tested and optimized.

Regardless, using message mining to create your first draft puts you much farther ahead than guesstimating!