LIVE Copy Critique - How To Write Insanely Better Headlines, Ads and Subject Lines

What does it take to write an ad? A headline, or a subject line that's impossible to ignore? Come along with me as I take you through one of my favorite copywriting exercises ever. I'm gonna let you look over my shoulder as I critique this copy from Remarkable and six other variations that were submitted by the Posse community. What made them great, what left me wanting more, and what could make them even more powerful? Keep watching. Hey, Posse, what's up? It's Alex. If you're following me on Instagram at Copy Posse, then you've probably seen my regular make it Hotter posts where I find an ad, a headline, or a subject line, and then I put it out to you, the Posse community, to. Yep, you guessed it. Make it Hotter. Not only is this one of my favorite favorite ways to practice copywriting, but it's also a really great way to see what other copywriters think and how they write, which ultimately helps you better understand why certain things work and why certain things don't. And the best part of this exercise is when I get to put on my Posse Prof. Spectacles and critique the top voted submissions. So in today's video, I'm going to take you through one of my latest editions of make it Hotter and break down each of my critiques for for each ad, point by point. So let's get started. So let's take a look first at this post where I asked my Posse community to make this ad from Remarkable even hotter. Now, this ad was for my favorite paperless tablet, Remarkable. If you know me, you know I love Remarkable. I am not affiliated with them in any way, but I am sure I have sold a lot of these because I talk about them all the time. So Remarkable, if you want to sponsor my videos, hit your girl up because I'm already a huge fan. So let's take a look at their copy. It says, ready to replace your notebooks with something smarter. Keep all your work on a single slim device. Remarkable too. Order yours today. Perfect for paper people. Not bad. Not bad. I don't mind it, but I got to admit, I like the pacified versions way better. But before I get to my critiques of those submissions, let's first critique Remarkable's original copy. What works, what was lacking, and what could be done better. Now, the first thing I notice is the hook they are using. They are directly calling out, notebook hoarders. Hello. That is so me. These are all my notebooks on my desk right now. So they say, ready to replace your notebooks with something smarter. And yeah, I think that's really great. Then they pivot into one of the selling points to keep all of your work on a single slim device. Yes, it's true. It's good. But it could be better because in my opinion, most people who are drawn to the Remarkable aren't drawn to it because it's a slim. I mean, I have an iPad right here that does basically the same thing. The target audience of Remarkable wants to maintain that distraction free experience of writing on paper, but without all that clutter and disorganization. So I would love to see this pivot section have a little bit more of an enticing benefit. They end their ad with the call to action, order yours today. Perfect for paper people. And I actually really love this CTA because again, they're directly calling out those of us in their audience who really love notebooks and the experience of writing on paper. But. But the one thing I would change is I would just swap the order of those two statements. So instead, say, perfect for paper people. Order yours today. That way the very last thing the person reads is a call to action, the one that they want them to take, which is ordering the Remarkable tablet. It's a really small tweak, but you'd be surprised how impactful it could be. Overall, this is an ad that I would say is good, but let's see what the Posse thinks before I get to my critiques. Here's a quick recap of my three step formula for writing a hot ad or headline. And don't worry about taking notes on this formula because I have a free guide waiting for you at the end of this video that will break down each of these step by step. Now, a hot headline should one hook attention. So start with a concept or idea that really grabs the reader's attention, either by provoking an emotion like fear, joy, FOMO, nostalgia, or promising a desired result, or clear USP that's unique selling proposition 2. It needs to open a loop, which is to pique curiosity and incentivize your reader to continue going. And number three, it needs to talk to your target audience, making it crystal clear exactly who you are speaking to. Not in a demographic way, but really what they value and what they're looking for. So now let's take a look at the posse submissions along with my critique of each of them. So these six ads were actually selected because they received the most amount of likes or votes from the Posse community. So let's dive in and take a look. All right, now we have this first ad. Exhausted from flipping through Pages trying to find your notes. Try Remarkable, the world's thinnest tablet, and have all your notes in hand. With a touch of your finger, stop flipping and get tapping. Overall, really, really great ad. I want to point out just a couple of things, though. Number one, make sure to watch your punctuation. You want to make sure that you're using proper capitalization, commas, grammar, all that sort of thing. It's really, really important. I love you're exhausted from flipping through pages. It's a great page pain point. But could it be even more concise? Because when I think about it, it's really not that exhausting flipping through pages. And to be honest, even on the remarkable tablet, you still have to flip through pages. So that doesn't really solve that problem. But what if instead, you could say, tired of losing your notes? Because as a notebook user, as you've seen, I lose my notes all the time. I'm like, what notebook did I put that in? And I'm constantly losing my notes. So I think that's maybe a bit more of a sp specific and relatable pain point. Also, I love the with the touch of your finger, but it's a little bit cliche and I think you could probably remove it as it's not adding that much. So instead, just have it say the world's thinnest tablet and have all your notes in hand. And then I would make a stronger CTA so you can have the stop flipping and get tapping, but maybe you could say, stop searching and get tapping or something like that. And I think having a CTA that just said something like, order yours today. Right? We want to make sure you're doing. You're driving people back to actually purchasing and getting their tablet. So keep the CTA a bit more left brain, a bit more direct. Overall, great job there. All right, this next ad with Sharon, she says in her ad, who says, slim can't go digital, take your notes everywhere without the noticeable bulge in the bag. That makes me laugh. Smart just went remarkable to the power of 2.0. Order your smarter notebook today. So, overall, really, really cute. Sharon, I love where you went with this. You just want to make sure that you're not making it too cute and focusing on just the specifics with fewer words. And so what I might say in the main hook, that's a bit unclear to me. Who says slightly slim can't go digital? I think of digital being, yeah, of course, you know, the digital tablet is going to be slim, so I might just say, who says your Notes can't go digital. I think that's just a little bit more direct. Take your notes everywhere. Brilliant. I legit take my remarkable tablet with me everywhere I go because it is so slim. So take your notes everywhere without the noticeable bulge in the bag. I think that could be a little bit of a stronger. Benny is. Is having your bag bulge. I don't know why I find that so funny. Is having your bag bald really that much of a pain point? What about take your notes everywhere without the extra weight? Because I know for me, I have a notebook for, like, business. I have a notebook for my to do list. I have a notebook for travel. I have a notebook for goal setting. I have all these different notebooks that if I was going on a trip, I'd want to take all of them with me, but I can't. So that obviously is a lot of extra weight, which might be a little bit more relatable. Smart just went remarkable to the power of 2.0. I really like that sentence. I wanna. I wanna love it. But I just can't help but think it doesn't really add anything to the ad. Like, just because it's 2.0 doesn't really mean much. But you could change it to say smart just went remarkable with our remarkable 2.0 because we have added this new feature. Or smart, something like that. Or you could just remove it. Order your notebook today. I think again, if you're saying smarter, a couple other places you can remove the word smarter. Overall, really, really well done. I think this ad hits on a lot of the points, so good job. Okay, this next ad, you have great ideas, but they can be made remarkable. So that I really, really love. I love the crispness of that. I think it makes a lot of sense. You might just want to tweak the flow a little bit. So it says you have great ideas, so why not make them remarkable? Just again, slight little tweak, same idea, a little bit better flow. Love the pun. Obviously love a good pun. Love the use of an emoji. I think the only thing here is not to forget the CTA. So make sure to just add one on the end. It could say, get your remarkable 2.0 today. Or order yours today. Get the pad that never forgets. See that? That, to me is really great. I might change the word pad to tablet because I don't think they really use the word pad. Or you could say, get the notebook that never forgets, which I also think is really great because of their features where it allows you to sync with your desktop and not lose your notes and things like that. So really, really on track. Great. With this one, I would say slight tweaks in the flow and languaging, adding a cta, bada bing, bada boom. You got yourself a pretty juicy ad there. Okay, next up, paper companies fear this. Here's why. It's smarter, it is slimmer, and it is remarkable, too. Order now. Only three left at $500. So I really love some of the concepts you're using here, and I think it could be finessed just a little bit. So I really love the hook. Like, paper companies fear this, right? It's a little clickbaity. Can you change it to something like, we've spooked paper companies? I think that has the same effect without it being as clickbaity and definitely piques my curiosity. You could probably even remove the words here's why, But I do like that. And I see where you're going with it. Using a reason why is really powerful. Use more contractions. So it is, it is, it is. It's just extra, extra syllables. So it's smarter, it's slimmer. It's remarkable, too. I really love the benefits. Good rule of three there. I think that's awesome. Strong call to action. Order now. I might make it a little bit clearer and say, like, what exactly are they ordering? Because up until this point, you actually haven't said what it is. So it could say, order your paperless, you know, remarkable tablet now. Only three left. Great scarcity, of course, if it's real. So for the sake of this, we're going to assume that there are only three left. But you wouldn't, of course, just say that if. If there wasn't three left. And I'm guessing there wouldn't be just three left. But you could do a Black Friday type of promotion. I know Remarkable has done promotions in the past where there. There would be a really good reason to use scarcity in that regard. So overall, really, really great job. Love the concepts. It's just finessing a little bit. All right, now we have Aisha. Heavy writing just got lighter. Why carry multiple notebooks when you can have the new Remarkable 2? A single tablet with the capacity of 100 notebooks. Really, really strong. Really, really strong. The one thing I might change is the heavy writing just got lighter. That's an emotional connotation as opposed to a physical connotation. So you might just want to say your book bag just got lighter. Something like that. Again, sometimes when we try to be like, too cute, too Punny. Too cat. Too catchy. It has the reverse effect. So sometimes just your book bag just got lighter. I think that's great. Why carry multiple notebooks when you can use the new Remarkable 2? I just thought use just had that bit of a better rhyming, subtle flow to it. Again, have is fine. A single tablet with a capacity of 100 notebooks that is so powerful, right? That, that, that all of a sudden makes me go, wait, what? A hundred? And it might even be more than that. But the specificity of using 100 is really powerful. I would just say add a call to action and you're good to go there. Awesome job. And last one. Okay. A notebook that can keep up with the speed speed of your brilliant thoughts. Meet your digital think tank, the new Remarkable Two. So really love the idea of the hook. Like a notebook that can keep up with your brilliant thoughts. I might just again, remove a few words just to. Just to catch the flow or fix the flow. A notebook that can keep up with your thoughts. I have this all the time where it's like, why can't I write faster? My brain's going too fast and my hand won't write faster. But a notebook that can keep up with your brilliant thoughts, I think sounds really great for flow. Meet your digital think tank. So I would be careful about introducing information that makes it a little bit more confusing because I still don't know what the Remarkable Two really does. So what if you change to say something like meet the tablet that feels like paper or something? Because Digital Think Tank all of a sudden takes me out of this experience and I'm wondering what even that is, right? So I think if you just said, meet the new. Meet the tablet that feels like paper, the new Remarkable Two, you know, add a CTA and you're done, then I think you're good to go there. Great job. All right, there we have it. Everyone did such a great job on this exercise. Now, if you want to play along in my next edition of Make It Hotter, be sure to follow me on Instagram Copyposse. And if you like this video and want to see more, more in depth critiques like this one in the future, make sure to subscribe to my channel below. And don't forget to ring that bell to be notified when my next video goes live. And don't forget to grab your copy of my free hot headline guide so that you can learn exactly how to write headlines that grab attention and stop scrollers dead in their tracks. You can grab that in just a few seconds. At the end of this video. I will see you next week with a brand new video. Until then, I'm Alex. Ciao for now. All right, guys, if you enjoyed that video, make sure to check out the next one from me right here. And you can click right here to get a free gift. What does it take to write an ad, headline or subject line that is impossible to ignore? Come along with me as I take you through one of my favorite copywriting exercises ever. I'm about to let you look over my shoulder as I critique six ads on the fly. What made them great, what left me wanting more, and what would make them even more powerful? Keep watching.