The Reddit Ad-Angles Skill 🛠️

The best ad copy I write, I don't actually write. I take it. Word for word, from how customers already describe their problem, and the biggest unfiltered focus group on the internet is Reddit.

I spent years at Meta watching how the best brands advertise, and the pattern never changed: the winning ad rarely sounded clever. It sounded like the customer talking to a friend. People do not respond to your positioning. They respond to their own words handed back to them. Then I left, built two 8-figure businesses, and the habit stuck. Before I spend a single dollar on ads, I go read what real people are saying.

Reddit is where people say what they actually think. No brand watching, no filter, no polite survey answers. This skill reads those conversations for you, pulls out the problems, desires, and objections people keep repeating, and turns them into ad angles you can actually test. Copy it, download it, or paste the quick version below. Then reuse it every time you launch something new.

You give it three things: your product, your customer, and the Reddit communities where those customers spend time. It does the rest, and it hands you a working document, not a vague summary.

• Ranked customer pain points, desires, and objections. Sorted by how often people bring them up, so you know what actually matters instead of guessing.
• A swipe file of 15 to 20 verbatim phrases. The exact words real people use, copied word for word, ready to drop straight into headlines and copy.
• 8 to 10 testable ad angles. Each one is a hook line written in the customer's own language, tied back to the real comment or thread it came from, so you can trust it.

It runs in Claude or ChatGPT's Codex, you save it once, and you re-run it for every launch. This is how I would research ads before touching an ad account.

Here is the full skill. Copy it, or download it as a ready-to-use file, then fill in the brackets with your product, your customer, and 2 to 4 subreddits. Save it once and it triggers itself every time you research a launch.

---
name: reddit-ad-angles
description: Mine Reddit for the exact language real customers use, then turn it into ranked pain points, a swipe file, and testable ad angles. Use whenever I am researching ads or messaging for a product launch.
---

# Reddit Ad Angles## What I give you- Product or offer: [what I sell, in one or two sentences]
- Target customer: [who they are and what they are trying to do]
- Subreddits: [2 to 4 communities where these customers actually hang out, e.g. r/SkincareAddiction, r/30PlusSkinCare]
- Optional: [competitor names, price point, or an angle I already suspect]## How to research1. For each subreddit, find the most active RECENT threads on the topic. Sort by top or hot within the last few months and favor threads with high comment counts, because that is where the real language lives.
2. Read the top comments on each thread, not just the original post. Aim for at least 100 to 200 comments total across all threads.
3. Capture phrases VERBATIM. Do not paraphrase. The exact wording is the whole point.
4. Track how often a pain, desire, or objection repeats. Frequency is the ranking signal.## What to output, in this order### 1. Ranked pain pointsThe top 6 to 8 problems people describe, most common first. For each: one line in plain language, plus a rough sense of how often it came up.### 2. Ranked desiresThe top 5 to 6 outcomes people say they want. Same format.### 3. Ranked objectionsThe top 5 to 6 reasons people hesitate, doubt a solution, or say one failed them.### 4. Swipe file (15 to 20 verbatim phrases)Exact quotes in the customer's own words, copied word for word, typos and all. These are the phrases I will paste straight into ad copy.### 5. Testable ad angles (8 to 10)For each angle give me:
- Hook line: a scroll-stopping opener written in the customer's own language, short enough to be a hook.
- Rooted in: the real pain point or desire it maps to.
- Source: the actual quote or thread it came from, so I can verify it.## Rules- Use real comments only. Never invent a quote, a statistic, or a customer.
- If a subreddit is too quiet, say so and suggest a better one.
- Prefer the plainest, most specific customer wording over anything clever.
- Cite the thread or quote for every angle so I can check it myself.

Do not want to install anything? Paste this shorter version straight into a chat and fill in the brackets. Same job, no setup.

You are my ad research assistant. I sell[PRODUCT]to[TARGET CUSTOMER]. Search these subreddits:[SUBREDDIT 1], [SUBREDDIT 2], [SUBREDDIT 3]. Find the most active recent threads on the topic, read the top comments, and capture the exact words people use.

Then give me:
1. The top 6 to 8 pain points, ranked by how often they come up.
2. The top 5 desires and the top 5 objections.
3. A swipe file of 15 to 20 verbatim customer quotes, copied word for word.
4. 8 to 10 testable ad angles. For each: a hook line in the customer's own language, the pain or desire it maps to, and the real quote it came from.

Use real comments only. Never invent a quote or a stat. Cite the thread for every angle.

You have two ways to give the skill access to Reddit. The first needs zero setup. The second gives you deeper pulls if you want them.

1. Open Claude or ChatGPT's Codex, on a version that can browse the web.
2. Web-browsing route (easiest). Paste the skill, fill in your product, customer, and subreddits, and let the AI read Reddit's public pages directly. No keys, no config. This is enough for most launches.
3. Reddit API route (deeper pulls). Create a free app at reddit.com/prefs/apps, choose the "script" type, and you get a free client ID and secret. Hand those to the AI so it can pull more threads and comments than browsing alone reaches. The official docs live at the Reddit API reference.
4. Save it as a reusable skill. In claude.ai you add it under Settings as a Skill, and in Claude Code it is a folder in your skills directory. In Codex, save it as a reusable file you re-open each launch.
5. Reuse it forever. Every new product, swap the three inputs and run it again. You build the muscle once and keep it.

Fill in three inputs and let it work. Here is a worked example so you can see the shape of a good setup.

• Product: a magnesium glycinate supplement for people who wake up in the middle of the night and cannot fall back asleep.
• Target customer: stressed professionals, roughly 30 to 50, who have tried melatonin and hate waking up groggy.
• Subreddits: r/insomnia, r/sleep, r/Supplements, r/Magnesium.

From there the skill searches the most active recent threads, reads the top comments, and comes back in a few minutes with the ranked lists, the swipe file, and the angles. If a subreddit turns out to be too quiet, it will tell you and suggest a livelier one instead of padding the results.

The more specific your product line and customer are, the sharper the angles. "A supplement for tired people" gives you mush. "For the person who wakes up at 3am with a racing mind" gives you a hook.

Three things you can put to work the same day.

You have the angles. Here is how I turn them into ads that get tested instead of sitting in a doc.

1. Use the exact words. Do not polish them. The typo and the plain phrasing are why it sounds real. The moment it sounds like marketing, it stops working.
2. One angle per ad. Test them against each other, do not blend three into one. You want to know which pain point actually pulls.
3. Lead with the pain, not your product name. People stop scrolling for their own problem, not for your brand. Name it in the first line.
4. Keep the swipe file open. Reuse those phrases in headlines, email subject lines, and landing-page bullets, not just the ad hook.
5. Kill the losers fast, scale the winner. Real customer language raises your odds, but the market still votes. Let the test decide, then put your money behind what wins.

Run the skill, pull the angles, test the top three or four, and you have a launch built on how your customer actually talks. That is the whole edge, and it costs you nothing but the reading the AI does for you.