Every draft came back in the same LinkedIn-influencer cadence: "Unlock. Empower. Transform." It read like six other startups.
I got somewhere by giving the model a real voice sample and a hard banned-phrase list, then making it justify each headline against a specific customer objection. The objection-first approach is what made it specific.
Curious whether anyone has a good way to prompt for humor without it landing as cringe.
Write homepage copy for {PRODUCT}. First, here is our voice (match it): {PASTE 3-4 SENTENCES OF REAL WRITING FROM US}.
Method:
1. List the top 3 objections a skeptical buyer has in the first 10 seconds.
2. Write the hero headline (max 9 words) so it answers objection #1 directly and concretely. No abstractions.
3. Write a subhead (max 22 words) that names the specific person this is for and the specific job it does.
4. Write 3 feature blurbs, each starting with a verb the user does, not a noun we sell.
BANNED words/phrases: unlock, empower, transform, seamless, revolutionary, game-changer, next-level, effortless, 10x, supercharge, and any exclamation mark. If a sentence would survive unchanged on a competitor's site, rewrite it until it wouldn't.The "would this survive on a competitor's site" test is the whole game. I formalized it: I make the model write the headline, then paste it next to two real competitor headlines and ask it to score how interchangeable they are 1-10. Anything above 3 gets rewritten. Forces genuine specificity.
After drafting, place the headline beside 2 competitor headlines and rate interchangeability 0-10. Rewrite until under 3, explaining what specific detail makes ours non-swappable.