How to Use PhraseMine

Getting Started

PhraseMine helps copywriters find the exact language their customers use when they talk about problems, desires, and buying decisions. It searches Reddit conversations, pulls out real phrases, and organizes them so you can write copy that sounds like your audience, not like a marketer.

Create your account

Head to the registration page and sign up with your email. You can use a traditional password, a magic link sent to your inbox, or a one-time passcode, whichever you prefer. Every new account receives 40 free credits, enough to run a couple of test sessions with no credit card required.

Set up your workspace

After signing in, PhraseMine creates a default workspace for you. A workspace is a shared environment where your research sessions, credits, and billing live. If you work with a team, you can invite members from the workspace settings page. Solo copywriters can ignore workspaces entirely; the default one is ready to go.

Start your first session

1. Click New Research Brief from your dashboard.
2. Choose a research mode (Guided Interview or Quick Mode, explained in the next section).
3. Describe the product, audience, and what you want to learn.
4. PhraseMine generates search queries, runs them, and delivers results, all automatically.

Research Modes

PhraseMine offers two ways to brief a research session. Both produce the same quality of results. They differ in how much guidance you want upfront.

Guided Interview

The Guided Interview is a short AI-led conversation. PhraseMine asks you 3 to 5 clarifying questions about your product, your target buyer, the main pain points you want to explore, and the type of language you are looking for. As you answer, the AI builds a detailed research brief behind the scenes. When you are satisfied, click Launch and the pipeline starts.

This mode is ideal when you are new to the tool, when you are researching an unfamiliar market, or when you want the AI to help you sharpen your focus before committing credits.

Quick Mode

Quick Mode skips the conversation. You paste or type your research brief into a single text area, as short as a sentence or as long as a detailed prompt. Click Launch and PhraseMine goes straight to work.

Quick Mode is best when you already know exactly what you want. Experienced users who have run several sessions often switch to Quick Mode to save time. You can also paste a brief you prepared in a separate document.

Which should you pick?

If you are not sure, start with the Guided Interview. It takes about two extra minutes, but the richer brief tends to produce more targeted queries and higher-quality results. As you get comfortable with how PhraseMine works, you will naturally move toward Quick Mode for repeat topics.

The Research Pipeline

After you launch a research session, PhraseMine runs a three-tier pipeline in the background. Each tier uses an AI model to generate search queries, runs those queries against Google (filtered to Reddit), scores the results for quality, and removes duplicates. You do not need to do anything while the pipeline runs. Results appear automatically.

Tier 1: Wide

The first tier casts a broad net. PhraseMine generates 15 to 25 queries across multiple categories: pain and frustration, desires and goals, purchase triggers, objections, product comparisons, identity language, and more. The goal is to cover as much ground as possible and discover which angles have the richest conversations.

Tier 2: Focused

Once Tier 1 finishes, PhraseMine reviews which categories returned the strongest results. It then generates 5 to 10 follow-up queries that drill deeper into the most promising threads. This tier narrows the lens and uncovers more specific language around the topics your audience actually discusses.

Tier 3: Edge Cases

The final tier looks for niche, contrarian, or surprising perspectives. It generates 3 to 5 queries designed to surface opinions that mainstream searches miss: dissenting views, unusual use cases, emotional turning points, and language from people at the edges of the market. These findings often produce the most distinctive copy angles.

How long does it take?

Most sessions complete all three tiers within 60 to 90 seconds. You can watch progress in real time on the session page, or leave and come back. Your results will be waiting. If a tier fails (for example, due to a temporary API issue), you can retry it from the session detail page.

Research posture

You can set a research posture before launching: Conservative, Balanced, or Aggressive. This controls how many queries PhraseMine generates at each tier. Conservative uses fewer queries (saving credits), while Aggressive uses more (for deeper coverage). Balanced is the default and works well for most projects.

Reading Your Results

When the pipeline finishes, you will see a list of Reddit conversations PhraseMine found. Each result is a card showing the thread title, a snippet from the conversation, the subreddit it came from, and a quality score.

Quality scores

Every result receives a quality score from 0 to 100. This score reflects how relevant the conversation is to your research brief, how much discussion the thread generated, and how likely the language is to contain useful copy material. Higher scores appear first. Scores below 30 may still contain useful outlier language, so do not dismiss them automatically.

Categories

Results are grouped into categories that match the query intent: Pain and Frustration, Desires and Goals, Purchase Triggers, Objections and Skepticism, Identity Language, Comparisons, and more. You can filter results by category to focus on one angle at a time.

Listening to threads

To pull the full conversation from a Reddit thread, click the Listen button on a result card. PhraseMine fetches the thread, flattens the comment tree, and stores every comment for analysis. You can listen to threads one at a time or use Listen to all threads to process everything at once. After listening, the content is available in the Notes tab for theme extraction and review.

Awareness Stages

PhraseMine tags every excerpt with an awareness stage, based on Eugene Schwartz's five levels of customer awareness. This tells you where the person writing that comment sits on the buying journey, and helps you match the right language to the right stage of your copy.

The five stages

1. Unaware: The person does not know they have a problem. They describe symptoms or frustrations without connecting them to a specific need. This language works well in cold traffic and pattern-interrupt headlines.
2. Problem Aware: The person knows something is wrong but has not looked for solutions yet. They describe the pain vividly. Use this language in problem-agitation copy and early-funnel content.
3. Solution Aware: The person knows solutions exist and is evaluating options. They ask comparison questions, weigh pros and cons, and discuss alternatives. This maps to mid-funnel copy where you position your product against alternatives.
4. Product Aware: The person knows your product (or a specific competitor) and is deciding whether to buy. They discuss pricing, features, reviews, and deal-breakers. This is bottom-funnel language for sales pages, FAQ sections, and objection-handling copy.
5. Most Aware: The person has used the product and talks about their experience. They describe what worked, what did not, and how it changed things for them. This language fuels testimonial-style copy, case studies, and retention messaging.

Using awareness stages in your copy

The Notes tab lets you view all excerpts grouped by awareness stage. This is powerful for writing a long-form sales page: start with Unaware and Problem Aware language for the opener, move through Solution Aware for the body, and close with Product Aware and Most Aware language for the offer section. Each stage gives you a ready-made vocabulary your audience already uses.

Theme Extraction

After you listen to threads, PhraseMine can analyze the collected conversations and group them into themes, recurring patterns in how people talk about a topic. Each theme contains verbatim excerpts: direct quotes pulled from the threads, tagged by type and awareness stage.

How analysis works

1. Click Analyze content on your session's Results tab.
2. PhraseMine divides the collected comments into batches and sends each batch to an AI model for reading and categorization.
3. The AI identifies recurring themes (for example, "Frustration with manual data entry" or "Desire for a set-and-forget solution") and tags individual quotes that belong to each theme.
4. After all batches finish, PhraseMine merges overlapping themes and presents the final set in the Notes tab.

Themes vs. excerpts

A theme is a named pattern (e.g., "Price sensitivity around $50/month threshold"). An excerpt is a specific quote from a real person that demonstrates the theme. A single theme might have dozens of excerpts, each phrased differently. When writing copy, themes tell you what to talk about; excerpts give you the exact words to use.

Research tags

Each excerpt is also tagged by research type: Pain, Dream, Obstacle, Identity, Trigger, Objection, Value Proposition, and more. You can switch between a By Tag view and a By Awareness view in the Notes tab to see the same data organized differently.

Saturation Analysis

After running one or more rounds of research, you might wonder: have I found enough? The saturation report answers this question with data.

Running a saturation check

Open your session and navigate to the Saturation tab. Click Check saturation. PhraseMine reviews all the themes and excerpts collected so far and evaluates coverage across seven research dimensions, including emotional language, practical objections, identity signals, and purchase triggers.

The completeness score

The hero number on the report is the completeness score (0 to 100). A score above 75 generally means you have enough material to write confidently. Below 50 means there are significant gaps worth filling. The score is not a grade; it is a decision tool. A 60 might be perfectly fine if you are writing a short email, while a long-form sales page might need a score above 80.

Dimension scores and next rounds

Below the hero score, you will see individual scores for each dimension. If any dimension scores low, you can click Focus next round here to launch a targeted follow-up round that specifically fills that gap. You can also click Guide me to have an AI-led conversation about the best direction for your next round.

Voice Profiles

A voice profile is a synthesized reference document that captures the recurring language patterns, tone, and vocabulary from your research. Think of it as a cheat sheet for writing in your audience's natural voice.

Generating a voice profile

After completing at least one round of content analysis, navigate to the Voice Profile section of your session. Click Generate voice profile. PhraseMine reads through all themes and excerpts, identifies the most common phrases, emotional patterns, sentence structures, and vocabulary choices, and compiles them into a structured profile.

What is included

A typical voice profile contains: key phrases your audience repeats, emotional triggers that appear frequently, the typical sentence length and formality level, words they gravitate toward (and words they avoid), and specific metaphors or comparisons they use. The profile is formatted as readable prose you can reference while writing, not a list of raw data.

Applying a voice profile

Keep the voice profile open alongside your copy draft. When you are writing a headline, scan the profile for the strongest emotional phrases. When you are writing body copy, match the sentence rhythm and vocabulary level. When you are writing CTAs, use the trigger language. The voice profile bridges the gap between raw research and finished copy.

Exporting Data

PhraseMine makes it easy to move your research out of the app and into your copywriting workflow.

Export from the session page

Open any completed session and click the Export button in the session header. PhraseMine generates a structured export that includes the original research brief, all themes and their excerpts, awareness stage tags, and the voice profile (if one was generated).

Copy individual excerpts

Every excerpt card has a copy icon. Click it to copy the exact quote to your clipboard, ready to paste into a Google Doc, Notion page, or swipe file. You can also use the Copy All button to export the current filtered set as Markdown, useful when you want all excerpts tagged as "Pain" in one go.

Bookmarks for later

If you want to save specific excerpts for future reference, bookmark them. Starred bookmarks are flagged as top picks. Your Bookmarks page collects excerpts across all sessions, so you can build a personal swipe file over time.

Credits and Billing

PhraseMine uses a credit system. Credits are consumed when you run research sessions, listen to threads, and analyze content. Your subscription plan determines how many credits you receive each month, and you can purchase additional credits any time.

What costs credits

Each research session uses credits based on three factors: the number of search queries generated (determined by your research posture), the number of Reddit threads listened to, and the volume of content analyzed for themes. A typical session using the Balanced posture consumes 25 to 35 credits. Credits are charged upfront when you start a session, and any surplus is automatically refunded to your balance when it completes.

Subscription tiers

PhraseMine offers three paid plans:

• Interest ($29/month): 100 credits per month. Good for copywriters running 3 to 5 research sessions monthly.
• Desire ($99/month): 400 credits per month. Designed for active copywriters handling multiple clients.
• Action ($499/month): 2,200 credits per month. Built for agencies and high-volume researchers.

Every plan includes the full feature set: the three-tier pipeline, theme extraction, saturation reports, voice profiles, and exports.

Top-up credits

If you run out of credits before your next billing cycle, you can purchase top-up packs from your billing page. Top-up credits never expire and roll over indefinitely. The per-credit price depends on your subscription tier, and higher tiers get a better rate.

Tips and Best Practices

These are techniques that experienced PhraseMine users rely on to get the most from every research session.

Write detailed briefs

The quality of your results depends heavily on the quality of your brief. Instead of "fitness supplements," try "Men aged 30 to 45 who have tried creatine and pre-workout supplements but are frustrated by inconsistent results and confusing ingredient labels." The more specific your brief, the more targeted PhraseMine's queries will be, and the more useful the language it finds.

Use follow-up rounds strategically

Do not run a follow-up round just because the saturation score is not 100. Read the dimension scores first. If your copy only needs pain and desire language, a low score on "Comparisons" does not matter. Run follow-up rounds to fill gaps that are relevant to what you are writing.

Build on previous sessions

When starting a new research session, you can reference a prior session by typing @ in the Guided Interview chat. This tells PhraseMine what you have already covered, so it focuses on new ground instead of repeating earlier queries. This is especially useful when researching the same product from different angles over time.

Organize by client and project

If you work with multiple clients, assign each session to a client and project from the intake form. The dashboard groups sessions under their client, making it easy to find past research when you return to a project weeks later. This small step saves significant time as your session count grows.

Bookmark your best excerpts

As you review themes and excerpts, bookmark the phrases that jump out. Star your absolute favorites. Over time, your Bookmarks page becomes a personal swipe file of proven customer language, organized across every session you have ever run. When starting a new copy project, check your bookmarks first before running new research.

Match research posture to the project

Use Conservative posture for quick checks and narrow topics. Use Balanced (the default) for standard client work. Use Aggressive when you need deep, exhaustive coverage (for example, a high-stakes sales page or a full brand voice project). Posture affects credit consumption, so choosing wisely helps you stretch your monthly allocation.

Export early, export often

Do not wait until your research is "complete" to start exporting. After each round of analysis, export the themes that are relevant to your current writing task. Copy is iterative. Your research should feed into your drafts continuously, not sit in a backlog.