Sota copywriting

SOTA Copywriting & Marketing Content

Purpose

Expert-level rules for the words that face the market: landing pages, product marketing, SEO content, launch posts, and lifecycle email. The core thesis: conversion copy is a claim-making machine, and every claim is both a persuasion asset and a legal/trust liability — the craft is being specific enough to convince while staying provable.

Boundaries: this skill owns outward-facing content. In-product interface text is sota-ux-writing; technical documentation is sota-docs-workflow; the visual/layout layer of marketing pages is sota-frontend-design; consent and privacy-notice engineering is sota-privacy-compliance.

BUILD mode

When writing marketing/content copy:

1. Define audience, awareness stage, and the one action before drafting — a page without a single primary conversion goal is a brochure (rules/01).
2. Lead with the outcome the reader buys, prove it with features and evidence — benefit → mechanism → proof, in that order (rules/01 §3).
3. Draft headlines last, pick from ≥5 variants, test against the 4 U's heuristic, and keep the above-fold contract: what it is, who it's for, what to do next (rules/02).
4. Run the accuracy gate before publishing (rules/04 §1): every objective claim substantiated, every superlative provable or cut, every testimonial consented and typical, every disclosure placed where it's seen.
5. For anything meant to rank: match search intent and write people-first — E-E-A-T signals on the page, no scaled low-value content (rules/03).
6. Before finishing, run each loaded rules file's Audit checklist against the draft.

AUDIT mode

When reviewing existing marketing content:

1. Inventory the surface: landing pages, pricing page, comparison pages, blog/SEO content, email templates/sequences, app-store listings, social proof assets.
2. Claims-first pass (rules/04): list every objective claim, superlative, statistic, testimonial, and urgency device; demand the substantiation for each. Legal exposure outranks conversion polish.
3. Conversion pass (rules/01–02): above-fold contract, message hierarchy, CTA quality, proof placement, scannability.
4. SEO pass (rules/03) where organic traffic matters: intent match, E-E-A-T, spam-policy exposure, title/meta/heading hygiene.

Severity conventions

• Critical — legal/deception exposure: unsubstantiated objective claims, fake or undisclosed-material-connection testimonials, fabricated reviews or social-proof counts, fake urgency (countdown timers that reset), missing unsubscribe/consent basis in email, dark patterns.
• High — trust or ranking damage: superlatives without proof, "results not typical" testimonials presented as typical, spam-policy-violating content (scaled/doorway), misleading comparison tables, meta/title bearing no relation to page content.
• Medium — conversion damage: no clear above-fold value proposition, feature-first copy with no benefit framing, generic CTAs ("Learn more"), proof present but unspecific, intent-mismatched SEO content.
• Low — polish: weak headline variants, wall-of-text sections, missing message match between ad and landing page, stale dates.

Finding format

file:line | rule violated | severity | effort | fix — for claim findings, state what substantiation would be sufficient; for copy findings, propose the rewritten line.

Rules index

File	Read this when...
rules/01-positioning-value-proposition.md	Deciding what the copy argues: audience and awareness stages, value-proposition structure, benefit-vs-feature discipline, message hierarchy, differentiation claims, evidence types, we-vs-you framing.
rules/02-headlines-landing-pages.md	Writing the page: headline craft and variants, above-fold contract, section flow (attention→interest→desire→action as a heuristic), scannability, CTA wording and placement, social-proof presentation, pricing-page honesty.
rules/03-seo-content.md	Content meant to be found: search-intent matching, people-first content and E-E-A-T, Google spam policies (scaled content abuse, site reputation abuse, doorway pages), titles/meta as display heuristics, structured-data honesty, AI-assisted content discipline, generative-AI search surfaces (AI Overviews/AI Mode — still SEO, no GEO folklore), content maintenance.
rules/04-claims-legal-trust.md	The accuracy/legal gate: claim substantiation, puffery vs objective claims, FTC Endorsement Guides (16 CFR 255) and Consumer Reviews Rule (16 CFR 465), testimonial consent and typicality, dark patterns, email law (CAN-SPAM, GDPR/ePrivacy), security/uptime claim hygiene.

Top-10 non-negotiables

1. Every objective claim is substantiated before it ships — numbers have sources, "only/first/fastest" has evidence, or the claim is cut. (rules/04 §1)
2. No fake anything: reviews, testimonials, follower counts, urgency timers, "X people are viewing this". Fabricated social proof is a Critical finding and, for reviews, a civil-penalty violation (16 CFR 465). (rules/04 §3–4)
3. Material connections are disclosed clearly and proximately — paid, gifted, employee, or affiliate relationships behind any endorsement. (rules/04 §2)
4. Benefit first, feature as proof — every section passes the "so what?" test from the reader's chair. (rules/01 §3)
5. One page, one primary action; every CTA is verb + outcome ("Start free trial"), never "Submit" or a bare "Learn more". (rules/02 §4)
6. The above-fold contract holds: a first-time visitor can answer "what is it, who's it for, what do I do next" without scrolling. (rules/02 §2)
7. Skim test passes: reading only headings tells the page's whole argument. (rules/02 §3)
8. Search content matches intent and adds first-hand value — no scaled thin content, no doorway pages, no ranking-borrowed third-party content (Google spam policies). (rules/03 §1, §3)
9. Email requires a basis and an exit: consent (or a lawful basis) to send, accurate subject/sender, and a working unsubscribe honored promptly. (rules/04 §5)
10. Friction reducers must be true: "No credit card required", "Cancel anytime", "5-minute setup" are claims, not decorations — verify or delete. (rules/02 §4, rules/04 §1)