/sota-copywriting

name: sota-copywriting
description: >-
  State-of-the-art marketing copywriting and content guidance (2026) covering
  positioning and value propositions, headlines and landing-page copy, CTAs
  and social proof, SEO content (search intent, E-E-A-T, Google spam
  policies), and the accuracy/legal layer — claim substantiation, FTC
  Endorsement Guides (2023) and the Consumer Reviews Rule (2024), testimonial
  consent, dark-pattern avoidance, and email-marketing law (CAN-SPAM, GDPR
  consent). Use when writing or reviewing ANY outward-facing content —
  landing pages, marketing sites, product pages, launch announcements,
  app-store listings, newsletters, cold/lifecycle email — AND when auditing
  existing copy for conversion quality, honesty, and legal exposure. Trigger
  keywords: copywriting, marketing copy, landing page, headline, CTA, value
  proposition, positioning, tagline, SEO, meta description, E-E-A-T,
  testimonial, social proof, case study, newsletter, email marketing, app
  store listing, launch post, pricing page, brand voice.

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 th