copy-quality-gate

Copy Quality Gate

The Law

COPY THAT CANNOT ANSWER "SO WHAT?" IS MARKETING FOR THE WRITER, NOT THE READER.
"It explains what we do" passes the author's test — the reader's test is "what does this mean for me?" and the reader leaves if the answer isn't in the first sentence.
Passing all three tests — "so what?", "who cares?", "why now?" — IS copy that earns attention.

When to Use

Trigger before:

• Publishing any homepage, landing page, or hero section
• Sending any email campaign or outbound sequence
• Running any ad copy
• Publishing any sales collateral or pitch deck

When NOT to Use

• Internal documentation (no reader conversion goal)
• Legal disclosures (accuracy and completeness are the goals, not engagement)
• Help centre articles (utility copy — different standards apply)

The Three Tests

All three must pass. Passing two and failing one is a fail.

Test 1 — "So What?"

For every claim in the copy, ask: "so what does this mean for the reader?"

Apply the chain:

Claim: "Our AI automatically categorises support tickets."
So what? "You spend less time manually triaging."
So what? "Your team handles 3× more tickets without adding headcount."

The final answer in the "so what?" chain is the real claim. If it is not in the copy, the copy is incomplete.

Rule: If the "so what?" chain reaches a benefit the reader cares about in 2 steps or fewer, the claim is positioned correctly. If it takes 3+ steps, the copy is describing features, not benefits.

Failure pattern:

"We use transformer-based models with retrieval augmentation." So what? "It's more accurate." So what? "You get fewer wrong answers." So what? "You don't have to manually verify everything."

Three steps to reach the benefit — the copy is too feature-level. The copy should open with "fewer wrong answers you have to verify" and let the technology be a proof point, not the headline.

Test 2 — "Who Cares?"

Who specifically is this copy for, and does it speak to them?