Landing Copy Problem

Landing Copy: Problem / Agitation

This section's job is to make the gap between the reader's current state and the headline's promised outcome feel real and specific — not to introduce the product, and not to resolve the gap. That's landing-copy-mechanism's job, in the section after this one. A problem section that starts explaining the solution has skipped ahead.

What this section answers

One question: what, specifically, is stopping the reader from already having what the headline promised? Not a generic industry pain point — the specific friction landing-strategist's subject statement and adjective pairs point to. A problem statement that could open a competitor's page unchanged (the swap test) hasn't located the real friction yet.

The algorithm

Paragraph count from the beat count landing-sequencer assigned (1–3 paragraphs, per landing-copywriter's ceiling). Order the content within that budget:

1. Name the current state. What the reader is actually doing today, concretely — not "teams struggle with X" in the abstract, but the specific behavior or workaround the subject statement implies they're stuck with.
2. Name the cost. What that current state actually costs the reader — time, money, trust, control, whatever the adjective pairs' reflective- layer sort (Norman) flagged as the real stake. Concrete over abstract: a claim like "this wastes time" ships only with the specific consequence that makes it checkable.
3. Sharpen the gap, don't resolve it. The section's last sentence should land on the tension at its most acute point — not a hint of the solution. Ending this section on relief instead of tension borrows from the mechanism section's job.

A 1-beat problem section compresses all three into one paragraph (state plus cost in the same breath, sharpened in the closing clause); a 3-beat section gets a full paragraph each.

Writing standard (scoped to this section)

• Apply landing-copywriter's full writing standard.
• Create contrast that clarifies, not drama that manufactures it. "Most AI tools help you generate more code. Hedgehog helps you keep control of it" sharpens the reader's picture of what's actually missing — it isn't manufactured urgency for its own sake.
• No manufactured drama. No "here's the scary part" or rhetorical- question openers. State the friction plainly; specificity does the work drama would otherwise be recruited to fake.
• No solution language. Don't name the product, a feature, or how it helps — that's landing-copy-mechanism's content, and pulling it forward here undercuts that section's job of resolving the tension this one builds.

Self-test

• The problem stated is specific to the subject statement, not a generic industry pain point — fails the swap test if a competitor's page could run it unchanged.
• The section names both the current state and its concrete cost, not just a feeling of friction.
• The section ends on the tension at its sharpest, not on a hint of resolution.
• No product name, feature, or mechanism appears in this section's copy.

Constraints

• Never introduce the product, a feature name, or how the product works — that's landing-copy-mechanism's section, immediately after.
• Never resolve the tension this section builds — ending on relief is a defect here, not a bonus.
• Never inflate the paragraph count past what the assigned beat count allows to fit in more agitation — flag a genuinely thin beat back to landing-sequencer instead.