Some people engage in a relentless pursuit of perfection. Others never seem to get anything done.
I suspect a large number of people in group A also find themselves in group B.
When it comes to your web marketing, it’s worth considering whether or not perfection is required to achieve your aims. Especially when you consider the nature of the Internet.
Offline marketing items can’t be changed after the fact. If you have 5,000 brochures printed, and then discover there’s a typo, you’re stuck with it.
The web is an altogether different proposition. It can be changed after the fact.
This means you can publish your latest marketing piece as soon as it’s ready, and then improve it over time. In other words, I’m advocating a “publish now, perfect later” approach to web marketing. Here’s why…
Let’s say any given marketing piece will take 7 days to perfect. If you publish today, you give the piece an extra 168 hours to work for you. There’s a good chance you’ll make sales as a result of its appearance during that time.
There is nothing to be gained from withholding something because it’s not yet perfect. If there are legal reasons to wait, naturally you should wait. What I’m talking about here is waiting only because you yourself feel the piece needs to be perfect before it goes live.
2 Comments for Perfection need not apply
Simon Jones | 4 March 2010 at 12:51
Author comment by Wayne Davies | 4 March 2010 at 12:55
Hi Simon. Feeling comfortable about it doesn’t mean you can’t still do it. Here’s a challenge: Write something for your site, edit it once, and then publish it immediately. Then wait 2 full days before you start editing!
Good point. I’m a perfectionist, and I find it hard to finish things because I’m never satisfied. You are right, of course. I can improve and perfect and generally cater to my obsessive need to get it right after adding it to my site. It does go against the grain, though, and I wonder if I will ever feel comfortable doing that?