3 reasons progress trumps perfection
The thrill of creation fuels many marketers. Envisioning an idea and seeing it come to life.
When the pursuit of perfection blocks progress, bad things happen.
But even better than seeing it come to life is seeing its impact — good or bad.
Too often marketers and entrepreneurs alike get consumed by the creation part. They miss out on the exciting part, measuring.
Strategy fails
Earlier this year, Ben Davis at Econsultancy tackled the question “ What is strategy in the digital age?”
Davis explores how strategy in the digital age has moved from analysis to synthesis. Arguing for a concept of continual innovation and a perspective on strategy that is more rooted in execution and learning than it is in planning and analysis.
At Lake One we take a hybrid approach. Our marketing programs kick off with a month long strategic level set. A deep dive on industry and customer to set a baseline understanding and make some educated assumptions. These assumptions shape our program from day one. Going forward, we focus on an iterative strategy. We adjust as we move forward knowing that no plan ever survives the first contact in battle.
Too often I’ve encountered marketers and businesses that don’t even get to the point of letting their plans be battle tested. Just one more code release, one more edit.
Strategy fails when perfection blocks progress. Always ship. You can adjust later.
Learning fails
If you aren’t getting activity into the market, you have nothing to learn from. As a result you can’t adjust — often referred to as fail fast.
David Brown, Managing Partner at TechStars puts it like this:
Fail fast isn’t about the big issues, it’s about the little ones. It’s an approach to running a company or developing a product that embraces many little experiments with the idea that some will work and grow and others will fail and die.
If you’re stuck worrying that every little detail must be pixel perfect, you’re never going to get anything out the door. Your banner ads, your landing pages will never have the chance to fail. You’ll never learn. You’ll never adjust. You’ll never grow.
Which leads me to our final failure.
Performance fails
Hippos are the death of performance. A hippo is the highest paid persons o pinion. Usually, the person that kills progress, opting instead for perfection. Their version of it. Not their customers.
When you don’t get things out the door, you can’t iterate. You can’t improve and the bottom line is that performance fails.
Get something out the door.
It either slows or outright stalls.
Even the best research can’t account for the value of shipping.
But, But, But
But what about brand?! You may be saying. We don’t want to be sloppy.
Of course not.
But in the weeks it took you to put together 4 banners ads, your competitor adjusted a campaign twice, improving performance before you even got started.
So strike a happy balance. If you’re wondering how long to worry about things in the digital landscape?
First consider the shelf life of regular digital content- social, blogs etc.
Second, consider digital ad recall. In 2015, Ipsos ASI conducted a study and found that only about 30% of consumers remember seeing a banner ad and even fewer recalled the brand. While advertising has its role in your mix, don’t over think it. Get your data and iterate, drive for your result.
You can spend months creating what you think is the perfect digital experience only to unveil it to lackluster results.
In the same time, you could iterate and adjust based on real feedback getting better as you go.
In the end, you’re further along. Progress always trumps perfection.
Leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.
Final Word
What do you do to keep things moving forward? Keep the learnings coming. — or — Have you struggled with overcoming perfection to get things out the door? How have you shipped despite internal blockers?
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on September 11, 2017.
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Thanks for reading Mark Growth!
