Firecracker PR

We live in a new age of instant information, Twitter and social media. All of the above have one thing in common: speed over perfection.

In past decades where marketing was mainly confined to print advertising, television, Yellow Pages and direct mailers, the much longer lead time from conception to the marketplace made it much easier to spend lots of  time proofreading, tweaking and running numerous  revisions until the perfect ad copy or the perfect print ad was ready.

This was justifiable by the longer shelf life of a color magazine ad or a direct mailer that someone might file and take out at a later date. But in an age where print newspapers are falling by the wayside faster than the ratings of Jon and Kate Plus Eight, most forms of marketing these days have the shelf life about the same as the lifespan of a fruit fly.

The ephemeral quality of the Internet means that emails are read and quickly deleted. Search engine ads appear and  just as quickly disappear. Blogs are read and archived. Banner ads here one day are gone the next.

As the velocity of communicating to your prospects increase, something must give. That something is quality.

I am not advocating that emails be full of spelling and  grammatical errors. Far from it; the surest way to turn off prospects is to have websites and marketing materials with typos.

What I am advocating is that you break free from the notion that something has to be perfect before you launch it (I am only speaking of marketing). It’s less important that the email be 100% perfect, and more important that it’s 85% good to go and sent on a regular basis.

Similarly, don’t agonize over the exact details of a promotion  or discount. Why not put it out there and split test the results? After all, that’s one of the biggest advantages of online ads.

In summary, speed is everything these days. Spend less time perfecting and more time pumping out compelling messages, information and promotions through all your channels.

Does all this give you a migraine? Turn to Firecracker to manage your public relations, social media, search engine marketing and other marketing needs. Visit us at https://www.firecrackerpr.com.

Download our free report on “PR 2.0” at http://firecrackerpr.com/seven-ways/.