Good afternoon!
Today I want to talk about something I see a lot of different opinions on, and a lot of people struggle with. When is something good enough to offer to the public, and when do I need to keep working to make it better. Some people will tell you to start marketing a product/service/offer before you even have the product ready to see if it will actually sell. They aren’t wrong, but they aren’t right either. Others will spend months or years never launching even a beta of a product trying to get it just right. They aren’t wrong, but they aren’t right either.
Let’s break this down into pros and cons:
Pros of marketing your product right away:
– You get to see if there is any actual interest before you spend time and money in development
– You may actually be able to make some money up front to help cover expenses
– You aren’t stuck with a product and no customers to buy it
– You can build hype for the product
– You have people that can help you find the bugs for you and give you feedback
Cons of marketing your product right away:
– It is, in my opinion, at least somewhat unethical
– It will disappoint a lot of people when they don’t get the product instantly
– You are basically committed to finish the project, even if something happens where you can’t or don’t want to.
Pros of waiting until you have a complete product:
– You will have something great to offer your customers
– Most of the kinks will be worked out
– You are ready to fulfill for your customers on day one
Cons of waiting until you have a complete product:
– The amount of time it takes to start getting paid
– The fact that you don’t know if it is going to sell or not
– The initial outlay of development cash
To put this in perspective for those of you that offer SEO and other digital marketing services… how skilled at SEO do you get before you start offering it to clients? Do you wait until you have ranked a site yourself? Do you sell and figure it out later? What’s the balance for you?
The reason I am thinking about this today is because it is something I recently debated with my software Audiit.io It has been in development for around a year.
I released it to my Superstar SEO Academy students about 6 months ago to help me troubleshoot but I wasn’t satisfied yet. I could have kept tweaking it and getting it ready… but the truth is, I didn’t find that many issues on my own or through them.
So yesterday I decided to just go for it and offer it to my email list (remember a previous email about giving yourself a raise every day? That applies here also) at a discount and see if they can find any issues/bugs in exchange for a lowered price point. And so far they have found some and its been helpful. So what I essentially did was take a blended approach… I did some development, and improving. Released it to a handful of people, got some feedback, released it to more people, and got more feedback… and once I make THOSE corrections it will be time to push it even harder to a cold market.
So to sum all this up, at a glance promote vs. perfect might seem like a chicken and egg situation, but I think the most effective and ethical approach is to roll it out in phases and continue to improve on it over time. Do you agree? Disagree?
Let me know in the Profiit Academy Facebook group.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Best,
CMW