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When to Stop Revising Your Copy

I don’t know how many gyms have used this phrase in their advertising, but just because it isn’t original doesn’t make it irrelevant: Summer bodies are built in winter. Before COVID, this was a much less complicated concept. Lots of people join gyms during winter than at any other time, particularly right after the holidays.

It’s one of those issues that leave copywriters shaking their heads. The client has come knocking — again — looking for revisions. For people like me who offer custom writing services, I can tell you that this happens quite a bit.

Before I go any further, I need to make this disclaimer: This is not a protest against any client or a commentary on any particular instance. If this story resembles you in any way, shape, or form, you are in good company. You also stand to boost your productivity and get back around to the business of making money if you follow my advice.

The Harsh Reality

Let’s just put it right out there: Your copy is never going to be perfect. It can be good, great, or amazing, but perfect is not in the cards. Still, it’s what clients seem to expect.

I had a conversation recently with a copywriter who said he once had a client return an entire email sequence over a misplaced comma. Now, I’ve encountered enough “grammar police” types  online to be able to understand wanting your copy to represent you well, but there comes a point where you need to ask yourself what’s really important — the one or two readers that are going to spot erroneous punctuation or the multitudes that are far more interested in the message?

No, there is no excuse for a copywriter delivering copy that is strewn with errors, but we’re talking about literally one misplaced punctuation mark. Now ask yourself: Have you ever been tempted to micromanage your content that way?

When your money and time are on the line, it can bring out thought processes and reactions that would normally not be an issue. I want to offer you this bit of sage advice: relax. The idea here is not to have the best grammar on the Web, or the best page layout, or the best color scheme for your overall branding initiative. Different things will appeal to different people.

Are Your Expectations Reasonable?

It is impossible to devise a content strategy that will elicit a positive response from 100 percent of users. In fact, some of the best content out there only gets about a 5 percent CTR. That means 95 percent of your audience was unimpressed by your exhaustive and thorough efforts to create something especially for them. In most cases, that number is higher.

So what is the answer? On the one hand, you have every right to want your content to represent you well. On the other, the more time you spend revising copy, the longer it’s going to be before you start making money with it.

Here’s the answer: Know when it’s time to stop revising.

Is It Really Good Enough?

The way I see it, you have several options: You can sit there scrutinizing every word in every headline, title, article, and caption on your site for hours, days, even weeks or months on end. You can spend an inordinate amount of time researching keywords, consulting thesaurus.com to find the best synonym that’ll give that sentence just a little more “oomph.” You can obsess over every detail in every paragraph of your content…

…or you can simply ask yourself a few questions:

  1. Is my content relevant to the audience I’m attempting to attract?
  2. Does the copy represent my company, name, product, or brand well?
  3. Does the copy give my company, name, product, or brand a unique voice?
  4. Is the writing informative, educational, thought provoking, and capable of holding the interests of people in my target demo?
  5. Is the writing free of glaring errors or bad placement/formatting on the page?
  6. If I were visiting this site for the first time, knowing nothing about my company, its products, or its services, would I be impressed by what I’m seeing here?

If the answer to most or all of these is yes, it’s time to stop worrying about the fine details and put your content in front of the masses. Some will scrutinize the misplaced commas, but the ones that count will see the value in the overall package. You engage with content that has personality and appeal, not with commas. You get sales by engaging your visitors and by building relationships with them, not stressing out over the best synonym for “intelligent.”

I’m partial to “astute” for that one, by the way. See? I just saved you a click.

The Bottom Line

It isn’t necessarily “astute” to keep second-guessing your content to the point that it never sees the light of day. What if the version of that article three revisions ago was the one that would have tripled your conversions, but you made changes that lost or diverted the right reader’s attention? There comes a point when you have to realize that that’s whom you’re going after: the right people for your product, not all people.

So again, relax. If you want a second opinion on your copy, let your friendly neighborhood copywriting company give it a once-over and trust its judgment. There are times when “intelligent” is actually the better synonym.

 

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