Both permanent and conventional makeup can look great or good enough with room - sometimes lots of room - for improvement. Skilled makeup artists are in great demand for the way they can improve a person's appearance with conventional makeup (albeit with the fanciest, highest quality products and applicators), but the average person is unlikely to have the same skill and/or time to attend to beauty ritual of applying makeup everyday and throughout the day as it wears off (with the exception of my grandmother, but she was quite a piece of work).
Well-executed permanent makeup can achieve the same results as regular makeup or better, especially since even the most meticulously applied makeup eventually comes off one way or another.