Remember that kid in high school who won everything, drove a new car and never had a zit? How many times did you say, “Just wait until something goes wrong and see how you like it?”

While your thoughts were colored green with envy, there was a lot of truth coming from your teenaged brain. Success is fun; failure is fundamental.

Fast forward to where you are now as an entrepreneur. Launching a new business and seeing instant success is fantastic. Even gradual success in a start-up is well above average. Before you know it, you get comfortable with your market position.

Then market changes hit. Competition nips at your heels. Your faithful client list is dropping off like flies. Frantically, you send out offers – anything just to get a sale – but you get more unsubscribe responses than hases. Your income is dwindling thanks to a big, fat failure.

Thanks? Are you not feeling thankful? Well, you need to be. While you were riding on the success high, you did not stop to analyze what was working and why. You did not spend enough time keeping up with your competition.

You never bothered to check out new products since the products you started with made regular sales. As long as your conversion rate was high, you were happy – and maybe just a bit smug about your success.

Failure slaps the complacency right out of you and gets you back on the track to being a genuine marketer. Some marketers have to get it wrong to learn how to get it right consistently.

The overnight marketing successes usually fizzle out when the first sign offailure creeps in. That is because their success was more about luck than planning. There is nothing wrong with a little good luck to boost your sales, but you should not depend on it.

If you are going to be the real expert in your business and not just another dabbler, then failure is necessary from time to time to keep you moving forward. The get-richquick-marketer is stopped dead in his tracks by failure and then moves on to the next opportunity.

A genuine marketer deals with failure like a speed bump; he slows down to be cautious and then moves forward. Napoleon Hill said, “Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for greatness.”

Can you see past your failures? If you can, then you’re able to take what you learned from that failure and turn it into a lasting success. Failure is fundamental for learning which marketing strategies work and which don’t.

Nothing makes you get serious about developing a true business than failure. The granddaddy of auto designers, Henry Ford, knew from harsh experience that “Failure is the only opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” If your project fails, ask yourself if you are ready to begin again with a real marketing plan in place. If you are, then failure will play an important role in the long-term success of your business.

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