Rejection isn’t fun when you’re trying to succeed in online business but you can learn a lot from it. Choose to do so and rejection becomes your education. By learning from each rejection, you can fine tune your strategy and increase your online success.
There’s also really good news for people marketing today… it’s easier than ever to measure your efforts so that you can maximise your marketing ROI.
The Digital Age Marketing Cycle
In the past, marketing had a really long cycle. It took ages and a lot of resources to research and then execute a campaign and it took even longer to measure that campaign’s success. Lessons were gleaned and new approaches added to future campaigns but the cycle was so long and the measurements so difficult that it was a bit of a guessing game and a very expensive one at that!
That’s no longer the case with marketing in the digital age – not if you use the tools available to you today. Not only can you launch marketing campaigns faster but you can measure their success or failure by your customers’ reactions and either capitalise on that success or redirect efforts and funds as measurements reveal what isn’t working.
What Can You Learn From Rejection?
Rejection teaches you a lot about what your customers want and teaches you important and money-saving lessons about what your clients and prospective customers don’t want. With an internet marketing campaign you can split test various approaches and gather data almost instantly. Low sales? Change your approach. Great results? Replicate that campaign!
The data you gather will tell you what works, what type of audience it works for, and what doesn’t work. You can use it to measure success in many areas, such as: email marketing, banner advertising, contextual ad layout, sales letters, press releases, article marketing, pay per click advertising, video marketing, and so on. And the great thing is that you don’t have to wait for a campaign to finish to get that info. You can measure a campaign while it’s in progress.
Excellent free and paid tools (such as Google Analytics) can help you measure every action of your website visitors and gather info about your competition and that will help you translate that information into useable business intelligence.
An epic failure in old-style marketing could be catastrophic. It could result in missing the boat on an opportunity that required perfect timing and it could cost a lot of money and result in a great deal of lost sales. No one wants to fail but failing could translate to success when you learn lessons from those bumps in the road.
With today’s new marketing techniques and tools, the learning curve is dramatically reduced and you can steer your business in a new direction before you’ve lost a lot of money and / or credibility.
See you at the top of Google!
Sean Rasmussen
SEO Australia Pacific
AussieSEO.com © 2007 - 2010
Sean this is so true
I especially like the line: “Choose to do so and rejection becomes your education.” This is not just applicable to internet marketing but to your whole life. So true is the “choose to do so”. If your mindset is right, you can seek out the positive in every situation, even if it does not appear the ideal situation to begin with. Sometimes what seems the worst situation, can often be life’s best lessons.
.-= Tegan´s last blog ..How can affirmations help change my mindset =-.
You put learning from rejection in online business very aptly Tegan.
“Choose to do so and rejection becomes your education”
I’m going to write that one down for future reminders as I know the road to internet success may not be smooth as I’d like it to be.
Cath
I agree rejection from clients is not a fun thing but they are actually a positive step to getting the product or service right.
.-= Jacqui Emery´s last blog ..2010 Tom Quilty Cup Winner =-.
Hi Sean,
Rejection is hard to take anywhere online business or offline the advantage online is you find out faster and can adjust your business accordingly.
Hi Sean,
Rejection isn’t fun but it’s character building. It’s not the end of the world to make mistakes; especially if you learn something from them. The great thing about working online is that you can track the results of your efforts.
You can see immediately which campaigns give you the most online success and which ones don’t. You just have to try and keep trying until you get it right.
This is one hard-fought lesson for so many people, and luckily one I learned long ago. Rejection (and really, most forms of adversity) are the best opportunity to reassess, retool, and ultimately, come out ahead if you’re savvy enough to recognize the opportunity.
Hi,’
This rejection thing is a bit over-rated. I think it’s a cultural thing a bit. For those of us who are a bit older, moving beyond the ‘personality’ thing and just into the mode of moving forward – is quite a step.
I agree with the above commentators, as well as the essence of the post. Finding out that a plan, and it’s subsequent effort needs a tweak now and then, is a great thing. And this time of history is the very best time to get better results. Bring it on!
‘I’m not good enough?’ Pfffffft, the paradigm’s shifting to: ‘well OK, what works better?’ You gotta love this life!
.-= Jo Carey-Bradshaw´s last blog ..Wealth Creation – Coffee and Internet Marketing =-.
I guess this blog is really about life itself. We can choose to learn from rejection in life or suffer because of it. Likewise in business, learning from rejection in online business is a must if we are to survive. Any rejection is simply an obstacle in life. Analyse it, make the necessary changes and move on.
A great post Sean.
Cath
We are supposed to learn from our mistakes – take rejection on the chin etc – but often we avoid this because of the real or imagined pain/hurt. Yet as the saying goes, ‘if we don’t learn from the past/history then we are doomed to repeat it’.
I agree with the ‘sense’ of this article and the comments – but I don’t think rejection is the ‘best’ opportunity etc. I also don’t think that rejection is character building – but how we handle it is!
Affirmation – in the face of mistakes/faults/rejection is far more encouraging and positive.
I have read that most people give up after the first rejection, but that you have to go through at least three rejections to succeed. And as my engineering teacher always said – “if you succeed immediately, the problem lies much deeper”.
So in a way it is good to have a rejection first up, so you can learn from it what’s missing in your offer and improve it step by step.
.-= Renee´s last blog ..Self Improvement Books – What Are Your Favourites =-.
Hi Sean
In business, rejection must not be taken personally. It is just telling me that something is not working and I need to discover what that it and get it to work.
I need to pin point exactly where the problem is and this can mean many areas of testing. I can use Google analytics and I can use many types of marketing techniques as you have outlined here, to see what works to bring more traffic, SEO and conversions.
Using a variety of techniques means I can split test them.
Rejection is telling me that I need to make improvements and enhancements through the use of many tools available.
Thank you for all these tips.
That’s a good point Elly – don’t take it personally – after all they don’t don’t actually know us as people – it’s all anonymous as far as that goes. Just business! It is a spur to look into what our sites are like for SEo, content and so on – which is a good thing to do anyway.
Hi Elly and Peter,
You guys make some great points. The other thing about rejection is that we get closer to our goal each time we experience it. Whether that’s because we work out little by little where we’re going wrong and make some minor adjustments or it’s just a numbers game.
Either way success will be ours. We just have to go through the rejections to get there.
.-= Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Internet Marketing Success – Make It Happen =-.
You raise a great point here Elly.
You can use great tools like Google Analytics to get very important information about your site and your visitors. You can see what pages visitors are exiting from and work to improve those pages to keep the visitor on that page longer or for whatever your goal is.
.-= Cemil´s last blog ..Thesis Theme WordPress 3 Compatibility Issue Resolved =-.
Hi Sean,
Thank you for the Learning From Rejection In Online Business post. Very educational tips!
I think that one of the feelings that most people will do anything to avoid is the feeling of rejection.
When you learn a lot from rejection then yes.. it becomes your education . I couldn’t agree more with this when we talk about online/offline business.
However,there is nothing and no one outside of you that can ever generate the painful emotion except you.
.-= Ada Leucuta´s last blog ..Starting strength and vertical jump training =-.
Hi Ada,
You make a good point – “there is nothing and no one outside of you that can ever generate the painful emotion except you.”
Most people already show in their language that they think the other one is responsible for them feeling bad when there proposal gets rejected. But it is the receiver who decides how to feel about
I think it’s important to realize that and find out what it is that makes me feel hurt. And then take it as a great learning experience.
.-= Renee´s last blog ..Sean Rasmussen – Australian Internet Marketer =-.
Education is the way and what a better way to learn than rejection…. You learn not to make the same mistake. I find google Analytics helpful, easy to understand and quick. Its time to improve my online business and start firing on all cylinders in this, instead of taking rejection personally. After all its business.
I remember my first article I submitted to ezine articles was rejected and I took it personally for a while until I had worked out what I had done wrong, fixed it and resubmitted it. It was then accepted. We have had a lot of rejections in our life but the trick is to just keep going and learn from it and make the next step better.
.-= Jackie Stenhouse´s last blog ..Anxiety Separation in Children =-.
Ezine only reject if there is something wrong with the article – it is never personal. I see them as a proofreader – and I don’t want inadequate articles going out – so I consider their rejection as a safeguard.
It is also a way to hone your skills more tightly – and the more you write, then there is little chance of rejection, unless you make an error – and then you will be glad they picked it up.
Hi Sean,
I guess after reading your mindset mastery articles that rejection is much like any failure & it is best to see it as a way to improve!
.-= jeremy´s last blog ..jlagatule- RT @tonyrobbins For you night owls still upCome be the first to have a sneak peak of R Breakthrough insiders site http-bitly-caSRxw =-.