Success with customer relationship management requires segmenting customers so that you can communicate relevant offers to them.

You can segment customers by:

Their buying behavior,

Their frequency of purchases, and

Their demographics.

This is the first of three posts on how to improve your success with customer relationship management by segmenting your customers. If you arrive at this page after the series is published, you can access the next in this series by clicking on the link below:

Success With Customer Relationship Management: Segmenting By Frequency Of Purchases

Success With Customer Relationship Management By Buying Behavior

This post covers segmenting your customers by buying behavior. It includes terms from an article by Ken Burke in the August 2008 issue of Target Marketing These terms are:

Lapsed buyers

Traditional loyalists, and

Brand advocates

Success With Customer Relationship Management For Lapsed Buyers

Lapsed buyers are customers who haven’t bought from you for a specific period of time. That time is a period that you set because it makes sense for your business.

Lapsed customers have purchased one of your products or your service already. And although they haven’t purchased for a while, they know your brand. Unless they have had a negative experience with your brand, it will be easier to get them to buy again than it will be to get a new customer.

If you’ve kept records on what and when they bought and what they paid for it, you can determine whether they paid full price or bought because you were offering a discount.

Those who paid full price are more likely to buy another product at full price. For those who bought at a discount, you’ll need to offer a similar discount to get them to buy again.

Success With Customer Relationship Management For Traditional Loyalists

Traditional loyalists are customers who have bought often from you and usually paid full price for their purchases. They like your brand and have already demonstrated loyalty to it with repeat purchases.

These are your best customers. They have the highest lifetime value so you need to really treat them special. Make them a part of a select community reserved just for them. Help them to feel like they belong in the community and are an important part of your business.

Inviting them to sales is not as important as involving them in special events like a time when your store is opened only to them. You can also make them feel special by assigning a representative that they can ask for by name who provides additional services that other customers may not get.

Success With Customer Relationship Management For Brand Advocates

Brand advocates are customers who have learned about your brand through interaction with other customers or your business representatives.

Maybe a friend recommended your business, or they met you on an Internet social networking site, or they know you personally from face-to-face social networking.

Because of their affiliation with your business, they like you and your brand so they chose to do business with you.

Although these customers may have purchased only once from you, they have the potential to be traditional loyalists so they should be segmented separately and pursued with promotions that further enhance their perception of your brand.

Success With Customer Relationship Management By Buying Behavior - Conclusion

It’s simple to segment these types of customers from your customer data. Yet these three segments enable you to connect to your customers in a way that relates to their buying behavior and their relationship to your business.

By treating each differently and providing each what they want, you will have more success with customer relationship management.

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Posted 8-13-08:Success With Customer Relationship Management:
Segmenting By Buying Behavior

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Category: Customer Market Segments, Market Segments, Uncategorized

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Start-up funds for a new business is precious. When you start a business you need to allocate only a proportion of your start-up funds to inventory. You’ll need to reserve a proportion of your start-up funds for marketing, overhead and other expenses.

How Much Of Your Start-up Funds Should You Spend On Inventory?

There is no exact answer for the amount of inventory you should keep on hand because it varies from business to business. But if you’re just starting out, you’ll be better off to invest only what is necessary in inventory.

Money tied up in inventory is a liability because money tied up in inventory can’t be spent on anything else.

How Much Of Your Start-up Funds Should You Reserve For Marketing?

You’ll be better off to reserve at least as much as you put in inventory for marketing so you can sell your inventory.

That doesn’t mean that you spend all your marketing funds at once, but that you reserve that much money to market your products and business.

You do need to spend some up front to research your target market. If you get this wrong, it can doom your business. Don’t think that everyone is your potential customer. Instead try to determine the people most likely to buy your products. Gather as much demographic information as you can about these potential customers. Then use market segmentation to produce a target market profile.

After you know as much as possible about your target market, develop your marketing plan with them in mind. Develop marketing activities and messages that will appeal to them. Plan these for at least your first six months and assure that you have money set aside to implement the plan. Then don’t spend anymore on inventory for that six months than what you planned for marketing.

How Much Of Your Start-up Funds Should You Reserve For Overhead?

And don’t forget your overhead and other day-to-day expenses. If you will pay yourself, that too needs to be considered. Figure how much you you’ll need for overhead expenses during the first six months and reserve it.

Remember that most small businesses fail due to lack of cash flow so set enough aside to at least get you through the first six months, even if you don’t make a penny during that time.

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Posted 8-12-08: How To Allocate Start-up Funds
For A New Business

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Category: Marketing, Other, Target Markets

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Personas are a type of qualitative target market research that you may find mentioned on marketing blogs and sites.

Many businesses use personas as a way of visualizing potential customers in order to be market to them. Personas serve the same purpose as target market research, but each has advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of Personas Compared To Target Markets

The major advantage of personas over target markets is that personas allow you to add detail to the visualized customer that are not found in target market research. Instead, marketers use their experience and instincts to estimate what the best customer for a product is like.

Another advantage of personas is that they provide an imaginary person that you can hold up to represent your potential customer.

Disadvantages of Personas Compared To Target Markets

The disadvantages of personas are flip sides of the same coin as the advantages.

The first disadvantage is that many of the distinctive characteristics of the potential customer come from experience and instinct instead of from research. Some marketers believe that their experience is more valuable than research.

But throughout my career, I’ve often seen that two experienced marketers form different conclusions based on their experiences. So I trust research more. It’s more consistent. It’s more verifiable and reliable.

The second disadvantage grows out of the first. Because personas or go beyond what you know from research, it’s more probable that part of your imaginary person doesn’t really represent your potential customers. Just one small mistake in understanding your customers can result in a failed marketing campaign.

Why I Prefer Target Market Research More Than Personas

While I recognize the value of being able to visualize your potential customers and think of one person to represent them. I believe this can be done using research. Demographic, phschographic and behavior characteristics acquired through market segmentation can create detailed pictures of target markets, I call them target market profiles. But because they are based on research, they are more likely to be reliable and accurate.

Personas and Target Market Research Conclusion

Using either personas or target market research will help you to visualize a picture of potential and present customers.

I believe all business people need to take this approach to select and direct their marketing at a target market. Too many small business owners think they can market to everybody. That usually results in what I call marketing madness. It just throws money at marketing and provides little return on the marketing investment.

You can use market segmentation to learn more about customers and potential customers with the idea of developing clear pictures of them. Once that picture is clear, it’s much easier to develop products and marketing activities that improve conversions and reciprocal relationships.

Your better off marketing to potential customers whether you use personas or target market research to do it. I contend that target market research is the better of the two methods.

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Posted 8-11-08: Personas Compared To Target Market Research

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Category: Target Markets

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Below is the list of dofollow blogs that I promised you yesterday. It contains 100 dofollow blogs to help with your dofollow linkbuilding.

I’m also providing a list of dofollow blog search engines and dofollow directories. However, in accumulating the list below, I found many entries in the search engines and directories that no longer work.

I also found that the page rank on the few sites that provided that information to be inaccurate. That’s understandable because Google just revised page rankings the end of July.

Still I found some inconsistencies over the three days that I searched for dofollow blogs.

Three blogs continued to drop over the three day period, some went from 4 to 2 or 1 and then to 0. Maybe Google was still revising the rankings. But I suggest that you always check the page rank before you decide to leave a comment.

I also encourage you to visit a blog several times and leave a comment each time. Some nofollow plug-ins don’t activate until you’ve commented on the blog three times.

I’ve provided the dofollow blogs’ urls instead of links. That way you can print out the list and type in the urls without having to come back here each time to click the links.

This is not a complete list, and I plan to continue searching for more dofollow blogs. If you want to get the updated lists, complete the form below, and I’ll send you each new list.

If your blog is dofollow and you have a page rank, you can also get your blog added to this page. Just leave me a comment with your url. I’ll visit your blog and check your page rank, then add you to the next list.

DoFollow Blog Search Engines

http://www.linkbuildingbible.com/dofollowdiver/
http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=010363265520675485990:xjmxcyokkls
http://dofollow.thegermz.com/

Dofollow Blog Directories:

http://www.blogsthatfollow.com/

Dofollow Forums

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums 7
http://forums.digitalpoint.com 7
http://forums.digitalpoint.com 7

http://forums.digitalpoint.com (Adsense Revenue Sharing Forum)
http://www.webmaster-talk.com (Adsense Revenue Sharing Forums)
http://www.webmaster-forums.net
http://v7n.com/forums/
http://forums.seochat.com
http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/
http://talk.iwebtool.com (Adsense Revenue Sharing Forum)
http://www.seoproject.com/forum/
http://forums.seoroundtable.com/
http://www.submit-express.com/bbs/
http://www.webtalkforums.com/ (Adsense Revenue Sharing Forums)
http://www.webmasters.org/ (Adsense Revenue Sharing Forums)
http://www.httppoint.com/ (Adsense Revenue Sharing Forums)
http://www.seomeeting.com/ (Adsense Revenue Sharing Forums)
http://www.internetmarketingforums.net/ (Adsense Revenue Sharing Forums)
http://www.allcoolforum.com

Dofollow Deep Linking Directories
Deep Link Directory

100 Dofollow Blogs

url followed by Page rank
1 http://randaclay.com 6
3 http://andybeard.eu/ 5
4 http://www.memwg.com 5
5 http://compsci.ca/blog 5
6 http://www.billhartzer.com/ 5
7 http://www.bloggingtips.com/ 5
8 http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/ 5
9 http://www.lifeinthefastlane.ca/ 5
10 http://lifecruiser.com/ 5
11 http://www.nimbletheory.com 4
12 http://www.edworthys.co.uk 4
13 http://www.yhumc.org 4
14 http://www.adeip.org 4
15 http://www.iiceb.org 4
16 http://www.fastswings.com 4
17 http://www.organicseo.in/ 4
18 www.australiawholesalers.com 4
19 http://www.howtowakeupearly.com/ 4
20 http://laughoutlouddogs.com/ 4
21 http://marenda.biz/ 4
22 http://blog.achille.name/ 4
23 www.instigatorblog.com/ 4
24 http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com/ 4
25 http://www.cutiegadget.com/ 4
26 http://www.lifeintherough.com/ 4
27 http://jennys-corner.com/ 4
28 http://sweetagring.com/ 4
29 http://www.layercake.net/ 4
30 http://www.roadlesstravelled.com.au/ 4
31 http://smartwealthyrich.com/ 4
32 http://lillieammann.com/blog/ 4
33 http://www.jhsiess.com/ 4
34 http://www.communityspark.com/ 4
35 http://www.ecommtips.com/ 4
36 http://blog.techiezone.in/ 4
37 http://wandersworld.fourleafhosting.com/ 4
38 http://workathomemomrevolution.blogspot.com 4
39 http://bigbrightbulb.com 3
40 http://dmiracle.com 3
41 http://successcreeations.com 3
42 http://essentialkeystrokes.com 3
43 http://www.datasystemsplus.net 3
44 http://www.nametags.org 3
45 http://www.centerosvita.org 3
46 http://www.asotn.com 3
47 http://www.logon.ie/internet-marketing-blog/ 3
48 http://www.linkdubai.com 3
49 http://jakeldaily.com/ 3
50 http://tallfreak.com/ 3
51 http://www.articlesnatch.com/blog/ 3
52 http://pixelheadonline.com/blog/ 3
53 http://sunlightflavour.net/ 3
54 http://blog.footbagshop.com/ 3
55 http://www.brilliantcheers.co.uk/ 3
56 http://menstrualpoetry.com/ 3
57 http://www.robertaferguson.com/ 3
58 http://secretofunlimitedprosperity.com/ 3
59 http://chrishoyt.com/ 3
60 http://www.bhatt.id.au/blog/ 3
61 http://www.tobsy.de/ 3
62 http://pajamaprofessional.com/ 3
63 http://dereksemmler.com/ 3
64 http://www.zr5.net/ 3
65 http://armymomnj.name/ 3
66 http://dontfearthetruth.com/ 3
67 http://emoneymarketing.com/ 3
68 http://www.jonespc.com/ 3
69 http://dorischua.com/ 3
70 http://marketingblagger.com/ 3
71 http://master-cleanse.info/ 3
72 http://www.mycreditgroup.com/blog/ 3
73 http://paulamooney.blogspot.com/ 3
74 http://pimpmypagerank.com/ 3
75 http://veganmomma.com/blog/ 3
76 http://www.simplekindoflife.com/ 3
77 http://table4five.net/ 3
78 http://usaer.blogspot.com/ 3
79 http://thermalblog.co.uk/ 3
80 http://timeforblogging.com/ 3
81 http://onaridge.blogspot.com/ 2
82 http://insure.catati.com 2
83 http://www.guruslab.com 2
84 http://what-is-what.com 2
85 http://www.triathlontraining.us/ 2
86 http://yourwebsiteprofit.blogspot.com/ 2
87 http://thebuffaloriver.com/ 2
88 http://baseballinvestor.com/ 2
89 http://thedailyfuzz.com/ 2
90 http://bloggersjourney.com/ 2
91 http://www.jadehat.com/ 2
92 http://www.bestrealincome.com/ 2
93 http://www.lcdlove.com/ 2
94 http://womantribune.com/ 2
95 http://crayonwriter.com/ 2
96 http://blograters.com/ 2
97 http://tagskitchen.com/ 2
98 http://www.justnotmartha.com/ 2
99 http://kansha-shite.blogspot.com/ 2
100 http://lastblogger.com/ 2

I got many of the above dofollow blogs from links at http://courtneytuttle.com.

Second 100 list url followed by Page rank

101 http://www.outofmygord.com/ 6
102 http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ 6
103 http://www.redflymarketing.com/blog/ 6
104 http://www.lonelymarketer.com/ 6
105 http://andybeard.eu/ 5
106 http://newsletter.blizzardinternet.com/ 5
107 http://blog.oflaherty.dk/ 5
108 http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/ 5
109 http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog 5
110 http://www.polepositionmarketing.com 5
111 http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/ 5
112 http://www.sitelogicmarketing.com/blog/ 5
113 http://www.chrisg.com/ 5
114 http://www.all-about-content.com/ 5
115 http://doteduguru.com/ 5
116 http://www.alistercameron.com/ 5
117 http://www.raproject.com/ 5
118 http://www.graphicdesignblog.co.uk/ 5
119 http://www.billhartzer.com/ 5
120 http://www.davidairey.com/ 5
121 http://sebastians-pamphlets.com/ 5
122 http://www.smoblog.com/ 5
123 http://just-thinkin.net/ 5
124 http://www.cornwallseo.com/search/ 4
125 http://www.instigatorblog.com/ 4
126 http://askowen.info/ 4
127 http://dukestreet.org/ 4
128 http://howtosplitanatom.com 4
129 http://www.meandmydrum.com/ 4
130 http://www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com/ 4
131 http://www.15minutedate.com/blog/ 4
132 http://necessaryskills.blogspot.com/index.html 4
133 http://www.jccommerce.com/ 4
134 http://www.allthingssem.com/ 4
135 http://smartwealthyrich.com/ 4
136 http://danemorgan.com/ 4
137 http://searchenginetigers.com/ 4
138 http://www.ads-links.com/ 4
139 http://mcseavey.org/blog/ 4
140 http://www.yackyack.co.uk/ 4
141 http://nimbleit.squarespace.com/4 4
142 http://www.brownbaron.com/blog/ 3
143 http://www.jangro.com/ 3
144 http://www.firstpagefitness.com/blog/ 3
145 http://wpplugins.info/ 3
146 http://www.realitywired.com/ 3
147 http://empowerwomennow.com/news-women-entrepreneurs/ 3
148 http://www.lxmarketing.com/ 3
149 http://www.seowoman.com/ 3
150 http://momgadget.com/ 3
151 http://getstartedtodayonline.com/ 3
152 http://www.feverishthoughts.com/ 3
153 http://feverishthoughts.com/garden/ 3
154 http://www.manilamom.com/index.html 3
155 http://www.benspark.com/ 3
156 http://dmiracle.com/ 3
157 http://www.jangro.com 3
158 http://affiliateprofitcenter.com/ 3
159 http://www.thatedeguy.com/ 3
160 http://www.legalandrew.com/ 3
161 http://chewonthat.blogspot.com/index.html 3
162 http://www.bracingyourbrand.com/ 3
163 http://3dogs3pigsandafamily.blogspot.com/index.html 3
164 http://dolangeiman.blogspot.com/index.html 3
165 http://disclosurepolicyplugin.com/ 3
166 http://successcreeations.com 3
167 http://www.forexpm.com 3
168 http://essentialkeystrokes.com 3
169 http://online-social-networking.com/ 3
170 http://www.wheretoadvertise.co.uk/website 2
171 http://blogs.qoody.net/ 2
172 http://dannydang.com/ 2
173 http://www.nethustlin.com 2
174 http://amycham.typepad.com/amy_cham_inside_my_head/ 2
175 http://feverishthoughts.com/celebrity/ 2
176 http://www.magicalrosegarden.com/ 2
178 http://markrobinson.ca/ 2
179 http://www.web-hostingreview.com/ 2
180 http://www.u-g-h.com/ 2
181 http://www.only-network.com/ 2
182 http://hippiespelunker.blogspot.com/index.html 2
183 http://credit-ability.blogspot.com/ 2
184 http://www.skillett.com/ 2
185 http://www.earnglobalonline.com/ 2
186 http://www.momisnutz.blogspot.com/ 2
187 http://www.mydandelionpatch.com/ 2
188 http://thereasoner.com/ 2
189 http://www.rottenbananas.com/ 2
190 http://www.scribbleonthewall.com/ 2
191 http://sophistishe.org/ 2
192 http://blog.audiogettingrichscience.com/ 2
193 http://www.caferomanza.com/ 2
194 http://www.jbslife.com/ 2
195 http://goodreview.bloggerunleashed.com 1
196 http://blogthatoutside.com/ 1
197 http://ericsocia.net/ 1
198 http://www.amorphism.net/ 1
199 http://www.brianpratt.net/ 1
200 http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com 1

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Posted 8-8-08: Dofollow Blogs, Search Engines
and Directories For Dofollow Backlinking

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Category: Internet Marketing

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Dofollow blogs can improve your search engine rankings and bring more visitors to your site or blog. In fact, dofollow linkbuilding is vital to on-line marketing.

Why Are Dofollow Blogs and Dofollow Linkbuilding Important?

Google determines your site or blog’s popularity by how many links that are pointing to it. And commenting on dofollow blogs is one of the easiest ways to build lots of links.

But how do you know which links are dofollow instead of nofollow? How do you know where to spend your time making relevant, well-developed comments?

My Unsuccessful Linkbuilding Experiences

I’ve been asking myself these same questions because I’ve spent loads of time doing unsuccessful linkbuilding.

First, I did article marketing, writing two to three articles per week with a service that required that each article be written three times so that the paragraphs could be intermixed to enable everyone that wanted a unique version of an article to get it.

I got hundreds of links from these articles, but Google didn’t count any of them. The articles did help me some with MSN and Yahoo. But as we all know, most search engine traffic comes from Google. So I wasted loads of energy and time.

I finally realized that the sites and blogs using the articles had poor page rank and no authority with Google. And that I had to go after links from more respectable sites and blogs.

So next, I picked some good blogs that were related to mine and started visiting them nearly every day. If a post was on a topic I could contribute to, I’d leave a comment. I left around 100 relevant, well-developed comments. Yet got very few links from them.

I didn’t understand why because I didn’t know about nofollow. In case you don’t know either, nofollow links aren’t counted as links. And nofollow links for comments are automatic in WordPress. The blog owner has to change the code and take the nofollow off or get a plug-in to make it a dofollow blog.

Dofollow Blogs And Resources To Help Your Dofollow Linkbuilding

I just recently realized this and started doing some searches on dofollow blogs. I found a wealth of information, some dofollow search sites, dofollow blog directories, and several dofollow blog lists.

I’ve decided to share all this information with you, but it’s not finished yet because I’m checking each blog for page rank. I’ll post the dofollow resources tomorrow.

So if you want a list of dofollow blogs where you can conduct dofollow linkbuilding, come back tomorrow.

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Posted 8-7-08: Marketing with Dofollow Blogs and Dofollow Linkbuilding

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Category: Internet Marketing, Marketing, Other

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