The importance of Ideal Customer Profiles!
(Hint: it will make your life easier)
Why you should care about your Ideal Customer Profile!
Why do we need an ideal customer profile? What is it? And how is it different from buyer personas? Let’s try illustrating it with a little example:
Imagine the following: you just hired an ambitious new person for your sales department to propel your business to the next level. You want her to go out do some business development and close deals – many deals. She asks: “Who should I approach? And how?” to which you will reply: “As many as possible. And the approach is up to you. You can do this…”. Easy, peasy, melon squeezy (ever tried squeezing a melon?). Surely, you will be in for a treat! Chances are high that the new person will be frustrated after the first week because of the following reasons:
- Doesn’t know who to approach
- Doesn’t know how to approach
- Low success rate
Give people the right tools and they will work wonders!
Your lovely new salesperson really has great potential to give your company that needed boost. But without providing the right tools and information, work will be really (and unnecessarily) cumbersome for her. Just imagine you hire a programmer to develop the next big app and the only thing you give him is a Notepad and a clammy handshake. For some magical reason, he might get a result. But on the way there, he will have crossed Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell. You don’t want to do this to people.
Coming back to the example of the salesperson: wouldn’t it be helpful for her to know who to approach? What kind of company? What industry? Etc., etc… And that plus a few more details is basically what we would call Ideal Customer Profiles. With that information the sales person could start to create profiles, lists and subsequently develop a plan who and how to approach. Sounds much less frustrating. So now that we know that ICPs are actually quite helpful, let’s dive into it a little more.
How do I create my first ICP?
You need to ask yourself a few questions to establish suitable ICPs for your business. The following 4 questions will provide you with a good starting point.
- What kind of company is your ideal customer?
- Which companies fall into that category?
- What do these companies do? What kind of tools are they using? Are they using similar products or services such as yours? Where do they get them?
- Who is the key decision maker? Who will use your product or service? What does their org-chart look like? How much money do they make?
What kind of company is your ideal customer?
You need to be clear on the type of company you want to sell to. Is it an MNC, a local SME, fintech or public school, B2B or B2C? It is advisable that you create individual ICPs for each type of company. Your product might appeal to MNCs and SMEs, however your approach should be different between the two.
Which companies fall into that category?
You defined what type of company you want to sell to. Great! Now in the next step start collecting information on companies that fall into that particular category. If you defined fast-food restaurants as your ideal customer, your next step would be to find all fast food restaurants that fit the description. Do your home work and scrutinize these companies until you found all information available to you. Think revenues, headcount, regions they operate in, etc.
What do these companies do? What kind of tools, products and services are they using? Are they using similar products or services such as yours? Where do they get them?
Show me your website and I show you who you are. After you know the basics about the companies you will want to know about their operations as much as you can. And nowadays websites can tell you quite a lot about that. Tools such as BuiltWith, Wappalyzer or W3Tech can give you good bits of information on the things your potential customer is using and paying for. Does your product or service match, complement or potetially replace these? Good! Get to work!
Who is the key decision maker? Who will use your product or service?
If you know who the shot caller is, it’ll be easier for you to craft the right approach. If you’re selling hosting space and your customer is a multinational conglomerate with 20,000 employees, you most likely don’t want to speak to the CEO or CFO but rather someone from middle management. If the company consists of 10 staff, the CEO might be the exact right guy to talk to. Even though, many times the user will not be the one who pays for the product (i.e. makes the final decision), it is always advisable to know about them and understand their pain points and needs. It might give you a bit of an edge when justifying your solution.
After you covered the basics, you can always add more information to get a better picture of your ideal customer. Your sales or BD team should know more about your existing customers and will be able to help you to clearly define criteria to look out for.
Difference between buying persona and ICP
A buyer persona provides insights about a person you might potentially be dealing with (“Karen, the soccer mom” or “Marketing Martin”) – say your perfect customer for B2C, or the typical decision maker within a company for B2B. The ideal customer profile (ICP) will tell you more about the company you want to do business with.
ICP and buyer persona complement each other and are both crucial tools to understand your customer to optimize your offerings and marketing efforts.
You might also be interested in this:
Discord for Marketing: 4 Tips to Try!
So, you’ve finally decided to use Discord for marketing? Discord started off as a platform for gamers. Over the course of the pandemic, it reached a much wider audience. People discovered it was an easy way to talk to your friends and family. Influencers have been...
Can you use Discord for business? Here are 3 Questions to Consider.
It’s no secret that Discord has become a hot topic over the past year. What was once a platform targeted at gamers is now something much larger with over 150 million active monthly users and 300 million registered accounts currently. So, can you use Discord for...
A Guide on How to Use Discord for Business and Marketing for Beginners
We've previously talked about the importance of leveraging niche sites to boost your business. Today we're covering marketing on the rapidly growing platform. But before we get into how to use Discord for business, you'll probably want to know what Discord is! If you...
8 Reasons Why Relationship Marketing Beats Transactional Marketing
We don't even need to have 8 reasons why relationship marketing is better than transactional marketing. Rand Fishkin said it in just a few words: "The best way to suck at marketing is viewing everything you do as a transaction". Let it sink in for a second. A few...
On-Page SEO – 8 tweaks to rank high on Google
In the first two parts of this guide, we covered the basics of SEO. You now have a general understanding of what Search Engine Optimization is and how Search Engines work. You also know that the holy grail of SEO is to rank on Google’s first SERP - that's why we're...
How do Search Engines Work?
How do Search Engines work? In Part 1 of our SEO guide, you learned about the basic concept of SEO. Now that you’re all warmed up, we can slowly start to get a little more specific. Let’s get to it! Search Engine Optimization is all about maximizing your organic reach...
Understand SEO – Part 1 of the SEO Guide
Many times, we are asked: “How much do you charge for SEO?” or “How much does SEO cost?”. The problem with these questions is, that it’s kind of like asking a dentist “how much is dental treatment”. The dentist could probably give you an hourly rate but could not...
The TOP 10 Best April’s Fools Pranks
What if you could prank thousands of people? Sure it's fun to prank your little sister by cutting her Barbie's hair (it doesn't grow back btw... just saying...) or your husband by putting baby powder in the hair dryer (ok, that is funny, though...) - but wouldn't it...
Free Marketing for a Good Cause
Awesome Content for your Non-Profit! (It's free!) Free Social Media Marketing for a Non-Profit! 💌 Covid-19 imposes many challenges on our society and unfortunately will continue to do so for a while. Until then, we will have to fight this beast together and help...
How to Use Marketing in times of crises! (hint: don’t stop!)
Marketing in times of crises In times of crises, we try to keep the business up and running - but of course, there are some major changes that need to be implemented. This is also the case for your marketing activities. So what marketing strategy should you actually...