Creating an Ideal Customer Profile

What is an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)?

For b2b sales & marketing teams, targeting is everything. Without it, you may struggle to close deals as the audience you try to sell to may not be interested. Ensuring you target the right audience can be as easy as creating your business’s ideal customer profile.

An ideal customer profile, also known as an ICP, is like a snapshot that shows the kind of company most inclined to purchase your offerings, stick around as long-term users, and even spread the word about your business.

This profile delves into the specifics of your ideal customer—their demographics, goals, hurdles, and the behaviors or characteristics that suggest they’re a perfect match for your product or service.

Why should an ICP be used as part of your sales & marketing strategy?

For your sales team, being armed with a customer profile means they gain the ability to pinpoint a customer’s pain points, effectively showcasing your product or service as the answer to their needs. Leveraging this profile, your sales team can forge connections with both existing and prospective clients.

For your marketing team, comprehending the client is pivotal in crafting compelling advertisements or emails tailored to entice potential leads and retain current clients. Marketers rely on customer profiles to tailor messages precisely for both potential prospects and current customers and ensure their messaging strategy is successful in order to obtain leads or book meetings for the sales team.

1. It lowers the cost of acquiring customers

Knowing your client well is crucial for crafting captivating ads or emails that resonate with potential leads and current customers. Marketers rely on customer profiles to personalize messages effectively, catering to the needs of both potential prospects and existing customers.

2. It allows you to find prospects that will purchase

Sales can be an arduous task. Without targeting prospective customers who are the right fit for your service or product, the sales process may slow down or come to a grinding halt. Being able to target the right prospects will increase the chance they purchase.

3. It reduces customer churn

Acquiring customers is painful if they immediately churn. By having a solid ideal customer profile you can onboard customers who are actually interested in your service/product, which greatly reduces the chance they will churn over time.

What data is included in a customer profile?

In order to target the right prospects, the more data that is included in the customer profile, the more effective the process can become. The goal here is to understand what your buyers motivations, where they are located, their pain points but also

Let’s look at the different types of data:

Demographic

First and foremost, demographics are the physical characteristics of your customers. These include:

Employee:

• Age
• Sex
• Job title

Company:

• Size
• Location
• Industry
• Revenue

Psychographic

Psychographics allow you to understand how, when, and why people make purchasing decisions, and may include attributes such as:

• Lifestyle
• Goals
• Pains
• Habits
• Values

Psychographics are helpful to understanding the buying journey and even the customer journey after they’ve already purchased from you.

Firmographic

Firmographics help you to classify your audience’s markets. This helps you to properly position your products/service into the idea market.

These attributes include:

• Sturcture
• Culture
• Decision making process

Geographical

Geographical is purely based on where your audience is more specifically located. This can help determine if there are any logistical issues, product bans, or any general marketing messaging differences.

These attributes include:

• City
• Area
• Region
• Country

3 simple steps to create your own ICP

Creating your ICP, or refining your current profiles doesn’t need to be complicated or overwhelming. We’ve narrowed it down to 3 simple steps for you.

1. Identify who already buys from you

In order to refine who you target, you need to understand why customers already buy from you. You can start this process by creating a list of your current customers and either politely ask a few of them questions to understand from their perspective, or fill out the framework yourself.

You can use our free frame work as shown below:

Industry – what industries are your customers in?
Company size – how large are your customers? we suggest using ranges of employees such as 1-50, 51-100, 101-500, 501-1000, 1001-5000, 5001+ etc
Deparment – what departments have purchased from you? Do you sell to accounting? Marketing?
Reasons for purchase – why did they buy your product or service, what was their need?
Pain points – what pain points did they have that you solved?
Upsells – what upsells have you made, this will help determine

Once you have all this, through either interviewing customers or filling it out yourself, you will have a better understanding of the value you will offer to your ideal customer.

2. Analyze the data

Once you’ve understood why your customers buy from you, it’s time to find out what it all means and create an ideal customer profile for your business.

Gather the data you’ve collected and look for common patterns and reasons.

• Do you have specific industries you sell more to?
• Is there a pattern emerging for the reasons to purchase?
• Are there any common pain points that your product/service solve?

Identify any similarities and use these insights as you move on to the next stage of building your
ideal customer profile.

3. Create your ideal customer profile template

Now that you have gathered all of that data it’s time to create an ideal customer profile framework.

You can absolutely use any of the many templates available in the wide world, or use our simplified version of an ideal customer profile shown below.

Once you’ve filled this in, this will allow you to target the right businesses & industries and create messaging that allows you to convert more and drive your sales.

Download your free Ideal Customer Profile kit below

How to target your ICP

Identifying your ICP is the first step.

The next step is targeting your ICP and to do that you need the right data in order to get in front of the right people.

DataBees can help you. Not only can we help you refine your ICP so you’re targeting the right companies perfect for your product or service, but we can provide all the data points you need to get in front of your ideal audience.

Get in touch today and let us walk you through how we can help you book more meetings, close more deals and grow your sales.