Home Guide How to Develop an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

How to Develop an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Learn how to identify and target your ideal customers by developing detailed buyer personas for each stakeholder in the B2B buying process.

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What Is an Ideal Customer Profile?
Finding your unique niche and audience is the key to opening the door to new prospects and exponential
growth. But finding the right key when it comes to your brand’s Ideal Customer Profile isn’t always as
simple.
An ideal customer profile is not necessarily your largest customer but could fit into the following
categories:
  • Most Profitable – Customers with the highest margins
  • Easiest to Support – Low maintenance, self-sufficient customers
  • Highest Lifetime Value – Long-term, loyal customers
  • In a Growth Industry – Positioned in expanding markets
  • Strategic Alignment – Aligns with your business direction
Benefits of Finding Your ICP
  • • Identifying better-fit prospects
  • • Lowering your customer acquisition cost (CAC)
  • • Serving customers better by knowing their pain points
  • • Reducing customer turnover
Surveying your current customers is a cost-effective method of gaining insightful analytics and data
that’ll provide a foundation to building your Ideal Customer Profile.
Considered Purchases with Extended Sales Cycles
B2B marketing is often more complex than B2C marketing because the size of the opportunities is much larger. As a result, these larger B2B opportunities take longer to win or close.
The best way to think of this sales scenario is to know you’re selling a “considered product or service” with an extended sales cycle.
Key Insight: The value of the product or service being offered is often considered by multiple stakeholders/buyers in the company—not just your direct contact. Discovering and understanding the unique challenges and needs of each stakeholder is the key to your sales success.
Often, the leader of the company will task a lower-level employee to do the initial research on a particular pain or problem, and then report back on key findings to the buying committee. Each member of the buying committee has unique challenges and perspectives that need to be addressed.
Key Personas in the B2B Buying Process

We recommend you focus on these personas when developing your ICP:

Researcher

This persona is simply researching all of the possible solutions for a specific problem and picking the top three or so solutions to compare. The key to attracting the researcher’s attention is to showcase how your product differs from your top competitors that they’re likely researching, too. This helps control the narrative vs. the researcher making their own assumptions.

Influencers

This persona might have an influence on the product or service being considered or other members of the buying committee. Think of IT employees who will be responsible for implementing a service or solution, or accounting staff that’ll be responsible for allocating funds towards the purchase.

The End User

This persona is the one who will ultimately end up using the service. They’ll know the most about its functions and features and will ask specific questions: How easy is it to use? What does training look like? How long will it take to get up to speed? What kind of support should I expect?

Decision-Maker

This persona will want to know if your product or service will fix the problem they are experiencing. Will it make my team more efficient and effective? What kind of ROI can I expect?

Financial Authority

This persona will want to know the terms of the contract—such as what is in the service level agreement and other details, like the escalation or cancellation policies.

Asking the Right Questions for Each Persona
Once you’ve isolated the specific stakeholders, it’s time to dive deeper into their personas.
Determining
these unique personas will require thorough thinking into how the stakeholder thinks, functions, and
operates.
Ask yourself these questions about each persona:
  1. Who is this person—i.e., job title level, role?
  2. What are their work habits?
  3. What are their challenges?
  4. What are their responsibilities?
  5. Who do they work with and report to?
  6. How much purchase authority do they have?
  7. What role do they play in the buying process?
  8. Do they have a relationship with your company currently?
  9. What sources do they trust? Peers? Online networks? Media, Publications?
  10. How do they measure success?

With just
one blanket message, you might flop on effectively communicating with
each persona. When you take the time to explore each of your Ideal Customer Profiles and
fine-tune your messaging to match, you’re better equipped to generate a lead and/or an
opportunity.
Understanding the Modern B2B Buying Process
Warning
Many organizations believe they know their buyers well. They have built personas and detailed product marketing plans. But this often fails to document how the customer buys, what content they consume as they conduct research, or what frictions you may need to overcome in your marketing and sales interactions.
In today’s modern B2B world, people are using online research to their advantage prior to sealing the deal, more than ever before. The dark funnel of online conte(Reddit, online review websites, professional associations, text messaging, etc.) has forever changed the B2B buying process.
As B2C buying habits and patterns increasingly affect the B2B buying journey—transparency is key!
Key questions to ask to understand the buying process:
  • What’s the most difficult aspect of your job?
  • What trends and/or regulations are affecting the way you do your job?
  • What are the trigger events that put you into an active buying process?
  • Are you proactively looking for solutions or reactively in the market because of a problem?
  • What does your research process look like and where do you typically start?
  • What information is most helpful as you’re researching new solutions?
  • Who do you consult with when conducting research?
Putting It All Together
By using these simple steps to tap into your ICP with real-time insights and analytics, you’ll reduce wasted time and effort on messaging that just doesn’t land.

Key Takeaways:

  • Identify your ideal customer based on profitability, ease of support, lifetime value, and strategic fit
  • Understand the multiple stakeholders involved in B2B purchasing decisions
  • Develop detailed personas for each stakeholder type
  • Ask the right questions to understand each persona’s unique needs
  • Map out how your customers actually buy—not just how they use your product

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