Ideal Customer Profile: How to Unlock Its Power to Boost your Marketing Strategy

Your “ideal customer” should guide you in all aspects of product development and marketing. But, this term can mean something to different people.

Let’s take a look at how to create the ideal customer profile.

What customer profile is ideal?

Businesses can use ideal customer profiles (ICPs), to narrow down their target audience from a large number of accounts to one. A hypothetical customer profile is a representation of your target audience that uses real data. It includes information such as your company size, budget, sales cycle and industry as well as key details such as your customer’s title, location, purchasing habits, age and budget.

Your product, service and business goals will determine the criteria that you use to determine your ICP. B2C businesses may use location, income and marital status to determine their ideal customer profile. B2B businesses may prefer firmographic data such as size, industry and budget.

Ideal customer profile vs. buyer persona vs. target audience

Ideal customer profiles are a lot like buyer personas or target audiences. All of them share the same goal: to help businesses identify their ideal customers.

Although there is some overlap, it is important to know how they differ.

• Ideal customer profiles can help you define who you’re selling to by using information like age, budget, industry and behavior.
• Buyer personas will help you to define the “how” that you sell to your ICP by using qualitative data points like motivation, goals and fears.
• Target audiences are the people you want to market your products to. These people could be buyers but may also include partners, influencers, and colleagues who are directly or indirectly related.

These identifiers can be used to determine who and how to sell your product. It is often useful to identify your target audience by starting broad. Who are they? What do they value?

Then, you can narrow down on the traits, firmographics and behaviors of those most likely to buy your product–your ICP.

Your ideal customer could be an e-commerce digital marketing manager with a budget of over $1 million annually. This definition also includes data about the decision maker and the business.

Once you have identified your target audience and your ICP, you can create buyer personas to help you “get in the heads” your customers. The ICP parameters and target audience data are quantifiable, while buyer personas allow you to determine whether your product or service will be a good fit for that customer. What are their problems? What can your product do to help them? What are their goals?

How to create a customer profile that is ideal

It may sound daunting to identify your ideal customer, but it is not impossible. Most likely, you already have a method for determining if a customer is worth your time. Let’s improve it.

Here’s how to think about it. Sales processes usually start with one point of contact. You can determine if this person is a good match for your company by using specific criteria. This is the list that will help you create an ICP.

Begin by looking backwards from the goal. This means that you need to identify your most loyal customers. These people are not just those who purchase your product, but also those who rave about it and recommend it to others.

When creating an ICP, consider the following customer groups.

• Ready They know they have a problem or an opportunity that they need to solve. The urgency is high for this problem/opportunity.
• Willing to Take Action: They are ready to solve their problem.
• Able to: They have both the authority and the budget to solve their problem.
• Success Potential Your solution will give them the best chance of success in near future.
• High Acquisition Efficiency: These customers can be acquired quickly, have an efficient buying process, and are worth a lot over their lifetime.
• Ascension Potential: After they have achieved success with your solution they are more likely to buy again. This includescross-selling and upselling.
• Advocacy Potential: Customers who are satisfied with your solution will advocate for you. They’ll refer additional customers, provide testimonials and spread product awareness through use-base triggers.

These categories, along with current data make it easy to identify your ideal customer.

Let’s take a look at your customers. How do you determine when a customer is ready? Is it a request for demo on your website? Is it a call to the sales department?

These markers can be defined based on current customers to enable you to target your ICPs with personalization.

After identifying your ICP, your ads can be targeted to those who are ready, willing and able convert. You can then match your ads to landing pages using UTM parameter. Furthermore, you can continue learning about the behavior of your ideal customer with heatmaps or A/B test.

Create your ideal customer profile for better growth

It is essential to have ideal customer profiles in order to align marketing and sales around a defined audience and maintain consistent messaging from ad page to landing page.

Your ICP will change as you gather feedback from customers over time. This will inform product and service improvement.

Personalization from ad to page allows you to reach your ideal customers. You can also track the results so that you can optimize your campaigns. Get a 14-day free trial from Instapage.

Author: Ted Vrountas