Finding your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) involves creating a detailed description of your target audience, including demographic information, industry, company size, and pain points.
If you don’t know who’s the ideal customer of your solution, then you won’t be able to look for those people and outreach to them.
The first step of that process is to clearly define the problem you're solving, and the value you're providing.
You need to be sure there is an actual issue.
Get validation by interviewing people, asking in communities, reading customers' reviews, etc...
Now that you have validated the pain point, you can identify your Ideal Customer Profile (#ICP).
That's people facing the problem you're solving AND having decision power.
Firmographics
Firmographics are sets of characteristics to segment prospect organizations.
Think things like:
- Company size
- Industry
- Location
- Revenue
- Number of employees
Knowing the characteristics of your ideal customer will be very helpful when we will arrive at the actual prospecting step.
Are you targeting agencies? SaaS companies?
Small businesses (SMBs) or Fortune 500 companies?
etc.
Demographics
Demographics are sets of characteristics to segment individuals in your target organizations, such as:
- Job title
- Seniority
- Age
Knowing who you should be reaching out to in a given organization is as crucial as finding that organization in the first place.
If you target the wrong person with the wrong message, you will lose the deal even though they could have been a good customer, if you had done your demographic homework properly.
How to find your ICP
Ideally, you should have already some customers, some being more successful/happy than others.
The best way to find your ICP is to identify who are the best customers you currently have.
The metric on which you measure that “value” is up to you, could be;
- customers with highest retention
- customers with highest usage
- customers with highest potential for growth
- customers with highest $$ value
Once you’ve identified who are those customers, try to find patterns.
Are they in a similar industry? in the same region? in the same growth stage? etc.
If you don’t have any customers or not enough to find such similarities, then the best way is probably to start with your gut feeling and your knowledge of the industry. Who’s likely to be interested in your product?
Test multiple audience like this and you will see which one resonates the most with your product.
Remember though, as your product is evolving you may need to update that ICP over time, too.
✍️ What you should do now
Homework for you, fill the following templates:
🏢 My target companies
- Industry:
- Revenue:
- Employees:
- Location:
- Investment:
- Budget:
👱♀️ My target individual(s)
- Age:
- Sex:
- Education:
- Income:
- Location:
- Language: