If you’re creating content, you’re talking to someone.
For your business or brand, you need to identify who that “someone” is because if you’re creating for everyone, you’re creating for nobody.
Ideal customer profiles are an essential marketing tool that can help your business gain new customers and retain current ones. These profiles give you a more in-depth look at who your customers are, what they want, how likely they are to buy again, and more.
Let’s say, you’ve got your ideal customer profile or target audience specified, but how can you leverage it to sell more?
As a business owner, you have a wealth of data at your fingertips. In order to unlock its full value and convert that into sales leads, you need to know where to look for answers.
This blog will take you through the ins and outs of understanding your ideal customer profile. Let’s take a look at everything you need to know about ideal customers: their traits, interests, values, and behaviour so that you can get the most from them.
What is an Ideal Customer Profile?
An ideal customer profile (ICP) is a summary of the person behind the purchase decision. You can think of it as the “who” and “why” behind a buying decision.
It can be defined as the perfect customer for what your organization sells.
Because when you first start marketing, your priority is to acquire leads. But as your business grows and matures, you’ll need to start thinking about how to convert leads into customers.
An ideal customer profile is a summary of a person’s traits, interests, values, and behaviour. It’s like an overview of your ideal customer. The profile gives you a glimpse of who your ideal customer is, so you know where to focus your efforts.
Knowing the motivators of your ICP and understanding their traits can help you tailor your message.
When you’re creating a marketing strategy, you need to know who your ideal customers are. This can help you tailor your messaging and create more relevant content.
When you look at your ideal customer profile, you’ll notice some similarities between them and your current customers. This will help you understand your ideal’s traits.
rom a marketing standpoint, knowing what makes your customers tick can increase transactions and build brand loyalty. These intrinsic and extrinsic motivators often compel the decision-making process.
Once you’ve got a better grasp on who they are, you can start figuring out what to sell to them. By understanding your ideal customers, you can understand what they like and, more importantly, what they don’t like.
Knowing what your customers like and dislike will help you create content and tailor services that are less likely to be rejected.
You can also use this information to determine what types of techniques and nurturing processes are likely to close sales.
This is what a good ICP and Buyer Persona look like:
Founder of a Fitness Apparel company in Singapore that has 60 - 110 employees.
Good, go deeper into the ICP.
Her name is Sara. She is the sole Founder of a Fitness Apparel company in Singapore that has 60 - 110 employees. Sara is female, aged 28-35, and she lives in Holland Village with her partner and their brown Labrador Retriever.
Looking good so far! This was the ICP. Keep going. Once you enter the mind of your ideal customer, you’ll see the Buyer Persona.
Introduce them: Her name is Sara. She is the sole Founder of a Fitness Apparel company in Singapore that has 60 - 110 employees. Sara is female, aged 28-35, and she lives in Holland Village with her partner and their brown Labrador Retriever.
Explain what they do and how they work: She has her own company but is always trying to find new ways to improve employee satisfaction and happiness. She’s invested in the health and mindset of her employees.
She’s outgoing, loves meeting new people, and is always down for a quick chat with a stranger. She’s kind, gentle, and loves animals. She is dependent on her smartphone and tablet because she’s always on the go.
Get into their mind and understand their values: She doesn’t like not being in control of situations and works hard to prevent problems before they arise. Sara is proactive and has the ability to gauge future outcomes.
She relies on word of mouth from her connections and friends on social media and also spends too much time there. She’s also protective of her personal time. She loves spending time with her family and getting her partner’s input on important decisions.
Now, as a business owner you know what she values and cares about, the importance she places on certain things in her life, and how you can best communicate your message to her.
You’re now able to sell a service to Sara or nurture her much more efficiently, along with other customers who fit the same profile.
Your ICP becomes your future lead list.
A lead list is a list of names, contact information, job title, and other information of potential clients and sales opportunities that entrepreneurs use to reach out to and convert into sales. They’re qualified sales opportunities that just need slight nurturing before confirming a sale.
This lead list is most effective when it uses and follows the information in your ICP. The closer it follows your ICP, the more successful your lead list will be.
You can use the information in your ICP to create higher-value offerings that have a higher margin of acceptance or nurturance rate. These are ways to “upsell” your products by giving customers additional benefits and value at no additional cost.
A good example of this is offering a free gift of value with the purchase of a product.
LinkedIn is one the most effective ways to filter through your leads using their Sales Navigator. It provides endless avenues to constantly find potential leads in certain job titles, industries, departments, and companies.
LinkedIn’s professional filtering system is incomparable, that’s why we’ve created a course for you to learn LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation in a matter of 4 hours after it took us years to research, analyse, and specialise in.