What is an Ideal Customer Profile and how are they used?
An Ideal Customer Profile or ICP is a detailed description of your perfect buyer; it’s essentially a blueprint for the business or individual who would get the maximum value from your product or service and, in turn, be your most valuable potential customer. ICPs are created by digging deeper than demographics, identifying behaviors, motivators, goals, pain points, and purchasing habits to create a detailed profile for the ideal customer that can be leveraged as a tool for marketing strategy. The level of specificity differentiates ICPs from target audiences, which rely upon general characteristics or interests and cast a much wider net.
ICP research involves research into both your existing customers and noncustomers who match your Ideal Customer Profile to compile qualitative and quantitative data. From this data, you can extract strategic insights which can be applied to overall business strategy and channel-specific marketing decisions to position yourself optimally to both new and returning customers.
Why ICP research is essential for brand marketing success
Every business can benefit from gaining a deeper understanding of their customers, and there will always be more valuable information to learn as that understanding evolves over time. Every brand should conduct periodic ICP research to avoid missing out on opportunities to grow.
Key benefits of ICP research include:
- Ensuring you have an accurate depiction of your ideal customer
- Recognizing how your actual customer types align (or don’t) with your ICP
- Mapping your customer’s purchase journey to detect high and low points on the current path to conversion
- Understanding what motivates your customers to purchase
- Identifying specific pain points and how you can solve them
- Unlocking strategies to differentiate your brand from competitors
ICP research helps unlock the insights that lead to data-driven decision making. Going beyond the basics to uncover the “why” behind your brand’s performance data uncovers new opportunities to grow, like how to gain a competitive advantage in crowded industries, lower Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) by attracting higher-quality leads, and boost Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) with increased repeat purchases.
Digging deep: common ICP research methods
Wondering how to conduct ICP research to make these discoveries? There are a variety of techniques which can be combined in different ways, depending on the available resources and level of investment. Below are some of the most common methods:
Customer interviews are live 1:1 (often virtual) interviews with your existing customers or consumers who match your ICP.
Key characteristics and benefits:
- Conducted in real time, typically via video call
- Provide qualitative data for comparison against quantitative data
- Put the interviewee at ease with a conversational tone, leading to more direct answers
- Allow the interviewer to get clarification on responses or ask follow-up questions
- Offer flexibility to dig into specific topics, like motivations, pain points, and how they see your brand versus competitors
Customer interviews allow you to position your brand in a way that speaks to your customers in their own language, addressing their unique needs and desires.
Example questions: “How do you shop for [X]?”, “What are your biggest struggles when purchasing [X] types of products?”
UX testing analyzes recordings of individual users interacting with your website or app, including video of their screen and audio of their voice, narrating the experience.
Key characteristics and benefits:
- Can be moderated (live, guided experiences) or unmoderated (user follows a set of instructions and completes tasks on their own)
- Provides qualitative data for comparison against quantitative data
- Allows you to see your site or app through fresh eyes
- Uncovers friction points that may be lowering your conversion rate
- Can be conducted with the same respondents as your customer interviews
UX testing generates insights for improving UX and messaging, plus new ideas for A/B testing for conversion rate optimization.
Customer surveys involve sending questions to a group of customers or potential customers and analyzing the responses.
Key characteristics and benefits:
- Sent to a large group, often from your own customer or email lists, or lists acquired from third party tools based on your ICP
- Provide quantitative data that helps shed light on the big picture
- Can include questions about the customer journey, motivations and frustrations, experiences with your website, and brand recognition
Customer surveys are essentially the quantitative version of interviews and user testing, providing a larger volume of data for the same types of questions.
Competitor research is frequently layered into every phase of ICP research, rather than being employed as a technique on its own.
Examples of how to incorporate competitor research:
- When sourcing users for interviews or surveys, request users who also shop with your top competitor(s)
- Ask respondents where they normally buy [X] product or where they’ve bought from in the past
- Ask what qualities the user associates with your brand and your competitor(s)
- Run your UX testing through your own site and then have the user complete a similar journey on a competitor’s site and compare the experiences
- Ask if there is a brand or website they prefer and why
Competitor research allows you to position yourself favorably against competitors and ensure you’re exceeding their experience and offerings.
Can you do ICP research effectively in-house?
Yes! The do-it-yourself method is a great starting point for ICP research, especially since it’s more accessible for new or smaller businesses. You can employ some of the techniques we covered above if you have (or can create) an ICP, have access to a list of existing and/or potential customers, and have the time and bandwidth to collect and analyze the data.
Before you decide to DIY it, ask yourself these questions:
- Does your team have the knowledge and experience to conduct surveys and interviews, and pull insights from the data?
- Does your team have the time? This work is time-intensive; ensure you budget adequate time and allow team members to prioritize it.
- What will you do if you learn something you or your teammates don’t want to hear?
If you asked yourselves the questions above and feel daunted by the time and expertise needed for ICP research, it may be a good idea to bring in an agency that does this day in and day out.
Or, if you think that decision makers at your company would receive this kind of assumption-busting data and insights better from an expert, an agency partner could help you navigate those tricky conversations with confidence.
The ROI Revolution difference: how we leverage ICP research for our clients
We act as a seamless extension of our clients’ marketing teams, offering white glove service and measurable, proven results. When we handle your ICP research, we create the surveys, run the interviews, and analyze the data for you.
We’ll create a clear and actionable report, designed so that you and every member of your team can easily understand the key insights and immediately apply the opportunities to your strategy – no specialized knowledge required. We also present our report and recommendations on a live video call that allows you to ask questions, dig deeper, or help get buy-in from decision makers.
We make recommendations both for high-level business considerations and channel-specific strategies, backed by a combination of real consumer data and a decade of experience in customer research by our team of UX experts.
Real businesses, real results
Wondering what ICP research impacts can look like for real brands? Here are a couple of recent wins for our clients:
A supplements company identified market opportunity for new products when they learned that some customers wanted entirely different categories of flavors.
A B2B company that sells commercial equipment learned that many potential customers were interested in installation services, which gave them the rationale needed to explore offering installation as an add-on.
Stop guessing about what your customers really want
Tap into the customer research expertise of ROI Revolution to unlock valuable strategic insights for your business. Book a meeting with our team today.
