Defining Your Ideal Customer During the GTM Design Phase

Growth is the lifeblood of any business. Without acquiring new customers, your company will stagnate and decline. This makes the Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy critically important. The GTM design phase sets the foundation for success by outlining how to efficiently acquire and retain high-value customers.

Defining your ideal customer profile (ICP) stands out as one of the most pivotal GTM design steps. Your ICP informs everything from messaging and positioning to channel selection and campaign tactics. Taking the time upfront to intimately understand your ideal customers will pay dividends across the entire customer lifecycle.

In this post, we will explore best practices for optimizing the GTM design phase by creating a detailed ICP. You will learn:

• The elements of an effective, ideal customer profile

• Real-world examples of compelling ICPs

• Data sources to inform ICP development

• Actionable strategies based on your ICP

Crafting an Actionable Ideal Customer Profile

Your ideal customer profile is a semi-fictional representation of your best customer segment. The ICP should be specific enough to guide your go-to-market motions yet broad enough to represent a meaningful total addressable market (TAM).

Here are the key elements to include in your ideal customer profile:

Demographics

• Industry

• Company size

• Geographic location

Psychographics

• Values

• Attitudes

• Interests

• Personality traits

Buying Process

• Buying authority

• Buying committee composition

• Buying criteria

• Purchasing timelines

• Buying cycles and seasonality

Pain Points

• Business challenges

• Frustrations with current solutions

• Obstacles to adoption

Objectives

• Goals

• Desired outcomes

Vividly detailing these elements brings your ICP to life. You want the ICP description to feel like a real person that you truly understand as a buyer. This empathetic understanding allows you to effectively tailor messaging and positioning.

Let’s look at some real-world examples of ideal customer profiles done well.

Real-World Examples of Compelling ICPs

HubSpot created an ICP representing a small business owner looking for marketing software:

• Demographics: Leads local services business with under 25 employees

• Psychographics: Tech-savvy and cost-conscious

• Buying Process: Researches options online, seeks free trial, makes purchase decision independently

• Pain Points: Overwhelmed by digital marketing complexity, lacks expertise

• Objectives: Attract more clients, automate marketing tasks, prove ROI

This ICP contains vivid details about the profile’s background, mindset, behaviors, challenges, and goals. The description tells a story that HubSpot’s marketing team can intuitively grasp and use to guide campaign development.

Salesforce created an ICP for a chief revenue officer evaluating sales software:

• Demographics: Works at mid-market tech company with $50-500M valuation

• Psychographics: Data-driven and innovative

• Buying Process: Large buying committee including CEO, lengthy pilot testing

• Pain Points: Old CRM causes sales inefficiencies, forecast unreliability

• Objectives: Visibility into pipeline health, sales productivity optimization

Again, the storytelling brings this ICP to life. You can imagine who this person is, what keeps them up at night, and why they would buy Salesforce. This degree of buyer intimacy pays dividends.

Both examples contain the ideal level of detail. Now let’s look at data sources that can inform effective ICP development.

Leveraging Data to Build an Insightful ICP

Every ICP starts with assumptions about an attractive customer segment for your offering. To transform these hypothesized ICPs into well-informed profiles, incorporate data from the following sources:

Customer Research

Surveys, interviews, and focus groups with current buyer personas provide direct insights into their thought processes. Analyze trends in their responses to reveal inclinations.

Buyer Psychology Studies

General market research into buyer psychology and trends by industry, role, geography, etc. can help you model your ICP’s attitudes.

Firmographics

Statistics describing your existing customer base - industry breakdowns, revenue ranges, etc. - can inform your ICP demographics.

Customer Analytics

buyer journey analytics expose how current customers research, evaluate, and buy your offering. Use this behavioral data to define your ICP’s buying process.

Sales Insights

Feedback from sales reps on why buyers purchase, what objections arose, what closes deals etc. provides qualitative insights into customer pain points and motivations.

Total Addressable Market Data

Market projections for your offering’s addressable buyer base helps ground your ICP size estimates.

Competitive Intelligence

Research competitor ICPs and messaging positioning to find white space opportunities where your ICP can stand apart.

These data sources enable you to back up your ICP with facts. The more insights you can gather, the better. Now let’s discuss how to actually apply your ICP.

Putting Your Ideal Customer Profile to Work

An insightful ICP serves as the North Star guiding your GTM strategy and tactics. With a solid understanding of your ideal buyer, you can:

Craft Resonant Positioning

What messages and positioning will most appeal to your ICP? Know their pain points and objectives to frame your offering as the perfect solution.

Identify The Right Channels

Determine the digital platforms, media outlets, events, etc. your ICP engages with in order to prioritize your outreach accordingly.

Personalize Sales Conversations

Equip sales reps with your ICP knowledge to tailor pitches and relate to prospects struggles.

Focus Product Development

Prioritize your roadmap around capabilities that serve high-value use cases for your ICP.

Develop Targeted Ads

Create tailored ad messaging and target profiles matching your ICP demographic, psychographic, and firmographic data.

Send Relevant Emails

Segment your email lists around ICP attributes to deliver personalized value focused on their needs in each send.

Build Thought Leadership

Craft content around your ICP’s interests and pain points to attract and engage your ideal buyers.

Win Advocates

Delight customers matching your ICP with tailored experiences to turn them into referrals and case studies.

Defining your ideal customer profile is the most foundational step in optimizing your GTM strategy and go-to-market motions. Taking the time upfront to build an insightful ICP with demographic, psychographic, buying process, pain point, and goal data empowers more effective execution across all aspects of the customer lifecycle. Use the real-world examples and data sources provided above to ensure your ICP description feels like a real person and rings true for your offering. Then keep this profile at the heart of your messaging, development, and marketing to grow sustainable business value.