After having identified ideal customer profiles (ICP) that are most likely to provide value to a business, it’s time to decipher how to choose which ICP will be most beneficial to individual campaigns. For example, if a business is looking to acquire new leads, which ideal customer profile should be used to coincide with business goals?
How to align an ideal customer profile with business goals
Every business should have at least one ICP to target content properly. However, some businesses might find it beneficial to have a couple of ICPs for different campaigns or different purposes within the business. Just don’t get carried away. The question is, how can a business identify and select an ICP that will best align with its goal? Here are the aspects to look for when selecting an ICP.
Does the ICP align teams to focus on one goal?
Look for an ideal customer profile that will align the teams across the business. Company cohesion is essential to reach goals. How can an ideal customer profile align teams? It would be an ICP that is connected to each stage of the customer journey to work with each corresponding team: sales, marketing, communications, customer service, and web development.
If an ICP doesn’t seem to align teams, it might be because it’s not likely to complete the sales funnel, or it isn’t a strong enough profile to require the efforts of multiple teams. An ICP should be valuable enough that the whole business is making content and resources for them.
Does the ICP guide the right strategies and messaging?
Choose an ICP that suits the strategies and messaging of the intended campaign. Will this ICP respond well to the messaging and voice that the campaign is striving to deliver? Campaigns vary; depending on the goal, they’ll have different strategies, tones, and directions. The ideal customer profile will help shape the campaign and drive it to completion.
Will the ICP drive results?
Based on the current campaign, also consider whether or not the ICP will be the right one to deliver results. An ICP should fit perfectly with each stage of the campaign. Choose an ICP that will provide the most clicks, views, impressions, and ROI.
Some businesses offer more than just one product or service. For example, an agency that specializes in automation technology might offer self-ordering kiosks, CRM tools, and online shopping. One customer might not be looking for all of those options. This is why there might be multiple ICPs to choose from because there are different parts of a business to promote to different leads.
Is the ICP likely to become a long-term customer?
Look further down the road and choose an ICP that has the highest potential for retention. Use customer research and previous campaign results to determine which ICP to choose. ICP analysis will help outline which customers will have the best ROI, referrals, and upsell potential.
Is the ICP someone the business can provide value to?
Lastly, ensure the chosen ICP is someone the business can provide value to and not just someone that would be nice to onboard. ICPs will need different content and communication based on where they are in the sales funnel and what service or product they’re interested in. Make sure the chosen ICP suits the campaign and that the content is relevant to them.
ICP analysis with bant.io
Bant offers multiple free tools to enable sales acceleration for businesses, one of which is the ICP analysis tool. Just input an email list to analyze the ideal customer profile. If that’s not enough, get in touch with us to develop personalized strategies for business growth and lead generation.
Jaclyn
Jaclyn joined the bant.io team as an Account Manager in early 2018 and now proudly supports bant.io as CEO, where she is responsible for wrangling and organizing our team initiatives.