How to Create an Ideal Customer Profile (+ Template)

Your preferrred buyer profile (ICP) embodies a B2B model’s goal buyer with elements like their location, business, and funds. Purchaser personas are fictional fashions portraying preferrred clients (people) by demographics, ache factors, occupations, and extra.

Right here, you’ll discover:

1. What is an ideal customer profile?
2. What is a buyer persona?
3. ICP vs. buyer persona: what’s the difference?
4. How to create your ICP and buyer personas: 8 steps
5. How to use ICPs & buyer personas in your marketing strategy: step-by-step
6. ICP template
7. Buyer persona template

B2B manufacturers battle with longer gross sales cycles and choosy firms as their viewers. However, B2C manufacturers want ample time to transform extra plentiful but lower-value clients and create relationships with people as their viewers.

That’s why we base advertising and marketing ways on preferrred buyer profiles and purchaser personas earlier than launch. 

We chatted with Joe Leija, a Senior search engine marketing Account Supervisor at HawkSEM, who brings a roster of content material advertising and marketing, promoting, and PR expertise to his work. He breaks down ICPs versus purchaser personas, a template for each, and the way you should utilize them to streamline content material creation, increase lead technology, and reap extra ROI. 

What is a perfect buyer profile?

Your preferrred buyer profile (ICP) is the group of individuals you most wish to entice to your services or products. It’s a standard time period in B2B marketing that normally refers to an organization profile as your audience. 

For instance, HawkSEM is a digital advertising and marketing company that targets companies in a variety of industries. Our most typical ICP is a mid- to enterprise-level firm within the B2B or ecommerce house inside the finance, retail, tech, and different industries.. 

So, how do you map out an ICP for your enterprise? We’ll stroll you thru it. 

Supreme buyer profile attributes to think about

Shrek famously mentioned that ogres are like onions, and so they have layers — properly, so does your ICP. Leija helps us peel again these layers with key attributes that make up your profile:

• Geography: Does your model cater particularly to sure nations, states, or cities? You probably have an internet SaaS product, location may matter. If not, the place are most of your current shoppers situated? How about your rivals’ shoppers?
• Annual income and funds: Work out how a lot income your preferrred buyer brings in annually. How a lot can they realistically allocate towards your model’s service?
• Business:  Finance, schooling, and transportation are a couple of of many examples of industries your preferrred clients may work in.
• Dimension: Have a look at what number of staff your preferrred goal buyer has. Have they got a single brick-and-mortar workplace or a number of places worldwide?
• Ache factors: Contemplate the issues your preferrred buyer struggles with. What points do your choices tackle?
• Job perform: Each firm has an individual chargeable for buy selections. What’s your decision-maker buyer’s job title (vendor supervisor, VP)?

However wait — what when you’re a B2C firm and your ICP isn’t one other enterprise, however a person? You continue to have to map out a profile, but it surely’s for an individual, not a enterprise. 

What’s a purchaser persona?

Purchaser personas (additionally referred to as advertising and marketing personas) are fictional representations of your preferrred clients as actual individuals. They signify specifics about your goal consumers, like the place they stay, what issues they face, their private targets and beliefs, schooling, and revenue.

You employ purchaser personas to create focused advertising and marketing content material for the complete gross sales funnel and create a roadmap to achieve them for optimum ROI. 

Typically, firms have a number of purchaser personas as a result of viewers demographics are various. With just one, you’d restrict your attain. However have too many, say, greater than 5? And also you danger sending blended messaging making an attempt to catch everybody and interesting to nobody.

You construct purchaser personas primarily based on particular knowledge collected out of your current clients. Or, when you’re a brand new model, you’ll have a look at your rivals’ clients for inspiration.

Supreme buyer profile vs. purchaser persona: what’s the distinction?

ICPs sometimes consult with profiles of firms because the audience of a B2B model. 

However, purchaser personas are constructed round actual clients. 

Naturally, ICP attributes will converse extra to the viewers as an organization, together with particulars like income, funds, business, and dimension. Purchaser personas, nevertheless, converse extra to the person, with particulars like age, gender, job title, and extra. 

Briefly: ICPs are for B2Bs and purchaser personas are for B2Cs. 

The best way to create your preferrred buyer profile & purchaser personas: 8 steps

Whereas ICPs converse to B2B’s enterprise shoppers and purchaser personas to B2C’s particular person clients, the processes to create every are fairly related. 

Simply tailor these steps to your model’s enterprise mannequin, and also you’re properly in your strategy to ICPs and personas that’ll aid you create killer advertising and marketing supplies:

1. Start with your customers
2. Examine purchase history
3. Monitor your website audience
4. Send out some surveys
5. Leverage the right tech
6. Map out your ICPs or buyer personas
7. Create multiple ICPs or buyer personas
8. Review ICPs and personas regularly

First order of enterprise? Get to know your audience.

1. Begin together with your clients

Who’re your present clients? How do they work together together with your model, and what are you able to collect from their historical past? Leija says your buyer base is a useful place to begin: 

“There’s a massive profit to having a robust current buyer base concerning knowledge and creating buyer profiles,” explains Leija. “It’s vital to have a look at knowledge from totally different locations and acknowledge any traits in buyer conduct or actions.”

He recommends the next sources for buyer knowledge assortment: 

• Interviews: Provide an incentive to get one-on-one interviews with clients to study extra about their wants.
• Buy and return historical past: Don’t simply concentrate on what they purchase, but in addition how a lot they spend, how ceaselessly they purchase from you, how lengthy they’ve been a buyer, and their whole worth to your enterprise (customer lifetime value). 
• Gross sales & assist groups: Overview chat logs and name historical past out of your customer support workforce for frontline insights. 
• Suggestions requests: Solicit suggestions by way of emails, pop-ups, and types for qualitative insights. 

Leija additionally places profound emphasis in your clients’ buy histories as a trove of helpful knowledge.  

2. Look at buy historical past

If you wish to promote to your clients, you first want to know how they purchase. 

Leija says to particularly have a look at previous buying conduct like:

• What they’ve purchased
• How typically they store
• Sorts of choices they like

He highlights these because the linchpin to understanding your clients’ wants and motivations:

“Buy historical past unveils insights into your clients’ preferences, habits, and pursuits,” explains Leija. “This information permits us to craft tailor-made advertising and marketing methods, advocate related merchandise, and supply personalised buyer experiences that resonate with them, finally fostering stronger buyer relationships and driving repeat enterprise.”

Simply ask our finance consumer, New Century Financial. With a bit market analysis, we personalised the corporate’s touchdown pages and tweaked viewers focusing on segments to higher meet their ICPs. The outcomes? A 5X enhance in lead quantity and 6X enhance in conversion fee. 

Now, what if you wish to goal a broader viewers? In any case, your objective is to collect extra clients, and also you may not have their knowledge inside your current buyer base. 

3. Monitor your web site viewers

You may need individuals who peep your web site, however have but to make a purchase order. Certain, they may have sized up rivals, however they’re definitely not out of your attain. Examine your total viewers to ultimately embody them in your buyer base: 

• Net conduct monitoring: Analyze how your current and potential clients (internet viewers) work together together with your web site, the place they bounce to, and the place they linger. 
• Social media: Monitor feedback, likes, and shares out of your viewers on social media to study extra about their ache factors and the way they impart.

Analytics supply essential insights, however typically you want direct suggestions for the total image. 

4. Ship out some surveys

Ask, and also you shall obtain — on this case, particulars about your viewers’s demographic info and preferences. You possibly can plug a buyer survey onto nearly your entire channels, together with: 

• E mail: Ship one out after your clients make a purchase order, or maybe embody a ten% low cost for e-newsletter surveys. 
• Pop-up: You may add a survey pop-up to your web site, however be sure to supply an incentive to mitigate the annoyance that comes with pop-ups!
• Touchdown web page: Lead types are preferrred to collect info in your viewers as a result of the individuals who find yourself listed here are normally bottom-funnel prospects able to convert.

As for what your survey ought to embody, contemplate these questions: 

• What’s your age vary?
• What are your major job duties?
• What’s your highest stage of schooling?
• What number of staff does your organization have?
• What publications and social media platforms do you most frequently learn and use?

5. Leverage the appropriate tech

Surveys, buy historical past, and buyer name logs take some time to sift by way of. Happily, there’s tech to assist streamline the method.

Leija recommends the next forms of software program for seamless viewers knowledge assortment: 

• CRM techniques: Buyer relationship administration software program like Salesforce and HubSpot may have already got simply exportable knowledge in your current clients. 
• Advertising automation: Gone are the times of manually plugging buyer particulars into Mailchimp for automated e-mail campaigns. 
• Net analytics: Instruments like Kissmetrics and Google Analytics share particulars like the situation and demographic of your web site guests (aka, potential clients). 
• Heatmap instruments: Put your self in your viewers’s footwear with heatmap instruments like Hotjar, which present session recordings of holiday makers’ web site exercise, together with the place they click on, navigate, or bounce.
  

6. Map out your ICPs or purchaser personas

Knowledge assortment? Test. Now, it’s time to show these insights into ICPs and personas to color an image of your preferrred clients. 

For B2B manufacturers creating ICPs, Leija recommends mapping out these particulars firstly: 

• Firm dimension and business
• Job title of one that makes buying selections
• Resolution-making course of
• Gross sales cycle size
• Particular wants for tech or software program
• Legality (authorized issues or rules on this business)

For B2C companies creating purchaser personas (together with ecommerce), he recommends writing down these attributes: 

• Job perform
• Ache level
• Demographics
• Buy historical past
• On-line habits

Try our ICP and persona templates towards the tip of this text for fast reference. 

From there, you should utilize a instrument like Hubspot’s Make My Persona to convey your persona, figuratively, to life. You may give them a reputation, face, job title, private particulars, and extra. Our recommendation? The extra particular you will get, the higher. 

7. Create a number of ICPs and personas

Unsurprisingly, personas aren’t one-size-fits-all. Most manufacturers don’t depend on a single ICP with one particular job and set of demographics. Moderately, they’ve varied personas they aim that cowl totally different areas, industries, or different attributes. 

By creating a number of personas, you don’t pigeonhole your focusing on too narrowly or overlook potential buyer segments which can be properly value your time.

It will also be useful to create a couple of “unfavourable purchaser personas.” 

These are the personas that will appear like these you wish to goal, however they’re really not the appropriate match for one purpose or one other. Possibly they work at too massive of an organization, have too small of a funds, or simply aren’t on the proper stage of their profession. 

When you’ve modeled your clients, share these personas together with your workforce and talk about tips on how to implement them in your advertising and marketing processes shifting ahead. 

8. Overview ICPs and personas often

As your enterprise evolves, so too may your personas. That’s why it’s sensible to revisit your ICP often. You are able to do this quarterly, semi-annually, yearly, or as ceaselessly because it is sensible for you and your workforce. 

When revisiting, have a look at your present preferrred consumer persona and ask questions like:

• Are these nonetheless the job titles we wish to goal?
• Is that this nonetheless the enterprise dimension we wish to go after?
• Are these nonetheless the platforms our viewers is utilizing?
• Have our ICP’s enterprise targets modified?
• Does our ICP line up with nearly all of our shoppers? If not, how can we get higher aligned?

When your personas are fleshed out, you may create content material that higher pinpoints their issues, aligns with widespread targets, and takes every purchaser stage into consideration. 

Simply bear in mind to make changes knowledgeable by new viewers traits and efficiency. 

Our distinctive efficiency evaluation system, ConversionIQ, tracks income attribution from each piece of content material and key phrase to each viewers primarily based on demographics, location, and extra. 

The best way to use ICPs & purchaser personas in your advertising and marketing technique: step-by-step

Able to make these ICPs and purchaser personas work for that ROI? Let’s break down tips on how to use them in your technique.

1. Take a look at out new viewers focusing on for PPC campaigns

PPC advertisements not changing? Now that you’ve got up to date ICPs or purchaser personas, you may put them to the take a look at. Google Advertisements enables you to create custom audience segments primarily based on:

• Pursuits
• Net behaviors
• Related audiences

Common viewers segments permit focusing on primarily based on life occasions, affinities, buy intent, demographics, and CRM knowledge. 

Replace all these focusing on parameters with the data in your ICPs and personas. Simply bear in mind to A/B take a look at totally different focusing on modifications to make sure that it’s efficient in reaching your preferrred buyer. 

Past advertisements? 

2. Tailor content material channels and codecs

Did you discover your LinkedIn strategy falling brief final 12 months? A fast look at your purchaser persona, and also you discover a development of consumers spending extra time on Instagram. There’s a channel swap you can also make to higher goal them. Leija additionally recommends adjusting your codecs: 

“Some personas may want long-form articles, whereas others could want video tutorials or interactive infographics,” says Leija.

So in case your B2B viewers has a web site historical past of watching SaaS tutorials on YouTube? Maybe you may leverage stay interviews and have walkthroughs, then share them on the channel the place your ICP most frequents. 

3. Mirror ache factors in your content material

Your ICPs and goal personas doc clear ache factors that your enterprise can resolve. Leija recommends that manufacturers replicate that authority with content material that identifies key ache factors: 

“Present options, ideas, and assets that exhibit how your services or products can alleviate their particular ache factors and enhance their lives or companies,” says Leija. 

ICPs and personas ought to inform all your content material, together with: 

• Gross sales pitches out of your gross sales workforce
• Touchdown pages and advert copy
• Weblog articles
• Video tutorials
• Social media content material
• Whitepapers and ebooks

4. Create segmented content material

Bear in mind how we talked about it’s potential to have multiple purchaser persona or ICP? 

For instance, Quickbooks has over 7 million shoppers throughout totally different enterprise sizes, sorts, and verticals. They may have an ICP for startups below 5 staff, in addition to one for big firms with over 5,000 staff. 

Equally, you want to contemplate your profiles by way of your buyer journey. Some shoppers may even have the identical ICP however be in numerous phases, and Leija says it’s best to create content material accordingly. 

“Craft messaging, imagery, and provides that align with their distinctive demographics, behaviors, and preferences,” he explains. 

Supreme buyer profile template

Price range

Firm dimension

Firm age

Geography

Tech wants

Worker quantity

Legality

Purchaser persona template

Age

Gender

Communication strategies & social channelgs

Job title

Ache factors

Training

Business

Objectives

The takeaway

Supreme buyer profiles (ICPs) assist inform advertising and marketing efforts for B2B audiences, whereas purchaser personas do the identical for B2C audiences. They’re priceless items of any advertising and marketing technique as they aid you perceive your viewers sufficient to efficiently promote your merchandise to them. 

However combing by way of tech databases, surveys, and buy historical past can really feel overwhelming whenever you already juggle a packed schedule. Pair that with a content material overhaul to attraction to your new profiles? Your activity listing simply bought a complete lot longer.

No have to panic; HawkSEM has your again.

Our workforce is stacked with a roster of PPC and search engine marketing strategists who stay and breathe digital advertising and marketing for various industries. We’ll create a profile of your preferrred buyer or purchaser persona and deal with all of the viewers analysis, focusing on, and content material creation, so you may lastly log out at 5 p.m. 

As soon as we’re by way of? You’ll reap a gentle stream of high quality leads and convert them on the common — simply take that first step and we’ll deal with the remainder.

This text has been up to date and was initially printed in June 2020.