Instead of theorizing about their Ideal Customer Profile, Assembled's first GTM hire created a list of all existing customers. By looking for patterns and creating groups based on traits like tech stack (Zendesk), agent count (20-200), and channel complexity, a data-driven, highly specific ICP emerged organically.
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Don't just analyze your entire email list's performance. Create a separate set of metrics for "verified subscribers"—those who fit your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This allows you to differentiate what resonates with your target buyers versus the broader audience, leading to more effective content strategy.
Don't unleash a generic AI agent on your entire database. To get high response rates, segment contacts into specific sub-personas based on role, behavior, or status (e.g., churn risk). Then, train dedicated sub-agents or campaigns for each persona, allowing for true personalization at scale in batches of around 1,000 contacts.
Don't mistake hyper-personalization for effectiveness. Running hundreds of tiny, account-specific campaigns is inefficient and hard to measure. A more successful approach is to group accounts by industry or shared pain points and run fewer, larger campaigns for better data and stronger engagement.
The conversation around Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) has evolved beyond simple refinement. With newly accessible data, companies are fundamentally re-evaluating their Total Addressable Market (TAM), challenging long-held assumptions about who their potential customers are and how big the opportunity is.
Go beyond simple prompts. Gather raw data—comments from your social media, competitor book reviews, and podcast feedback—and feed it all into ChatGPT. Then, ask it to synthesize this data into a detailed avatar guide, identify market gaps, and suggest opportunities for your offer.
Instead of manually sifting through overwhelming survey responses, input the raw data into an AI model. You can prompt it to identify distinct customer segments and generate detailed avatars—complete with pain points and desires—for each of your specific offers.
Executive teams often create an ICP based on a 'wishlist' of big logos. The most accurate ICP is actually found by analyzing your first-party CRM data. Examining patterns across both close-won and close-lost deals reveals surprising truths about which customer segments are actually the best fit for your solution.
Instead of relying on static persona decks, marketers can feed raw data like sales call transcripts and support tickets into AI tools to generate live, interactive customer profiles. These apps can be instantly updated with new information, ensuring the entire organization is aligned on a current view of the customer.
Ditch the aspirational "Ideal Client Profile," which represents a rare, perfect-world scenario. Instead, build a "Target Client Profile" that defines which customers will perceive the most meaningful value from your offering. This provides a realistic, operational benchmark for qualifying leads.
At the $300k revenue stage with one salesperson, defining a precise Ideal Customer Profile isn't just for targeting. It's a survival mechanism to focus limited resources, prevent churn, and ensure every sales effort contributes to scalable growth, rather than creating future service burdens that consume your only salesperson.
