How to Create an Ideal Customer Profile (+ Template)

Your supreme buyer profile (ICP) embodies a B2B model’s goal buyer with components like their location, trade, and finances. Purchaser personas are fictional fashions portraying supreme prospects (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 wrestle with longer gross sales cycles and choosy firms as their viewers. However, B2C manufacturers want ample time to transform extra considerable but lower-value prospects and create relationships with people as their viewers.

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

We chatted with Joe Leija, a Senior search engine optimisation 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 era, and reap extra ROI. 

What is a perfect buyer profile?

Your supreme buyer profile (ICP) is the group of individuals you most need to entice to your services or products. It’s a typical time period in B2B marketing that often refers to an organization profile as your target market. 

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. 

Excellent 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 a web based SaaS product, location may matter. If not, the place are most of your present purchasers positioned? How about your rivals’ purchasers?
• Annual income and finances: Work out how a lot income your supreme buyer brings in every year. How a lot can they realistically allocate towards your model’s service?
• Trade:  Finance, training, and transportation are a number of of many examples of industries your supreme prospects may work in.
• Dimension: Have a look at what number of workers your supreme goal buyer has. Have they got a single brick-and-mortar workplace or a number of places worldwide?
• Ache factors: Contemplate the issues your supreme buyer struggles with. What points do your choices handle?
• Job operate: Each firm has an individual answerable for buy selections. What’s your decision-maker buyer’s job title (vendor supervisor, VP)?

However wait — what for those who’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 known as advertising and marketing personas) are fictional representations of your supreme prospects as actual individuals. They symbolize specifics about your goal consumers, like the place they dwell, what issues they face, their private targets and beliefs, training, and earnings.

You employ purchaser personas to create focused advertising and marketing content material for your entire gross sales funnel and create a roadmap to succeed in them for optimum ROI. 

Usually, firms have a number of purchaser personas as a result of viewers demographics are numerous. With just one, you’d restrict your attain. However have too many, say, greater than 5? And also you threat sending combined messaging attempting to catch everybody and interesting to nobody.

You construct purchaser personas based mostly on particular knowledge collected out of your present prospects. Or, for those who’re a brand new model, you’ll have a look at your rivals’ prospects for inspiration.

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

ICPs sometimes seek advice from profiles of firms because the target market of a B2B model. 

However, purchaser personas are constructed round actual prospects. 

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

In brief: ICPs are for B2Bs and purchaser personas are for B2Cs. 

Methods to create your supreme buyer profile & purchaser personas: 8 steps

Whereas ICPs converse to B2B’s enterprise purchasers and purchaser personas to B2C’s particular person prospects, the processes to create every are fairly comparable. 

Simply tailor these steps to your model’s enterprise mannequin, and also you’re properly in your technique to ICPs and personas that’ll assist 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 target market.

1. Begin along with your prospects

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

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

He recommends the next sources for buyer knowledge assortment: 

• Interviews: Provide an incentive to get one-on-one interviews with prospects to study extra about their wants.
• Buy and return historical past: Don’t simply concentrate on what they purchase, but additionally how a lot they spend, how ceaselessly they purchase from you, how lengthy they’ve been a buyer, and their complete worth to your online business (customer lifetime value). 
• Gross sales & help groups: Assessment chat logs and name historical past out of your customer support workforce for frontline insights. 
• Suggestions requests: Solicit suggestions via emails, pop-ups, and varieties for qualitative insights. 

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

2. Look at buy historical past

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

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

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

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

“Buy historical past unveils insights into your prospects’ 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, in the end fostering stronger buyer relationships and driving repeat enterprise.”

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

Now, what if you wish to goal a broader viewers? In spite of everything, your objective is to collect extra prospects, and also you won’t have their knowledge inside your present 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 actually not out of your attain. Examine your general viewers to finally embrace them in your buyer base: 

• Internet habits monitoring: Analyze how your present and potential prospects (net viewers) work together along 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 complete 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 all your channels, together with: 

• E-mail: Ship one out after your prospects make a purchase order, or maybe embrace 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 varieties are supreme to collect info in your viewers as a result of the individuals who find yourself listed below are often bottom-funnel prospects able to convert.

As for what your survey ought to embrace, take into account these questions: 

• What’s your age vary?
• What are your major job duties?
• What’s your highest stage of training?
• What number of workers 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 via. Luckily, there’s tech to assist streamline the method.

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

• CRM programs: Buyer relationship administration software program like Salesforce and HubSpot may have already got simply exportable knowledge in your present prospects. 
• Advertising automation: Gone are the times of manually plugging buyer particulars into Mailchimp for automated e-mail campaigns. 
• Internet analytics: Instruments like Kissmetrics and Google Analytics share particulars like the placement and demographic of your web site guests (aka, potential prospects). 
• 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 supreme prospects. 

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

• Firm dimension and trade
• 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 laws on this trade)

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

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

Take a look at 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 can provide 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 numerous personas they aim that cowl totally different areas, industries, or different attributes. 

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

It will also be useful to create a number of “adverse purchaser personas.” 

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

When you’ve modeled your prospects, share these personas along with your workforce and focus on learn how to implement them in your advertising and marketing processes transferring ahead. 

8. Assessment ICPs and personas commonly

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

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

• Are these nonetheless the job titles we need to goal?
• Is that this nonetheless the enterprise dimension we need 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 the vast majority of our purchasers? If not, how can we get higher aligned?

When your personas are fleshed out, you’ll be able to create content material that higher pinpoints their issues, aligns with frequent 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 based mostly on demographics, location, and extra. 

Methods 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 learn how to use them in your technique.

1. Check out new viewers concentrating on for PPC campaigns

PPC advertisements not changing? Now that you’ve up to date ICPs or purchaser personas, you’ll be able to put them to the take a look at. Google Adverts permits you to create custom audience segments based mostly on:

• Pursuits
• Internet behaviors
• Comparable audiences

Common viewers segments enable concentrating on based mostly on life occasions, affinities, buy intent, demographics, and CRM knowledge. 

Replace all these concentrating on parameters with the data in your ICPs and personas. Simply bear in mind to A/B take a look at totally different concentrating on modifications to make certain that it’s efficient in reaching your supreme 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 change you may make to raised 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’ll be able to leverage dwell interviews and have walkthroughs, then share them on the channel the place your ICP most frequents. 

3. Replicate ache factors in your content material

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

“Present options, suggestions, and sources that reveal 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

Keep in mind how we talked about it’s attainable to have a couple of purchaser persona or ICP? 

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

Equally, it is advisable take into account your profiles by way of your buyer journey. Some purchasers may even have the identical ICP however be in numerous phases, and Leija says you need to create content material accordingly. 

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

Excellent buyer profile template

Funds

Firm dimension

Firm age

Geography

Tech wants

Worker quantity

Legality

Purchaser persona template

Age

Gender

Communication strategies & social channelgs

Job title

Ache factors

Training

Trade

Targets

The takeaway

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

However combing via tech databases, surveys, and buy historical past can really feel overwhelming once you already juggle a packed schedule. Pair that with a content material overhaul to attraction to your new profiles? Your process record simply acquired an entire lot longer.

No have to panic; HawkSEM has your again.

Our workforce is stacked with a roster of PPC and search engine optimisation strategists who dwell and breathe digital advertising and marketing for numerous industries. We’ll create a profile of your supreme buyer or purchaser persona and deal with all of the viewers analysis, concentrating on, and content material creation, so you’ll be able to lastly log out at 5 p.m. 

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

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