How to describe ICP + examples

Identifying your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a crucial step in refining your marketing and sales strategies. Whether you're in the early stages of defining your market or refining your strategies based on in-depth data analysis, understanding your ICP is foundational.

Initially, consider your ICP description as a working hypothesis, especially if you have not yet reached product-market fit. At this stage, your assumptions are based on initial research, market insights, and strategic goals. As you gather more sales data and receive feedback from the market, be ready to adjust and refine this profile to better align with reality. Continuously iterating on your ICP is essential to ensure it remains relevant and effective.

Your ICP should emphasize clear differentiators that set your ideal customers apart from non-target groups. It's not about listing all possible attributes, but rather identifying the specific characteristics that distinctly define who your best customers are. Removing unnecessary details prevents dilution of your targeting efforts and ensures that your marketing message resonates strongly with the right people.

Aim for high specificity in your ICP description. The more unique statements you include that accurately distinguish your target customers, the more precise your targeting will be. This involves honing in on particular demographics, buying behaviors, industry positions, and psychographic traits that are unique to your best prospects. A highly specific ICP enables more focused marketing efforts, better allocation of resources, and improved conversion rates.

While specificity is important, be cautious of over-complicating your ICP with excessive conditions. Each additional criterion can unnecessarily narrow your target audience, potentially excluding viable prospects who could benefit from your product or service. Ensure that each condition reflects a crucial element of differentiation rather than an arbitrary restriction.

Set clear criteria such as company size and location. For instance, target companies with 100 to 500 employees headquartered in a specific region like California. These details help distinguish your ideal clients by aligning with your market strategy.

Define business model attributes relevant to your ICP. This includes focusing on businesses that require a specific lifetime value or annual contract value and establishing pricing thresholds to exclude those that do not meet your criteria.

Identify the specific technologies or platforms that are used by your ICP, such as data lakes or advanced CRM systems. This helps in refining your target audience based on technological sophistication and compatibility.

Specify details about decision-makers using precise job titles or more generalized roles based on seniority, function, and keywords within job descriptions. This ensures your marketing efforts are aimed at individuals with purchasing influence.

Highlight necessary professional backgrounds or expertise. For example, targeting individuals with expertise in machine learning or those with entrepreneurship experience who have founded or co-founded companies before.

Incorporate specific financial details, such as targeting companies that have secured a certain level of funding or have annual revenues within a specified range, such as twenty million to fifty million dollars.

Describe the desired market focus, such as companies expanding their footprint in international markets or targeting specific language-speaking demographics.

Define the structure of teams within the company, such as a marketing department with a minimum of five members or a certain percentage of total headcount. This ensures you're reaching businesses with the capacity to engage effectively with your services.

Specify any regulatory or compliance needs, like SOC 2 or industry-specific standards, to focus on companies needing assistance in these areas, enhancing your offering's appeal.

Exclude subsegments that do not align with your strategic goals. For example, you might include aerospace companies but exclude those specifically in helicopter manufacturing to focus only on suitable segments.

With the Unstuck Engine, you can describe your Ideal Customer Profile in plain English, making the process of defining and refining your target criteria straightforward and intuitive. This tool allows you to communicate your ICP effectively, using a language that is both accessible and precise.

Using Logical Operators:

- Use "AND" to combine multiple conditions that must all be true for a customer to fit your ICP. For example, "Companies in the technology sector AND with annual revenues between $20 million and $50 million AND headquartered in California."

- Use "OR" to offer alternative conditions, where meeting any one of them is sufficient. For instance, "Companies using Snowflake OR Redshift for data management."

- Use "AND NOT" to exclude certain characteristics or subsegments that do not align with your strategic goals. For example, "Aerospace industries AND NOT involved in helicopter manufacturing."

Additional Operators:

- Use expressions like "greater than," "less than," "at least," or "no more than" for numerical criteria. For example, "Companies with more than 500 employees" or "Revenue less than $10 million."

- Use "includes" or "excludes" for the presence or absence of features or sectors. For instance, "Includes those using AI for data analytics" or "Excludes companies without a dedicated innovation team."

- Use "within" or "outside" to denote specific geographic, industry, or financial boundaries. For example, "Headquartered within the European Union" means the company's registered office is in an EU country. For "Outside heavily regulated industries," you might specifically exclude industries like pharmaceuticals and finance by listing them, such as "Excludes companies in pharmaceuticals OR finance sectors."

- Use "requires" to indicate essential criteria and "lacks" to highlight something the ICP does not possess. For example, "Requires existing AWS infrastructure" or "Lacks a formal HR department."

1. Partners level and up in the leading consulting firms (including, but not limited to Deloitte, EY, KPMG,PWC, Bain, McKinsey) and investment banks on Wall Street who are Canadian Origin

2. Managed Service Providers in the Cybersecurity space that have recently closed a Series A funding round or have annual revenues between $1M and $5M. These companies should have a business development team that makes up at least 10% percent of total headcount, maintain a global-facing English website, and use Microsoft Defender or Azure Security Center.

3. Leaders (seniority from director to CXO) who responsible for activation (function: customer service or product or sales) at the PLG B2B SaaS companies (available free trial or free plan) with at least one plan that cost more than $500/mo or enterprise plan.

4. B2B SaaS: Sell software as a services to the businesses, no service businesses, agencies. Sales Team: more then 3 positions with respective titles LTV>10K at least one of the following: demo, meeting, enterprise, talk to sales, at least one of the pricing tiers without price, no pricing page, at least one price is higher than $400 per month, $4000 per year

5. Corporations with yearly revenues between $250M and $1B, operating out of Asia or South America, engaged in competitive fields like logistics or telecommunications, excluding organizations in high-margin areas such as defence contractors with at least 10 people in HR team.

6. Engineers in robotics and automation with over 8 years of experience in IoT who have previously run a startup or served as co-founders.

7. Certified clinicians with master's degrees, actively engaging in direct care services. This excludes wellness coaches and those solely offering remote services without certification.

8.Companies with a monthly expenditure of at least $25,000 on Google Cloud, with leaders responsible for overseeing IT budgets.

9. Early-stage biotech firms needing HIPAA compliance but are not yet compliant, possessing active websites with at least 5 distinct sections, a CTO lacking cybersecurity experience, and founders who graduated more than 7 years ago.