Creating Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Episode 5 . 38:37

Join Andrew on WeMarketers Podcast as he discusses the importance of defining your ideal customer profile (ICP) with Ora Gittsovich, CEO of ClickRoads. With over 13 years of experience in B2B marketing, Ora shares insights on how businesses can build relationships, gather critical metrics, and identify their target audience.

Learn the difference between ICP and customer persona, strategies for omni-channel marketing, and practical examples of successful ICP implementation. Perfect for startups and established companies looking to break through growth barriers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWYKb7B732k

____________

Connect with Ora Gittsovich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmora-gittsovich/

Connect with Andrew Demianenko: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-demian

Transcription

[00:00:53] Andrew: Hello and welcome to WeMarketers Podcast. I’m Andrew, and my guest today is Ora Gittsovich, CEO of Click Roads, a fractional CMO, and an ABM expert with over 13 years of experience in marketing. Ora specializes in B2B marketing, omnichannel strategies, and go-to-market plans, helping businesses break through growth barriers.

[00:01:18] Andrew: Today, we are diving into a very important topic: defining your ideal customer profile. Ora, welcome.

[00:01:24] Ora: Hey, thank you so much.

[00:01:26] Ora: I will be glad to share all of this knowledge because, during the 13 years, I guess I have a lot of stuff to share.

[00:01:34] Andrew: Let’s start with the basics. There is a lot of confusion around this topic. Can you explain what an ideal customer profile is and how it is different from a customer persona?

[00:01:45] Ora: In general, ICP is a corporate portfolio. When we talk about ICP, all descriptions come from companies: points, sizes, revenues, industries, etc. What about customer persona? It’s also known as a buyer persona. Of course, it’s about the people behind the scenes in the companies you want to work with.

[00:02:12] Ora: For example, ICP could be an industry—like finance. In finance, we have sub-industries: blockchain, currency, insurance, etc. In the sub-industries, we have the total addressable market.

[00:02:27] Ora: Okay, numbers of companies you want or plan to work with as a hypothesis to test, etc. In this case, we are collecting information about their revenue, the number of employees. For the start, it’s enough, but after, when you want to dive deeper, you should know their structures—company structure and who’s responsible for the decision-making process.

[00:02:53] Ora: It’s called buying scenarios they have and a buying committee. And after, you should divide it into buyer personas connected with buying roles in these buying committees. For example, decision-makers, influencers, evaluators. Under these buying roles, we have different titles: CEO, CFO, COO, VP of something—marketing or sales.

[00:03:22] Andrew: You’ve worked with a lot of companies, helping them create ICPs. How does this process vary depending on the industry? Are there any specifics?

[00:03:32] Ora: If we talk about ICP in general, it’s all about building relationships with your brand, your product, your service, and your planning target account.

[00:03:45] Ora: It’s called the same as a target audience; it’s called target accounts. Imagine that you are not a startup, you’re a developing business. You have initial sales traction, for example, you’re at the developing stage, and you have some numbers. I suggest collecting them. You need to understand which customers bring you greater results.

[00:04:13] Ora: LTV, LTAP—these are called vital metrics you need to collect and analyze, like churn rate and retention rate. So, how long these customers work with you, why they work with you. Before you build an ICP, you should understand what’s happening and what’s your current situation in the company. Then, you can make a similar company to collect and build ICPs based on the same industry.

[00:04:44] Ora: For example, you recognize that you’ll have better results and better numbers in industries like finance or healthcare. You can compare companies you work with, understand why you work with them, why they work with you, and with your product. After that, you can collect similar companies.

[00:05:06] Ora: The second point after collecting all these metrics: it’s very important to talk with your customers. As part of a CusDev interview service. You need to understand why they choose you. This helps you understand who is responsible for the decision-making process.

[00:05:27] Ora: What value propositions were the best for you? And of course, what competitive influence you have. Sometimes your ICP can include their clients as well. When you understand what’s happening in the market, what’s happening inside your company, and what you want to do next, you can combine all this information and start building ICP.

[00:05:52] Ora: Of course, once you collect this information as a background for yourself, you need to dive deeper into the company. For example, you have the finance industry, as we mentioned earlier. In finance, you have about 300 companies. If you have more than one client, you collect all these insights and understand what’s happening.

[00:06:23] Ora: Because it’s complex to build an ICP based on one client. You need to understand how companies in this finance industry make their decisions, what their buying cycle is because sometimes companies make solutions based on their own sales cycle.

[00:06:54] Ora: But that’s not true because they are different, very different.

[00:06:58] Andrew: From your experience, how can this process be organized within companies? Do in-person teams have the capability, for example, if a marketer hasn’t done this before?

[00:07:10] Ora: Of course, you can do it yourself. Every time I face companies, they don’t collect any metrics at all. They don’t know their businesses. And I think the main point is to do it yourself, to know what’s happening in your business from the inside.

[00:07:26] Ora: After you understand what’s happening, when you collect LTV, as I mentioned before, when you understand your churn rate, retention rate, how many clients you have, if you’re SaaS, how many users you have per month or per year. Then, you try to find the tendency of how it’s developing, and you can build a hypothesis of what your next steps could be. When you build this hypothesis, only you know how it would be better for your business.

[00:08:04] Ora: Also, you can understand what’s happening with your competitors. Plus, you need to understand what’s happening in the market. You do this analysis, this research, and collect all the information about it. After collecting key metrics and doing CusDev interviews, you need to analyze the total addressable market according to the data you’ve collected. Total addressable market refers to how many companies exist in this segment, in this industry, how they operate, how they make their decisions.

[00:08:48] Ora: You then build hypotheses around their buying scenarios—how many people are involved in the decision-making process, who they are—and create value propositions based on their challenges and pain points. Or you can adjust your existing value propositions if needed.

[00:09:13] Ora: Once you have this information, you create customer portraits according to these buying roles involved in the process. For example, titles, demographic, and social information. This allows you to recognize the touchpoints you need to establish to connect with them. After that comes the strategy development phase.

[00:09:38] Ora: This is, of course, the marketing strategy—how to build this communication flow with them.

[00:09:44] Andrew: So, we have different cycles of company growth. At which stage should companies develop ICPs, and when is it really crucial?

[00:09:56] Ora: Honestly, as early as possible. When you’re in the early stage, it’s important to build these hypotheses and validate them.

[00:10:07] Ora: Sometimes companies forget about this stage, but when we’re talking about initial sales traction, the first steps you make in your pipeline, it’s a good sign to build your ICP and test it. If you have more than one client, you should understand what’s happening in the business and why they are with you.

[00:10:30] Andrew: At the same time, there are a lot of companies that start their business without ICPs at all, right?

[00:10:37] Ora: Of course, because they think, “Okay, our target clients are global.” But that’s not true. It’s the main mistake I see working with startups, and every time they face the problem that you can’t be a global player when you’re so small.

[00:10:54] Ora: Please move step by step, and then you can recognize your ideal customers and their profiles.

[00:11:01] Andrew: Yeah, it’s all about testing.

[00:11:02] Andrew: I noticed that laser focus really helps here. From our experience at Matchr, we initially targeted a wide range of customers.

[00:11:16] Andrew: We organized events in New York, Cape Town, and Europe. We even planned something in the Middle East. But we realized this didn’t work, and with limited resources, we shifted our attention to the Netherlands and a narrow segment of the U.S. audience. That’s when it started to pay off.

[00:11:39] Ora: At first, companies don’t want to be niche; they want to make money fast. But the right time to build your ICP is when you start gaining your first revenue. Analyze it, because in my experience, we help companies create new opportunities. Sometimes, after one or three years of existence, they face a plateau, and the question is: What can we do next?

[00:12:16] Ora: It’s all about marketing attribution. What channels work better in terms of ROI or ROMI? If you start getting revenue, then you can identify trends and think about scaling. ICP building helps you multiply your revenue.

[00:12:45] Ora: Of course, it’s not immediate, but it happens over time. ICP is a flexible term. I suggest reviewing it annually. You need to check it and understand what’s happening, especially considering competition. You might feel their influence because you try to work with them, but you can’t close your deals. Why? Maybe time to market isn’t in your favor. Maybe your product features aren’t good enough for them. Maybe it’s not your audience. Companies often avoid these tough questions.

[00:13:36] Ora: As a founder or CEO, you need to balance between all these factors.

[00:13:48] Andrew: In your experience, how specific should an ICP be? And should companies have multiple ICPs for different market segments?

[00:13:57] Ora: I suggest having maybe two or three segments to start with. You can move step by step, understand what’s happening, and follow your customers’ journey from the first touchpoint to the last—when they sign the contract. But here’s the important thing: sometimes businesses forget that their customer journey doesn’t end with the signing of a contract. They forget about customer satisfaction, net promoter score, and so on.

[00:14:57] Ora: It can be more than two or three segments—why not?

[00:15:02] Andrew: That’s a great point, that the customer journey doesn’t end after signing the contract. For example, in our company, we’re a recruitment business, and we need renewals of contracts. It’s about customer success and how satisfied they are with our work.

[00:15:19] Ora: Of course, you need to create something to retain those customers. Nowadays, it’s not just about closing deals.

[00:15:33] Ora: It’s about building relationships, and we help to do that. Sometimes I feel like a matchmaker—building relationships between two businesses. One is in the development stage of a product, and the other is in the consumption stage. You’re always balancing between them to foster long-term relationships.

[00:16:03] Andrew: Let’s zoom in on practice. Are there any tools or AI technologies that help create ICP?

[00:16:12] Ora: If you’re seeing the marketing funnel and you’ve built these touchpoints, when you implement your strategy, of course, you use tools during the customer journey. But sometimes the customer journey turns into a highway to hell without these tools.

[00:16:30] Ora: You need to understand how to optimize it. First, I suggest using tools that provide buyer intent and signals—information about your customers, how to add value, what pain points they have. For example, 6sense or ZoomInfo.

[00:16:59] Ora: These tools help you collect information about website visitors and recognize trends, helping you find the best segments to start testing ICPs. Then, of course, you need landing pages for testing. We use Webflow.

[00:17:27] Ora: But it’s not all about AI-generated tools. It’s a combination. Sometimes ChatGPT works well for building audiences or lookalike audiences. It helps a lot with prompts to develop that.

[00:17:52] Andrew: Could you share some real-life examples of how developing ICPs helped companies boost their efficiency?

[00:18:03] Ora: I’ll share an example from the healthcare industry. We worked with a client who ran a virtual hospital and wanted to target enterprise-level pharma companies.

[00:18:19] Ora: It was challenging, but we started by understanding their buying scenarios and buying committees—what people were involved, at what stage. Then, we built a marketing strategy based on account-based marketing and started building small funnels, targeting different buying roles and stages.

[00:18:47] Ora: For example, for initiators, we developed one type of communication, and for evaluators and decision-makers, another. We started receiving responses from target accounts in the first month after launching the strategy. It wasn’t a big success, but it was a kind of success when you understand your audience and explain why you should work together.

[00:19:34] Ora: I also have an anti-example. Some companies try to build ICPs from exhausted markets or from one customer who came to them by accident.

[00:19:45] Ora: In one case, we faced a problem with a company’s buying cycle—it was over a year and a half. It’s tough to test hypotheses and find quick responses from clients. It’s a good idea to focus on shorter buying cycles when building ICP segments so you can quickly test hypotheses through different channels.

[00:20:45] Ora: In my practice, industries like finance and banking struggle because of their old-fashioned buying cycles. The best marketing strategy in these cases is account-based marketing, which allows you to tailor your message and be precise in your one-to-one or one-to-few communications.

[00:21:31] Andrew: You mentioned those occasional customers who can misguide us if we focus our efforts on them. That resonates with me, as it often happens in companies.

[00:21:51] Andrew: When a random customer makes a purchase, we think, “Great, let’s focus here,” but it distracts us. It’s a great thing to avoid.

[00:22:07] Andrew: What other mistakes do companies make when developing ICPs?

[00:22:12] Ora: I want to add about those accidental customers. To build ICPs and increase revenue, you should multiply the same actions. If you want to repeat your success, you need to understand the process behind it.

[00:22:35] Ora: Another mistake is failing to collect data. I’m a data-driven marketer, and it’s crucial to analyze what’s happening inside your business. One big mistake is making conclusions based on just one customer. Another mistake is making business decisions based solely on competitors’ actions, always copying them. This puts you behind your customers instead of leading.

[00:23:01] Ora: It’s all about speed—how fast you can test hypotheses. Dive deeper and understand what’s happening with your target accounts. Why is their buying cycle so long?

[00:23:45] Ora: The buying cycle starts at the initiator stage—awareness, attention, etc. Your potential customers start their journey long before they interact with you. You need to understand where you can find them and interpret their buyer intent signals correctly.

[00:24:38] Ora: If you want to work with dream clients—big enterprises—understand that they have complex decision-making processes involving 15-25 people. You need to be precise when broadcasting your value propositions.

[00:25:05] Andrew: Yes, this resonates with me. When reaching out to large companies, you deal not only with decision-makers but with procurement and other departments.

[00:25:22] Ora: In B2B, you can’t be a one-channel rider. Stop thinking you’ll find a golden key in just outreach or paid ads. It’s all about an omnichannel approach, personalized strategies like ABM.

[00:25:56] Ora: It’s a red ocean in almost every industry. Many companies are operating and struggling to find new opportunities. Be smart—understand what’s happening in your business and in your customers’ businesses. Consider factors like economic or political situations, such as the upcoming U.S. elections.

[00:26:22] Ora: Regarding when and how often to build an ICP, review it annually. Tailor your value propositions, check your features, work on customer success, and ask your customers if they’re ready to refer you.

[00:26:40] Ora: Collect metrics like net promoter scores—yes, it’s boring, but it’s necessary. Traditional, data-based marketing is boring, but it works. We help companies build relationships and collect metrics. It’s hard to analyze and determine the next steps, but it’s interesting, like a mix of math, physics, and psychology.

[00:27:29] Ora: When building relationships with your ICPs, you need to understand how people operate internally.

[00:27:41] Andrew: We’ve developed an ICP. We have it in a PDF. What’s next?

[00:27:51] Ora: The next stage is strategy development. Find out where your audience is—who they are and where they are. Most B2B companies start with LinkedIn, but that’s not enough.

[00:28:13] Ora: You need to build a strategy and align all communication channels with your target audience. I suggest building traditional marketing funnels for small segments within your ICP and targeting based on different stages of the buying process. Start from the top of the funnel and go deeper.

[00:28:50] Ora: When you start seeing responses, that’s when scaling begins. I remember working with a client in an old-fashioned industry. We decided to send paper-based direct mails to their potential customers. We integrated QR codes and tracked responses. It was crazy, but we booked appointments from those mails.

[00:29:49] Andrew: What industry was that?

[00:29:50] Ora: My favorite: credit unions in the USA. Credit unions are tough—no, not tough, just not as easygoing as other industries.

[00:30:08] Andrew: As a wrap-up, could you guide us through the process of creating an ICP? Where to start and what to do next?

[00:30:16] Ora: Don’t think it’s a complex or long process. It might sound like it, but you can do it in a couple of days. If you know what’s happening in your business, collect the information, analyze it, and then integrate tools to understand what’s happening with your clients. You can combine all of this, build your target account lists, and develop value propositions based on challenges and structures.

[00:31:08] Ora: The fun part is developing the strategy. You don’t know what will work best—what channels will bring the best ROI. It’s like solving a puzzle. If you need help, just ask me.

[00:31:26] Andrew: Noted. Thank you!

[00:31:30] Ora: Yes, yeah.

[00:31:30] Andrew: What one piece of advice would you give to someone just starting with ICP?

[00:31:37] Ora: Try to communicate with the market, with the people you want to work with—even your competitors.

[00:31:44] Ora: Don’t be afraid to work with competitors as partners. It can be so interesting and bring you more results in B2B. Also, understand how people operate psychologically and socially. For example, the term “jobs to be done.”

[00:32:07] Ora: When you build your audience, understand why they need your product. Jobs to be done can be more complex than we think. For instance, in B2B, a CEO may want to integrate your tool to increase revenue—that’s an action. But there’s a second layer connected to emotions. The CEO might also want their general manager to be proud of them.

[00:33:01] Ora: The second layer works better because it touches the potential customer emotionally. Understanding both layers lets you build stronger value propositions. Building long-term relationships is about knowing each other and moving forward together.

[00:33:44] Ora: People’s decisions are based on two things: fear and vanity. Once you understand this, you can build everything on it. It’s fascinating to work with people—unpredictable, inspiring, and never boring.

[00:33:56] Ora: Clients sometimes ask me for predictions: “What channels will work best?” But until we start working with the industry and interacting with them, we can’t predict anything. We need to collect data, analyze it, and move forward.

[00:34:39] Andrew: I have three quick questions for you. First, what’s your favorite marketing tool and why?

[00:34:46] Ora: That’s a tricky question because, as a marketer, I can’t have just one tool. We work across the whole customer journey. But SimilarWeb is definitely one of my favorites for analyzing traffic and predicting results.

[00:35:20] Ora: I also like Hotjar for website events, Looker Studio for preparing reports, and ZoomInfo for collecting buyer intent data. For landing pages, we use Webflow—it’s fast and adaptive. HubSpot is another favorite, especially their marketing hub. It’s great for following the customer journey.

[00:36:37] Andrew: I wish all marketers had the budget for HubSpot Marketing Pro!

[00:36:43] Ora: Yeah.

[00:36:47] Andrew: Next question: If you had a marketing superpower, what would it be?

[00:36:53] Ora: I’d love to have a sixth sense—especially because some tools are so expensive! Another superpower I’d choose is marketing predictions.

[00:37:13] Andrew: And the third question: What are your go-to sources for marketing inspiration?

[00:37:19] Ora: My clients. They bring me new challenges, and it helps me grow. I love my work—it’s inspiring. My team is also a great source of inspiration, and nature too. I’m an introvert, so I need time alone to recharge.

[00:38:08] Andrew: Great words. Ora, thank you for sharing your wisdom. Guys, if you need help with creating ICPs, marketing strategies, and more, please reach out to Ora. You can find her on LinkedIn. All the links will be in the description. Thanks a lot and bye-bye.

[00:38:28] Ora: Thank you so much. Bye.

Episode timeline:

  • 00:00 Defining Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
  • 00:00 Collecting Metrics and Building ICP
  • 00:00 Importance of Customer Interviews
  • 00:00 Analyzing Market and Competitors
  • 00:00 When to Develop ICP
  • 00:00 Practical Tools and Technologies for ICP
  • 00:00 Real-Life Success Stories
  • 00:00 Common Mistakes in Developing ICP
  • 00:00 Final Thoughts and Advice
  • 00:00 Blitz Questions and Wrap Up
Title
.