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Customers are decision-makers and trendsetters in a market. Their preferences, market actions, behaviors, choice of a commodity, and loyalty to a brand, everything plays a major role for a business in determining long-term goals and implementing different marketing strategies to understand and analyse the customer base which strengthens the seller-buyer relationship.
If we just talk about the digital marketing aspect which is booming at a very positive rate with numerous tools and techniques to enhance sales, customer engagement, etc. Ideal Customer Profiling is also one such tool that allows businesses to procure detailed information about the ideal customer’s characteristics including age, gender, job title, company size, and industry.
So, this blog will further talk about every aspect of ICP with an overall guide that will enable prospects to create various customer profiles.
What makes ICP so relevant in the industry?
For businesses to identify their prospect’s needs, challenges, and pain points with the help of any product or service, Ideal Customer Profile ( ICP ) is required in the digital marketing sector.
- Lead qualification gets improved
There is always a benchmark or lead characteristics that the business has set to focus on potential customers and ICP is used to qualify those leads and filter the prospects from the funnel who doesn’t suit the business criteria.
- Helps in defining the price
ICP provide businesses with insights into their customers' financial capacity, enabling them to set their pricing strategies accordingly. ICP can suggest long-term pricing where a contract for long-term pricing is there or for small businesses who prefer to pay monthly as per the ROI they are receiving.
- Adjoins product, sales, and marketing
ICP enables businesses to utilise the maximum of production, sales, and marketing resources and after achieving synergy between these three departments can help in hyper-targeting their sales and marketing efforts in B2B.
- Account-based marketing (ABM) and ICP
A detailed ICP is a perfect starting point for an ABM strategy as it reveals perfect-fit characteristics of the business’s target accounts and ABM methods deliver highly targeted, customised campaigns based on those particular attributes of an account. It’s perfect.
Who is an ideal customer?
An ideal customer can be someone who possesses the following traits:
- They are ready and keen to buy the business’s product and there are clear elements of value for them in it.
- They have the ability in terms of sufficient financial resources to buy the product.
- They are skilled with in-house knowledge to make successful use of the business’s product to its full potential.
- They have long-term growth perspectives which will support upsells and renewals.
- They are well-networked and can act as promoters for the product and talk about it in the market.
Build Your Automated Sales Funnel: A 9-Step GuideA guide on how to create an Ideal Customer Profile
If a business wants to acquire lifelong customers, ones that will achieve long-term benefits for the products/services, the business must truly understand the way it operates. The whole success of a brand depends upon how well the venture knows its customers.
- 1. Questioning and defining goal
Before the business does anything else, it needs to ask one question, What specific problem is their product/service hoping to solve? Once the problem is defined that needs to be solved via that product, then the business can determine demographics such as age, gender, hobbies, income, level of education, etc. This step will give the blueprint for the next few steps. - 2. Surveying the customer base
The business has to ask customers insightful and probing questions that will reveal information about why they particularly chose this product to resolve their issues from the rest. The customers can be reached through a Zoom call, sending out a survey, social media, etc. This is a prime opportunity to learn about what customers think about a product/service based on facts. - 3. Build customer behavioural profile
After some research and analysis, it is time for the business to accumulate the findings. Now, list down a few notable customer characteristics that a business will like in its ideal customer. This can be termed a behavioural profile. Sometimes, negative traits can also be taken into consideration which will help in elimination and save the effort on wrong targets. The customer characteristics can be:
- Location
- Organisation size
- Age range
- Annual Revenue
- Industry
- Softwares used
- Budget
- 4. Utilise MagicPitch for precision
MagicPitch’s insights let the business get into prospect’s buying behaviour, including budget considerations and purchasing frequency. The business can leverage the capabilities of MagicPitch and their powerful tool is designed to streamline ICP creation.
Input key data-
The business can start by entering its customer data into MagicPitch with details from demographics to behavioural patterns.
Machine Learning Usage-
MagicPitch’s machine learning algorithms help analyse and identify data that might not be possible through manual efforts.
Induces efficient ICP-
Once the analysis is complete, MagicPitch generates illustrative customer profiles with a detailed overview and allows user customisation based on unique business goals. - 5. Competitor market analysis
If a business can find out who its competitors are serving through social monitoring, this will give a general idea of the customers they currently have, how customers perceive other products and how is their online presence. The business can look into competitor’s landing pages, exit pop-ups, CTAs, etc. - 6. Review and Revise:
Businesses have to understand that customer buying behaviour is changing every day which makes it very important for them to stick with current market trends and revise the customer profiles now and then. Quarterly, the profiles can be reviewed and updates can take place. For better accuracy, instances from actual data should be put to use.
Conclusion:
Once the Ideal Customer Profile is set, it can be used in valuable ways that will be advantageous and give a clear picture of the pain points of customers, the environment they are operating in, and the goals they aim to achieve. MagicPitch is a perfect platform to gain all these marketingbenefits for the business.
With MagicPitch’s ICP, get ready to experience business success with strategised and targeted approach that boosts sales cycles, higher conversion rates, and improved annual and lifetime contract value.
Realted Blog Post:
FAQ
- Q.1 How to validate an ideal customer profile?
Ans. By identifying pain points, developing customer personas and identifying the behavioural pattern, an ICP can be validated.
- Q.2 Why is it important to know your ideal customer?
Ans. It is because it becomes easier for the brand to focus solely on marketing and they can promote themselves to a specific audience.
- Q.3. How do you determine customer segmentation?
Ans. Review industry data and market analysis, examine current customer base, collect customer experience data, are some of the ways for customer segmentation.
- Q.4. What is the customer lifetime value?
Ans. It is a metric that indicates the total revenue a business can reasonably expect from a single customer account throughout the business relationship.
- Q.5. What are customer personas?
Ans. A customer persona (also called buyer persona) is a representation of your ideal customers based on people who have already made a purchase.
