An ideal customer profile (ICP) portrays your prospective company’s general qualifying attributes. Creating an ideal customer profile template for B2B leads allows you to understand your target audience and eventually enhance the efficiency of your sales and marketing efforts.
You will gather information on prospects’ firmographics, demographics, and psychographics. Each step will help you determine who to target and what strategies to focus your time and money on.
Continue reading to become an expert in creating an ideal customer profile.
Download the free Ideal Customer Profile Template
Enhance your market research by downloading our ideal customer profile template. Made to help you identify and analyze your target companies.
3 Steps to an Ideal Customer Profile for B2B Leads
Creating an ideal customer profile (ICP) will help your marketing and sales teams determine which techniques will be most effective based on the data you find. By focusing on your ideal customer’s characteristics and behavior patterns, your team can create a tailored marketing plan to reach the right audience. Additionally, it will prevent you from spending your budget on marketing efforts your ideal customer may not see, ultimately speeding up the sales process.
To optimize the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, we recommend creating an ideal customer profile (ICP) for each type of prospective company to avoid curating a list of unsuitable target accounts. It’s important to remember that your marketing strategy is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Each company will require different tactics in order to be reached.
Follow these steps to make your ICP and quickly find your ideal customers.
STEP 1:
Understand firmographic characteristics
Firmographics are a great place to start when creating an ICP. This data is essentially the demographics of an entire company. This information will give you a general idea of companies’ characteristics so you can use specific marketing and sales strategies to reach the right companies to target for your product or service.
Firmographic information is necessary, but it’s also important to find accurate data to strategize your marketing and sales efforts properly. Consistent data validation and verification will help you find trustworthy data and accelerate your sales process.
Firmographic data includes the following:
- Company Size: Find out how many employees work there, and most importantly, who are the decision-makers
- Industry: The professional area(s) the company specializes in
- Geographic Location: Locate the physical location of the company to assist your targeted marketing strategies down the line
- Revenue: Research the financial well-being of the company and its overall profitability
STEP 2:
Define the demographics
Similar to firmographics, finding the right demographics to target will give you insight into your prospective customer’s preferences and patterns.
Rather than showing what the company itself is like, demographic data provide insight into the most engaged prospects within the target company. You can see their characteristics and who is buying their product or using their services. Again, you can use this information to get a sense of your target market and how to find suitable customers.
Demographic data will include:
- Age: Find the age range of customers interacting with the target company
- Gender: What is the gender that typically interacts with the company?
- Location: Find the customer’s location. Are they national? International?
- Income: Identify the income range of the customers buying the product or services
- Education level: Gather the educational background their customers typically have
- Occupation: Find out where their customers work and if there is a pattern in the industry they work in
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STEP 3:
Identify the psychographics
Psychographics is a set of information that you will not be able to gather based on a customer’s firmographics or demographics. Instead, it is an opportunity to learn the customer’s purchase behaviors, habits, and preferred channels.
A strong understanding of psychographics will help set you apart from your competitors. Understanding your customers and eventually relating to them will allow you to nurture that relationship so they feel cared for and understood. It’s also a way for you to create engaging, personalized content specific to their likes, needs, and wants.
Psychographic information to pay attention to:
- Values: Find out what the customer looks for in a brand or company, such as its personality, ethics, and sustainability efforts
- Social status: Understand where customers hope their social status is and how they want to be perceived by others
- Interests: What do the customers spend a lot of time doing? Find out what their hobbies are or what apps they are often using
- Personality: Over time, determine a customer’s traits, thoughts, and feelings to learn more about their personality (e.g., extroverted, open, agreeable, etc.)
- Preferred Channels: Do they most enjoy using LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or other forms of communication?
Download the free Ideal Customer Profile Template
Enhance your market research by downloading our ideal customer profile template. Made to help you identify and analyze your target companies.
It’s Time to Make Your Marketing & Sales Plan
Once you have completed the ideal customer profile template for B2B leads, you will better understand how to strategize your B2B marketing and sales efforts.
With insight into your target company, you will speed up the sales process and gain more time to continue creating new ICPs. Remember to constantly verify all data collected for firmographics, demographics, and psychographics to ensure your process is based on accurate information.
Gather your baseline information by starting with firmographics so you can initially tell if this company aligns with your product or service. If their firmographics align, it’s time to dive deeper into the company’s demographics. Understand how the customers interact with your target company based on education level, income ranges, occupations, and more. And lastly, you’ll want to take time to look into their psychographics. Unlike firmographics and demographics, psychographics will dive into the customer’s purchase behaviors and habits. It’s essential to understand this information so you know how to relate and foster customer relationships down the road. Psychographics also help when deciding how to market to specific customers. You can use this data to see what personalized content will reach and engage your target customers.
Gather this information to create your ideal customer profile template for B2B leads so you can save money and see results quickly. We are here to help. Call EBQ to speak with a business consultant if you need help completing your ICP.
