Ideal customer profile, explained
What an ICP is, how it differs from a buyer persona, and how to write one from your best customers.
First brand read free. No filming.
On this page
The short answer
An ideal customer profile (ICP) describes the type of customer who gets the most value from your product and brings you the most value back: For a business, its industry, size, budget, problem and buying trigger; for a consumer brand, the situation and need that make someone a great fit. It decides who you target; buyer personas then describe the people you talk to.
Updated
Build yours, step by step
- 01
List your ten best customers
Best means they got results, stayed and paid. Ignore the biggest one-off sale.
- 02
Find what they share
Industry, size, problem, trigger, where they found you. Patterns beat anecdotes.
- 03
Write it on one page
Six fields, specific enough that you could say no to a lead that does not fit.
- 04
Point your channels at it
Post where your ICP already looks, about the trigger that makes them buy.
- 05
Check it against new customers
Every quarter, see whether new customers match. Adjust the profile, not the facts.
ICP, persona, audience
2 = what it is for, 1 = partly, 0 = not its job.
What an ICP includes
Who they are
Industry, size, location and stage for a business; situation and life stage for a consumer.
The problem
The specific pain your product solves better than the alternatives they use today.
Budget and buying power
Whether they can pay your price and who signs off.
The trigger
The event that makes them look now: a launch, a hire, a missed target, a new season.
Where they gather
The platforms, communities and searches where you can reach them.
Fit signals
What your best customers have in common: they stay, pay on time and refer others.
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Your questions, answered
Short answers to what people ask next.
A description of the type of customer who gets the most value from your product and gives you the most back: their industry or situation, size, budget, problem, buying trigger and where they gather.
The ICP describes which customers or companies to go after; the buyer persona describes the person who buys inside them, with their motives and words.
It started in B2B, but consumer brands use the same idea: the situation and need that make someone a perfect fit.
Specific enough that you could turn a lead away. “Small businesses” is too broad; “two-to-ten-person agencies selling to local restaurants” is an ICP.
Percify reads your brand from your website, including who you sell to, and deals daily short video ideas for that audience, built on formats that already performed in your market.