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Jory MacKay on September 17, 2025

Jory MacKay

Jory is a writer, content strategist and award-winning editor of the Unsplash Book. He contributes to Inc., Fast Company, Quartz, and more.

September 17, 2025 · 11 min read

In business, it’s easy to become obsessed with an idea. Founders, leaders, and managers become convinced that they know exactly who wants their product and what they need from it. But the hard truth? They’re often wrong.

Too many teams try to build for who they think wants their product without doing the foundational customer research to back it up.

To align with real customer needs and unlock that next stage of growth, it’s important to define, analyze, and plan against an objective Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

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In this article, we’ll explore what an ICP is (and what it isn’t), the core benefits of defining one, and arm you with a practical, step-by-step framework to understand your own.

What is an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)?

An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a detailed description of the company who gets the most value from your product or service, and thus is most likely to buy.

When you have a clear ICP you can align your entire organization — from product development to marketing and sales — around a single, shared vision of your customer. On the other hand, ignoring your ICP is an easy path towards wasting time, money, and resources.

“By neglecting to research customer needs before commencing their engineering efforts, entrepreneurs end up wasting valuable time and capital on MVPs that are likely to miss their mark. These are false starts. The entrepreneurs are like sprinters who jump the gun.”
— Why Startups Fail, Harvard Business Review*

An ICP can be either an individual or a company, depending on the context of your business:

• In a business-to-consumer company (B2C) your ICP will be an individual. For example, a 30-40 year-old male, who loves sports, and earns around $90,000 a year.
• In a business-to-business company (B2B) your ICP will be another organization. For example, 500-1000-employee construction companies that are digitally savvy, but struggle with data management.

Either way, you can think of an ICP as a fictional entity that represents your perfect customer. But remember, these aren’t just the customers who are most profitable — they’re the customers who will be most satisfied with your offering, see the quickest results, and are most likely to become your most powerful brand advocates.

Why bother defining your ICP, especially if you’re already making revenue? The benefits of a clearly defined ICP are wide-ranking, including:

• Higher win-rates. When your sales team knows exactly who to target, they can tailor their conversations to a prospect’s specific pain points and goals.
• Shorter sales cycles. By not wasting time on poor-fit leads, you can focus your energy on accounts that have a genuine and urgent need for your solution.
• Lower customer churn. Customers who are a perfect fit for your product are more likely to integrate it deeply into their workflows and see a clear return on investment, and are therefore far less likely to leave you for a competitor.
• Higher lifetime value (LTV). Happy, successful customers not only stick around longer, but they are also more likely to expand their usage, buy additional services, and grow with you over time.
• More effective marketing. Your marketing team can create highly targeted campaigns and messaging that speak directly to the challenges of your ideal customer, resulting in better quality leads and a lower cost of acquisition.
• Increased customer satisfaction. It’s easier to satisfy customers you’re aligned with. When you have a deep focus on who they are and what they need, you’re much more likely to meet and exceed their expectations.

The core attributes of an ICP

An ideal customer profile is more than just a rough outline of your current customer base. Instead, it should gather in-depth information about your target company or consumer.

When defining your ICP, you’ll want to look at these core attributes:

• Firmographics. These are the basic, quantifiable characteristics of a person or company. Think of it as “core demographics” such as age, gender, social background, religion, and average income. In a business context, this could instead detail industry, company size (in terms of employees or revenue), geographic location, and overall budget.
• Technographics. In the modern world, everyone and every company is led by technology. Modern profiles also dive into the technologies individuals or companies use. Specifically in the B2B world, this would focus on the current tech stack, system integrations, and technical maturity.
• Behavioral attributes. These qualities explain why your ICP needs your product or service. For example, in the B2B world, this will focus on specific pain points, how urgently they need a solution, and the events that might cause them to enter the market (e.g., a new funding round, a key executive hire, a change in regulations).
• Success signals. These are the markers that indicate a company won’t just buy your product, but will thrive with it. This could be their potential for expansion, their likelihood to become a brand advocate, or how profitable they are to serve.

It’s also important to remember that an ICP isn’t static. With the rate of change in the modern world (and your product’s continual improvements), your ICP should be treated as a living document that needs constant updating and refinement.

As you gather more data from real customers, revisit and refine your ICP to ensure it always reflects your best-fit client.

Ideal Customer Profiles vs. Buyer Personas

The difference between Ideal Customer Profiles and Buyer Personas is a common point of confusion in the B2B world, so let’s clear it up.

While ICPs and buyer personas are related, they serve different purposes. An ICP defines the company you should target, while a buyer persona describes the people within that company who you need to influence and persuade.

It’s a subtle difference, but knowing both will help you at different stages of your marketing and sales journeys. Here’s a simple table to break down the key differences:

Even though ICPs and Buyer Personas are different, you should 100% use them together.

Here’s how:

• Always start with your ICP by defining the right type of company to go after.
• Once you’ve identified which organizations to target, you can create buyer personas underneath that. These help you better understand the different people involved in the purchasing decision at those companies.

Think of it like this: the ICP tells your sales team which doors to knock on, and the buyer personas tell them what to say when someone answers the door.

How to create (or refine) your ICP: 7 steps to success

Now for the practical part: How do you actually go about creating your ICP? In reality, it’s a process of investigation and synthesis, gathering data from multiple sources, looking for patterns, and then building a narrative around what you find.

Let’s go through it step-by-step, using a fictional B2B SaaS company called DataGlyph to bring the process to life.

1. Mine your existing customer data

Your current customer base contains a goldmine of information about who finds your product valuable.

Start your user research by looking at your happiest, most successful customers. Who are they?

Identify the top 10-20% of your customers based on metrics like:

• High lifetime value (LTV)
• High product usage and engagement
• Low number of support tickets
• Fast and smooth onboarding
• Willingness to provide testimonials or referrals

Once you have this list, dig into their common characteristics. What industries are they in? How big are their companies? What are their job titles? Your CRM and billing software are excellent sources for this quantitative data.

Pro tip: If you’re in the early stages of product discovery and don’t have any customers, you can skip straight to step #3!

Case Study: The DataGlyph team pulls a list of their 15 best customers. They discover that 12 of them are marketing agencies or in-house marketing departments at tech companies. They also notice that most of these successful customers have between 50 and 250 employees.

Too many teams try to build for who they think wants their product without doing the foundational customer research to back it up.

2. Interview customers — both happy and unhappy

Data can tell you the "what," but it can’t always tell you the "why." The next step is to talk to real people by conducting user interviews with a mix of your best customers and those customers who have churned.

For your happy customers, ask questions like:

• What problem were you trying to solve when you found us?
• What did your workflow look like before our product?
• What has been the biggest benefit you’ve seen since using our tool?
• What would you have done if our product didn’t exist?

For your unhappy or churned customers, ask:

• What were you hoping our product would do that it didn’t?
• Where did our product fall short of your expectations?
• What are you using as an alternative now?

These conversations will provide rich, qualitative insights into the pain points, motivations, and success criteria of your user base. You can plot this information onto a perceptual map to help with visualization.

Case Study: DataGlyph interviews five of their best customers and three churned customers. They learn that their happy customers love the ability to create client-ready reports in minutes, a process that used to take hours. The churned customers, on the other hand, were mostly data science teams who found the tool too simplistic for their advanced statistical modeling needs.

3. Refine your data with market research

Now that you have internal data and qualitative feedback, it’s time to look outward. Why? Because data shows that 42% of startups fail because they build products no one wants.

Market research helps you validate your findings and understand the broader landscape.

Look at:

• Competitor analysis. Who are your main competitors targeting? Analyze their messaging and customer base to reveal opportunities they might be missing.
• Industry reports. Publications from firms like Gartner, Forrester, or industry-specific associations can provide valuable data on market size, trends, and technology adoption.
• Social and community platforms. Forums like Reddit, LinkedIn Groups, or industry communities are great places to observe the organic conversations your potential customers are having. What problems do they complain about? What language do they use?

Case Study: The DataGlyph team analyzes their top three competitors. They notice that two of them are heavily focused on enterprise-level business intelligence, with complex features and high price points. The third is a very basic, free tool. This confirms their hypothesis that there’s a significant, underserved market of mid-sized companies.

4. Score and segment your ICPs

You may find that you have more than one potential ICP, and that’s perfectly normal. In this step, you’ll score and prioritize them to know which ones to focus on first

Create a simple scoring model based on the attributes that are most important to your business. You could use a 1-5 scale for criteria, such as:

• Estimated Market Size: How many companies fit this profile?
• Budget: Do they have the financial resources to afford your solution?
• Urgency: How pressing is the pain point you solve for them?
• Expansion Potential: Is there an opportunity for them to increase their spending with you over time?
• Competitive Landscape: How easy will it be to win this segment?

This exercise will help you focus your efforts on the segment that represents the biggest opportunity for your business right now.

Case Study: DataGlyph identifies two potential ICPs: "Marketing Agencies" and "Mid-Size Tech Companies" While the market for agencies is large, they realize that in-house tech companies have bigger budgets and a more urgent need to prove ROI to internal stakeholders. They decide to prioritize the "Mid-Size Tech Companies" segment as their primary ICP, while keeping agencies as a secondary focus.

5. Draft your narrative

Now, bring all of this information together into a written document. This is your official ICP definition. It should be clear, concise, and easy for anyone in the company to understand.

Your drafted ICP should include sections for:

• Firmographics: Industry, company size, revenue.
• Common Job Titles of Users/Buyers: e.g., Head of Marketing, Product Manager.
• Pain Points & Challenges: What specific problems do they face?
• Value Metrics: How do they measure success? What ROI are they looking for?
• Common Objections: What hesitations might they have during the sales process?
• Watering Holes: Where do they hang out online? (e.g., specific blogs, communities, social media platforms).

Case Study: DataGlyph creates a one-page document titled "DataGlyph Ideal Customer Profile: “Mid-Size Tech Companies" It details everything from company size (50-250 employees) to their primary pain point ("Wasting too much time building manual reports for leadership") and their key value metric ("Time saved per report").

6. Share your ICP and stress-test it

Your ICP isn’t a hypothesis until it’s been validated. Share it amongst your team and get them to start testing it in the wild.

For example:

• Sales: Should use it to qualify leads and prioritize outreach.
• Marketing: Should use it to inform all content, campaigns, and channel strategies.
• Product: Should use it to prioritize features on the roadmap that will deliver the most value to your best customers.
• Customer Success: Should use it to develop onboarding processes that address the specific needs of your ideal customers.

Case Study: DataGlyph’s sales team begins focusing on their “Mid-Size Tech Companies” profile, leading with case studies on how they’ve reduced time on report creation with other clients. The initial rapport is good, and they notice they’re moving through the sales cycle faster.

7. Set a quarterly “ICP retro” task

The market changes, your product evolves, and your customers’ needs shift. A quarterly "ICP retrospective" is a great way to ensure your profile stays current.

In this meeting, bring together leaders from sales, marketing, product, and customer success to discuss:

• What have we learned about our ICP this quarter?
• Are our assumptions still correct?
• Do we need to make any adjustments based on new data or market trends?

This continuous feedback loop is the key to keeping your entire organization aligned and focused on serving your most valuable customers.

Pro tip: Organize and share your findings in a central project management tool, like Planio.

Planio allows you to easily set up recurring tasks, store documents, update product roadmaps, and align project stakeholders on your latest ICP developments.

Real-world ICP examples to learn from

One of the best ways to put ICPs into practice is to see how other successful companies have used them.

Here’s a breakdown of ICPs from some successful modern companies, including our own one at Planio:

Keep your ICP current. The market changes, your product evolves, and your customers’ needs shift.

Final thoughts: Don’t fall for these common ICP mistakes

A well-defined ideal customer profile is the single best tool to ensure you’re building a product that customers actually want.

Aligning your product, marketing, and sales efforts around your highest-value customers amplifies every dollar you spend.

As you begin building your first ICP, watch out for these common mistakes that many leaders make:

• Chasing vanity customer criteria. It’s tempting to define your ICP based on big-name logos or what you think will look good to investors. Focus on the customers who are truly successful with your product, not just the ones with the most brand recognition.
• Confusing the total addressable market (TAM) with your ICP. Your ICP is a focused segment within your broader market. Trying to be everything to everyone is a recipe for failure. Get specific first, and then expand later.
• Building personas first. Always start with the ICP (the company), then build the personas (the people). Defining the right type of account is the strategic foundation upon which all your messaging and content should be built.
• Over-fitting to one early customer. Don’t base your entire ICP on a single, outlier customer who happened to be an early adopter. Look for patterns across a group of your best customers to create a more reliable profile.
• Treating the ICP as a slide deck, not an operational tool. An ICP only has value if it’s actively used to make decisions across the company. Integrate it into your sales qualification process, your marketing campaign planning, and your product roadmap discussions.
• Ignoring negative signals. Pay just as much attention to who is not a good fit. Defining your "negative ICP" can be just as powerful, as it helps your teams avoid wasting time on deals that are destined to fail or churn.

Lastly, stay organized to make sure everyone knows who your ICP is and how to use that information in their daily tasks.

If you need help keeping your team on track, consider trying Planio’s intuitive project management tool. Planio provides powerful task and issue tracking, high-level and cross-project roadmaps for planning and prioritizing, real-time communication, and more.

Try Planio with your own team — free for 30 days (no credit card required!)