Bravery.
We usually save the word for daring, for danger, or the risk of getting hurt.
When you apply it to a business and marketing context, it might feel out of place. Overstated, even misused. But building a real ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) demands bravery, because it means betting on the few and turning your back on the majority.
FICTION SHOWS US THE WAY
Think of any good film or book, the writer doesn’t start with the dialogue straight away. They build the character(s) before the story can unfold. We need to get to know what that person wants, their back story, how they act and their inner most thoughts and fears. Only when they character is fully formed can the story begin.
MARKETING IS NO DIFFERENT
Marketing and communications work in the same way. If we view our content as the script, then the customer is the character. If you haven’t built the character then you’re writing dialogue for an unknown stranger, and it shows. It’ll read as flat, generic, and forgettable, because something that is written (created) for everyone, is written for no one.
So the ‘who’ needs to come before the ‘what’, the ‘how’, and (I hope Simon Sinek isn’t reading this) the ‘why’.
The natural pull towards action
Experience working with clients or students on content projects, shows this common trait time and time again. Energy, ideas, momentum and within minutes everyone is deep into the deliverable. Whether that’s the headline, copy, visuals or creative styling, it’s quick to come to the surface. But what’s usually missing in these embryonic stages is clarity on one question; who is this actually for?
This is entirely normal. Hand the brain a new challenge and it goes straight into problem solving, because that feels like efficient progress.
There’s a behavioural pull we can credit here too, the curse of knowledge. Once we know our own product, our own market, our own reasons for buying, we assume everyone else shares them. Or at least we overestimate exactly how much knowledge and understanding they share with us. We can no longer imagine not knowing what we know, so we design for a version of the customer who thinks like us.
Which brings us to a harder truth to hold.
The I in ICP isn’t U
A point we often need to remember, and something I regularly need to hold myself to account on, is that of avoiding designing for ourselves. It’s really tempting to apply our own preferences and perspectives, and our lens on the world. But in 99.9% of cases, we won’t be sitting in the ICP, and this is where having a clear vision on the key audience helps us from falling into that trap.
It means designing for someone who isn’t you, and letting go of the choices you’d make, the tone you’d prefer, the features you’d lead with. The first act of bravery is getting out of your own way.
How to build your persona(s)
- Aim for accurate, not average. You may have several personas, but each one should be a specific person representing a focused group, not a blurred composite of everyone who might buy. If half your market could sit inside the persona, it is just a broad demographic.
- Create it from people you’ve actually met. Anything drawn from real customers, people you’ve genuinely spoken to, sharpens the accuracy of what you’re creating. In my experience, time with the customer service and experience team is a treasure chest of insight.
- Build in the context, not just the stats. Age and job title give some shape to the character, but it gets far richer when you factor in their situation, their pressures, their needs and desires. Context is a crucial driver in the customer experience, so let it bring your audience to life.
- Be clear on what they get from a relationship with you. What are they actually trying to achieve, and what does success look like in their world, not yours.
- Map the behavioural drivers. The part most personas neglect. What is influencing the audience, and which biases are shaping how they decide? Are they anchored on a competitor price, paralysed by too much choice, herding on social proof, or held back by loss aversion?
- Give them a personality. A name, a back story, some life. Write it so a stranger could spot them in the wild. The test of a good persona is whether someone on your team could recognise this person in a meeting, not just recite their attributes.
- Decide who it excludes. We are sharpening the focus, so in many cases you can name the people this persona is deliberately not for. That is the part that takes nerve, and it is what stops persona creep as you move towards execution.
With clarity on your personas, you can start to build out the ICP. You’ll often find certain ‘peripheral’ personas, people you can perform a role for but who don’t sit at the centre of the bullseye. And then there are the ones squarely in the middle, the people you’re perfect for, where you add the most value.
There may be a single persona that is the ICP, but realistically you might land on a small selection. If it’s the latter, apply some flexibility. On one hand you need commonality and cohesion to form your overarching ICP. On the other, a single piece of communication or one channel may speak solely to one persona. That’s fine, and common. But you need to hold that flexibility while still protecting a tight focus, so the ICP doesn’t dilute out to half the addressable market.
Brave (and bold) beats generic every day
The rigour in condensing this down is where the aforementioned bravery comes in, but I’ll give you some comfort when you’re explaining this to wider stakeholders. Ideal Customer Profile is just that, Ideal. It’s not Only Customer Profile, so it doesn’t mean we have to turn down other people who have knocked on the door. The FOMO induced by focusing can be alleviated with this simple truth.
Yes, we will work hard to be extremely relevant and communicate with our ICP in mind, but we also know there will be a halo effect and other people will see our offering as relevant to them. We just didn’t actively try to expand, or dilute, our activities to be all things to all people.
With the above in mind, and filled with the confidence our relevance and impact ripple outwards, we can move ahead building that laser like focus and elevating our connections.
A thought for you.
How well can you articulate your ICP, and when you find yourself describing them, how narrow is your focus? Nowadays we are communicating to a busier than ever, overloaded audience who often suffer decision fatigue. So to serve them better, you need to make things easier. And that starts by stopping and really understanding them before starting to communicate.
