Most companies cannot identify their ideal customers.
It may sound crazy, but it’s true.
There’s a pervasive lack of ideal customer profile (ICP) alignment, like:
- Not identifying your ideal customers, your ideal Champions, Buyers, and Influencers
- Not knowing which campaigns or channels are working to engage your ICPs
- Not knowing where your ICPs come from or how they learn about you
This is Growth Blocker #4 that Eric Rudolf and I identified in our conversation on the 10 most common blockers preventing tech businesses from scaling from $1M to $10M in revenue.
Knowing your ICP is fundamental to success, and the solution lies in using data intentionally. “It’s not just about having numbers and statistics; it’s about using them intentionally to drive growth,” Brent says.
The first challenge often stems from not actively using data to identify your ICP. It’s not enough to collect data; it’s crucial to analyze and leverage it for strategic decision-making. This lack of intentional data usage can lead to uncertainty about which campaigns or channels are effective.
You want to actually look at the data through active tests. What’s working? Not only to drive people to your website but you want to know how to capture them and progress them through your GTM process.
The process involves studying the data to understand not just the initial engagement but also the conversion and retention rates. By doing so, companies can identify the most effective strategies for both attracting and retaining customers, providing a holistic view of campaign success.
To uncover the ICP, we need to look at the customers that have been with you, that renewed and stayed with you the longest, and spend the most. Then, work to broaden your appeal to that persona.
Instead of spreading efforts thin across various buyer types, focus on understanding and targeting the segments that yield the fastest and most significant results. It’s about quality over quantity, particularly when resources are constrained.
You can see our full list of the 10 Blockers for Sales Growth here in the first post in the Scaling from $1M to $10M series.