Why You Should Identify Your Customer Profile

Creating an ideal customer profile gives a business a clear target to focus on. It can help generate more higher quality leads and minimise the time and energy spent on leads that are less likely to want to do business with your firm. You do this quite simply by drawing up your ideal customer profile and then identifying those leads that best fit the description.

Let’s dive deeper into exactly what constitutes an ideal customer profile.

What is a B2B ideal customer profile?

To create a B2B ideal customer profile, just imagine what that customer would be like. They will be the types of businesses that would benefit the most from the products and services you offer. You also want to imagine what kind of business would benefit your company, with the ideal customer profile appearing in the overlap between the two.

By describing this imaginary customer, whether it is a company, government department or some other organisation, you are creating a defined profile that your sales and marketing teams can work on more efficiently together by focusing on the higher quality leads.

How to create an ideal customer profile

There are various ways you can create an ideal customer profile (ICP), but the best method is a simple three-step process:

• Compare your existing customers for common similarities.

• Identify how the ICP benefits from you.

• Identify how you benefit from the ICP.

Find commonalities between existing customers

By identifying the common similarities that your existing customers share, you can quickly spot patterns that can help you create an ideal customer profile. This step might not be beneficial to a startup that has yet to gain a significant enough amount of customers; so such businesses could skip to the second step.

How the ICP benefits from your business

Now it’s time to get creative by imagining all the ways your business might benefit another business. First, whatever product or service you provide should help them make money. This could be directly by increasing their revenue, or indirectly by reducing their expenses, or by helping them increase their productivity.

Think too about certain pain points that other businesses have that your product or service can alleviate. See if your business can help them better serve their customers, raise the morale of their staff, or extend their reach.

How your business can benefit from the ICP

Obviously, your business will mostly benefit from earning revenue for your products and services, but there are other ways you can benefit too. An ideal customer profile could include their connections to other businesses. Perhaps they can recommend your services and connect you with other potential customers. If their brand is recognisable and reliable, you might be able to use their logo with a testimonial on your website to enhance your own credibility.

Some businesses might be able to provide you with access to certain resources or provide other kinds of opportunities to help you grow. You can even consider how easy an ICP would be to do business with and what level of support they require.

This exercise in creating an ideal customer profile will also help you understand your customers better. This in turn will improve your marketing strategies and help you keep generating those high quality leads.

We Can Help

If you’re interested in finding out more about how to create an ideal customer profile, or any other aspect of your business finances, then get in touch with our financial experts. Find out how GoCardless can help you with ad hoc payments or recurring payments.