ICP and persona

Targeting everyone means reaching no one effectively. But I've also seen the opposite problem: companies with such narrow targeting that their addressable market can't support their growth goals.

ICP and persona work together. Your ICP defines the company characteristics: industry, size, geography, tech stack, business model. Your persona defines the human you're actually selling to: their role, their seniority, what they care about, what authority they have to buy.

The goal isn't to create detailed fictional profiles with names and hobbies. The goal is to get specific enough that your marketing and sales teams can make consistent decisions about who to pursue and what to say to them.

When ICP and persona are vague, everything downstream suffers. Messaging tries to appeal to everyone and resonates with no one. Ad targeting is broad and wasteful. Sales wastes time on prospects who were never going to buy. Content covers topics that don't matter to actual buyers.

When ICP and persona are clear, the opposite happens. Messaging speaks directly to specific pain points. Targeting focuses spend on the right accounts. Sales prioritises prospects who fit the profile. Content addresses questions your buyers actually have.

This chapter covers how to define ICP and persona with enough precision to be useful, without overcomplicating it.

ICP stands for Ideal Customer Profile. It describes the characteristics of companies that are the best fit for your product. Not every company that could use your product, but the ones that will get the most value, stay longest, and be easiest to sell to.

Your ICP is a description of an organisation, not a person. It includes firmographic details that help you identify and target the right accounts.

Components of ICP

1. ‍Industry or vertical. Which industries do your best customers operate in? Some products work across industries. Others are specifically valuable in certain sectors. If your product solves problems that are acute in SaaS companies but minor in manufacturing, SaaS is part of your ICP.‍
2. Company size. Size can be measured by employee count, revenue, or both. A product designed for teams of 5 to 50 people has different buyers and buying processes than one designed for enterprises of 5,000 or more. Size affects budget, decision-making complexity, and needs.‍
3. Geography. Where are your ideal customers located? This matters for language, time zones, currency, compliance requirements, and go-to-market logistics. A company focused on the UK market has different requirements than one selling globally.‍
4. Tech stack. What other tools do your ideal customers use? If your product integrates with HubSpot, companies already using HubSpot are better prospects than those on Salesforce. Tech stack indicates sophistication level and integration possibilities.‍
5. Business model. B2B or B2C? Subscription or transactional? Online or offline? Business model shapes what problems companies have and how they think about solutions.‍
6. Growth stage. Startups have different needs and budgets than established enterprises. A company that just raised Series A has different priorities than one that's been profitable for a decade.

How to define your ICP

Start with your existing customers. Look at your best accounts: the ones that buy quickly, pay full price, stay longest, and expand over time. What do they have in common?

If you don't have enough customers yet, work from hypotheses. Based on the problem you solve, which types of companies would find that problem most painful? Where is the urgency highest and the budget available?

Talk to your sales team if you have one. They know which prospects convert easily and which ones waste time. They have intuitions about fit that may not be documented anywhere.

Be willing to exclude. A useful ICP says no to some potential customers. If your ICP describes every company that could theoretically buy, it's not specific enough to guide decisions.

A persona describes the individual buyer within your target companies. While ICP defines which organisations to target, persona defines which humans to reach and what to say to them.

In B2B, you often have multiple personas involved in a purchase. The user who will work with the product daily, the manager who needs to approve the purchase, the executive who controls budget, the technical evaluator who assesses security and integration. Each has different concerns and decision criteria.

Components of a persona

1. ‍Job title and role. What position does this person hold? Are they an individual contributor, a manager, a director, an executive? Their role determines their perspective on problems and solutions.‍
2. Responsibilities. What are they accountable for? What does success look like in their job? Understanding their responsibilities helps you connect your product to outcomes they care about.‍
3. Pain points. What problems do they face that your product addresses? Pain points should be specific and connected to their role. Generic pain points like "wants to be more efficient" are too vague to be useful.‍
4. Goals and motivations. What are they trying to achieve? What would make them look good to their boss or their team? Understanding motivations helps you frame your product as a path to what they want.‍
5. Decision authority. Can they make the purchase decision alone? Do they need approval? Are they an influencer or a decision-maker? This affects how you sell to them and what information they need.‍
6. Information sources. Where do they learn about new solutions? Industry publications, peer recommendations, conferences, search engines, social media? This guides where you need to show up.

How to define your personas

Interview existing customers. Ask them about their buying process, what problems they were trying to solve, what alternatives they considered, what convinced them to choose you. Real buyer insights beat imagined ones.

Talk to prospects who didn't buy. Understanding why people said no is as valuable as understanding why they said yes. Lost deals reveal objections and concerns you may not have addressed.

Involve your sales team. They talk to buyers daily. They know what questions get asked, what objections come up, what resonates and what falls flat. Capture this knowledge systematically.

Limit the number of personas. If you have ten different personas, you effectively have none. Focus on the two or three that matter most for your buying process. Usually this means the primary user and the economic buyer.

ICP and persona connect but operate at different levels. Your ICP might be "B2B SaaS companies with 50 to 200 employees in North America." Within those companies, your personas might be "Head of Marketing" as the primary buyer and "Marketing Operations Manager" as the primary user.

The combination matters. The Head of Marketing at a 50-person SaaS startup faces different pressures than the Head of Marketing at a 5,000-person enterprise. Same title, different context. Your ICP provides that context.

Creating the matrix

List your ICP characteristics down one axis and your personas across the other. For each combination, consider whether it represents a real buyer you want to target.

Not every persona exists in every ICP segment. Small companies may not have dedicated Marketing Operations Managers. Enterprises may have procurement teams that don't exist in startups. The matrix helps you see which combinations are real targets.

Prioritising segments

You likely can't pursue every valid ICP and persona combination with equal intensity. Prioritise based on:

1. ‍Market size. How many companies fit this ICP? How many of the target persona exist within them?‍
2. Problem severity. How painful is the problem you solve for this segment? More pain means faster sales cycles and higher willingness to pay.‍
3. Competitive intensity. How many alternatives target this segment? Less competition means easier differentiation.‍
4. Your strengths. Where do you have existing relationships, case studies, or credibility? It's easier to win where you have proof.

Being too broad

The most common mistake is defining ICP and persona so broadly they don't guide decisions. "Companies that want to grow" is not an ICP. "Business professionals" is not a persona. If your definitions could apply to almost any B2B company or buyer, they're too vague.

The test is whether your ICP and persona help you say no. If a lead comes in, can you quickly determine whether they fit? If the answer is always "maybe," your definitions aren't specific enough.

Being too narrow

The opposite mistake is defining such a narrow niche that your addressable market is tiny. Specificity is good, but you need enough potential customers to build a business. Before committing to a narrow ICP, estimate the market size and make sure it can support your goals.

Treating personas as fictional characters

Some persona exercises create elaborate fictional people with names, photos, hobbies, and family situations. This can be a fun workshop exercise but often produces personas disconnected from reality. Your personas should be based on real buyer research, not imagination.

Setting and forgetting

ICP and persona should evolve as you learn. Your initial definitions are hypotheses. As you sell and serve customers, you'll discover which segments perform best and which personas actually drive purchases. Update your definitions based on evidence.

Ignoring the buying committee

In B2B, purchases rarely involve a single person. Even if one persona is your primary target, others influence or approve the decision. Map the full buying committee and understand what each stakeholder needs to say yes.

Defined ICP and personas are useless if they sit in a document nobody reads. The value comes from applying them across your go-to-market activities.

Marketing applications

Use ICP to target advertising. Platforms like LinkedIn allow targeting by company size, industry, and job title. Your ICP tells you exactly which filters to apply.

Use persona to shape messaging. What pain points do you lead with? What outcomes do you emphasise? What objections do you preempt? Persona research answers these questions.

Use both to guide content. What topics will attract your ICP? What questions does your persona have at each stage of their buying journey? Content should be created for specific personas in specific contexts.

Sales applications

Use ICP to qualify leads. When a new lead comes in, does the company fit your ICP? If not, route them to lower-touch channels or disqualify them entirely. Sales time should focus on high-fit prospects.

Use persona to tailor conversations. What does this buyer care about? What language do they use? What proof points will resonate? Persona knowledge makes sales conversations more relevant.

Use both to prioritise accounts. In account-based approaches, ICP helps you build target account lists. Persona helps you identify the right entry points within those accounts.

Product applications

Use ICP to guide roadmap decisions. Which features matter most to your ideal customers? What integrations do they need? ICP keeps product development focused on the right users.

Use persona to shape user experience. How does your primary user persona think about their work? What mental models do they have? Persona insights inform product design and onboarding.

ICP and persona are foundational to effective growth execution. Without them, marketing targets everyone and connects with no one. Sales chases leads that were never going to convert. Product builds features that don't matter to the people who pay.

The exercise of defining ICP and persona forces clarity. It makes you articulate who you're really selling to and why they should care. That clarity propagates through every growth activity.

Start with what you know from existing customers and honest hypotheses about your market. Document your definitions simply. Apply them to real decisions. And update them as you learn.

The goal is not a perfect document. The goal is shared understanding across your team about who you serve and why.