X Marks the Ideal Customer Profile: ICP's Are a Marketer's Treasure Map

Hello Marketeers [sic].

If you stop and think about it, Marketing is the only group who touches more parts of the business than the CEO and payroll. From the website, logo, and corporate templates to sales enablement tools and selling presentations, to channel programs and relationships, engagement with prospects and customers, competitive analysis, customer journey mapping, onboarding and renewal programs, social media, analyst and press relations, marketing has their finger in almost every pie being cooked by the organization. Consequently, one might expect that marketing would be the primary driver of corporate strategy. 

However, the irony is that marketing sometimes finds itself responsible for successfully executing a previously created strategy that it didn’t play a significant role in crafting. Instead, Marketing should help draw those treasure maps. You can tell who played D&D growing up; we love a treasure map. 

To optimize its support of company business goals, Marketing must leverage their position in the stakeholder ecosystem by identifying:

1) where growth will come from and

2) how it will be monetized. The way to do these is by becoming the organization’s de facto expert in two critical areas.

The first is the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Take the time to truly understand:

• Who the ideal customer/player/user are, 
• What their triggers are, 
• Which value-props are most important to them, 
• Where and when they engage with a brand, 
• Why they are compelled to act.
• How they are going to act.

The second is in-depth knowledge of the Total Addressable Market, the Serviceable Addressable Market, and the Serviceable Obtainable Market. The TAM/SAM/SOM. 

The overlap of these two critical components is the treasure map for any organization, and Marketing is better positioned than most anyone else to build this map.Let me explain.

Unlike a decade ago, when the limits of Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) construction did not extend much further than demographic attributes, companies need to be much more sophisticated in understanding the WHY behind customers actions. 

What technology do they currently have or are in the process of implementing? Once upon a time I helped develop a game that only ran on iPads. Our TAM/SAM/SOM became so narrow I started calling our funnel a “straw.”

What partner ecosystems are they engaged with and how can you access them? For instance, when working with PlayOn Game Marketing we were able to connect studios and publishers with player communities like Lenovo Legion, Steel Series, and HP Omen through content and sweepstakes.

Complicating B2B  matters is the fact that purchases are not made by one or two people but by approval chains of six, eight, even more. Or, as with in-game micro-transactions or subscriptions, purchases are not made once but again and again. ICP’s must account for both individual personas and patterns of those of groups. To top it all off, most buyers prefer to do much of the research and discovery themselves, and may go to great lengths to avoid intrusive and ineffective “salesly  content.” It’s important to get this all right and usually marketing sits in a position to have eyes on all of it (with help from our friends in analytics). From real-time feedback to marketing campaigns and messages to managing Customer Advisory Boards and User Groups, moderating customer communities, and working hand-in-glove with CS, Sales, Product, and Engineering, Marketing can be the single source of truth for that ICP.

Getting it right requires marketing to dive into the data. Going back in history to find common attributes of segments that buy more, buy faster, renew at higher rates, and act as market advocates (K-Factors) is not very glamorous (unless you're a nerd like me). But, it’s critical. Marketers need to speak regularly and often with prospects (especially resistant ones) and existing customers all over their lifecycle, to understand challenges and opportunities for engagement. We must proactively and consistently define the ICP and keep everyone else aligned. In games with a long pedigree, this span provides perspective. For instance, the players of Dungeons & Dragons first edition may not seem like the same target audience as 5e but they may be the buyers (as in buying it for their kids). What role does nostalgia play in creating content? How have the buyers changed since they signed onto the brand?

The other element is correctly sizing the markets where your ICP lives and getting it onto the treasure map. It starts with the Total Addressable Market, a representation of the part of the global economy relevant to your brand. This is a great start and useful when raising seed capital, but nowhere near specific enough to be very useful. Filtering the TAM to identify the SAM quantifies the market's total value that falls within your ability to sell. This is the number that can (hopefully) sustain your profitable growth targets for the foreseeable future. The SOM represents the buyers that you can realistically expect to win.

By virtue of owning the relationships with analysts and other experts, Marketing should be able to quantify how much opportunity is there for the taking, where it exists, and when coupled with the ICP, the steps required to take it e.g. sales enablement.

By owning the ICP and TAM/SAM/SOM, Marketing is responsible for drawing the map that leads to the treasure (Profitability targets, IPO, Re-Cap, Stock Split, etc). It has the added benefit of identifying effective messaging, choosing channels and programs, drawing roadmaps, and writing scripts and enablement tools for points and people of sale (POS).

For even more, check out Marketing Analytics Roadmap: Methods, Metrics, and Tools by Jerry Rackley. [Not an affiliate link. I don’t receive any benefit.]