Are You Making These 6 Common Mistakes with Your Ideal Customer Profile?

​The first step to creating an effective marketing strategy is to get to know your customer. You can do this by creating an ideal customer profile. Since your ICP informs everything you do after, it’s important to make sure it’s effective and accurate. Here are the 6 most common mistakes businesses make when crafting their ICP. 

Basing Your Ideal Customer Profile on Assumptions 

You may know a great deal about your customers, but you need objective data from the market, not just assumptions. Your assumptions could be wrong or could be missing something vital. Once you start researching your target audience, you may encounter some surprises. There might be trends you hadn’t noticed before.  

Not Being Specific 

Your ideal customer profile should identify one single individual who benefits most from your products and services. This isn’t the only person who will buy from you, but the ideal person to focus your resources on trying to reach. If you try to be everything for everyone, you’ll end up pleasing no one.  

Ignoring Patterns 

As you go about creating your ideal customer profile, you’ll start seeing patterns. You should take note of all these trends and include them, even if they don’t seem strictly relevant to your business. All information could be useful in crafting your marketing message and targeted advertising. 

Forgetting Psychological Data 

When we think of customer profiles, it’s natural to think of demographics such as age, location, and income level. But don’t forget to also include psychological factors such as core values, buying behavior, and dreams and aspirations. 

In fact, this information could be even more important. You need to make an emotional connection with your target market. Your marketing should speak to their values, beliefs, and challenges. This is how you demonstrate the ways your offering can benefit them. 

Failing to Gather Indirect Data 

Reaching out to customers and holding focus groups are excellent ways to get data from your target audience. But don’t forget to also obtain indirect data. People won’t always tell you what you need to know if you ask them. On the other hand, you can listen to their conversations and watch their behavior to learn even more about them. 

Setting It and Forgetting It 

Once you have a strong ideal customer profile based on objective data from your market, you’re ready to get started offering your products and services to them. But your ICP is not something you can simply set once and then forget about.  

You’ll have to revise your ICP occasionally due to changes in the market or your customers’ tastes. When you launch a new product or service, you’ll have to adjust accordingly. It’s also helpful to brush up your ICP from time to time with new information from the market. Keep in steady touch with your customers so you can keep your ideal customer profile and marketing strategy up to date. 

Do you want to learn more about getting to know your audience?  

Check out this course in Innovate Academy Memberships:  
CREATE YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE, which teaches you the A to Z of creating an effective ideal customer profile and helps you achieve your business goals.  

HEAD OVER TO INNOVATE ACADEMY AND REGISTER TODAY! 

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