The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is one of the cornerstones of successful marketing and sales, especially in B2B. Research shows that having a well-developed ICP can increase marketing returns by 30% and increase the chances of exceeding sales targets by 67%
. However, many agencies still face a number of challenges in developing an ICP and do not always use it to its full potential. In this article, we will take a closer look at:
- Current challenges in creating an ICP in 2024-2025;
- Typical mistakes and omissions in the ICP development process, according to industry research.
- New trends and opportunities, including AI-powered tools that are changing the approach to defining an ICP;
- Pain points of small and medium-sized agencies seeking to scale ICP work with limited data, time, or resources;
- Practices of market leaders – what the most successful agencies do differently when working with ICP (processes, hypothesis validation, segmentation, etc.).
We will also provide examples and cases, including showing how the modern AI assistant Elsa AI automatically generates target client profiles, including audience segmentation, buyer persona description, Jobs-to-be-Done, problems, pains, decision triggers, barriers, alternatives, selection criteria, interaction channels and tools, etc. This will help to see in practice how new technologies can facilitate and accelerate the creation of effective ICPs.
The Key Challenges of Building an ICP in 2024–2025
1. Lack of Cross-Team Alignment: One of the biggest challenges is getting all departments on the same page about the ideal customer. When marketing, sales, product, and support have different views of your “ideal customer,” efforts are scattered, campaigns lose focus, and sales suffer. This misalignment slows revenue growth (up to 27% slower) and causes you to miss out on new customers — companies without a unified ICP are 50% less likely to acquire new customers. The best results come from teams where the ICP is aligned and implemented across the board.
2. Relying on intuition, not data. Making decisions “on gut instinct” can cause you to miss your most promising segments. What seems like an obvious “hot spot” may not actually be profitable. It’s much more effective to use real data — firmographics, intent signals, behavior analytics — to identify your most valuable prospects. Even if you don’t have a lot of data, it’s better to rely on it and create a preliminary ICP than to act blindly. According to McKinsey, companies that actively use customer analytics are 23 times more likely to outperform competitors in attracting new customers and 9 times more likely to outperform competitors in retaining them. Conclusion: data helps find “that” segment that will bring the highest ROI.
3. Too broad or too narrow a portrait. Finding the balance of “not too broad, not too narrow” is another challenge. An ICP that is too vague leads to marketing dispersion and low conversion, while an overly narrow one cuts off the market and prevents sales from growing. It often takes several iterations to find the “golden mean”: first, you define the ICP based on the available data, then test and refine it. The cost of error is high: an overly broad ICP delays the deal cycle and reduces conversion, while an overly narrow one leaves a large part of the market “overboard”. It’s no wonder that Gartner predicts that by 2025, 75% of companies will cut ties with “unsuitable” clients – that’s how damaging it is to work with the wrong audience. Proactive segmentation and rejection of “less than ideal” clients are becoming the new norm in order to optimize resources.
4. A profile that quickly becomes outdated. The world and customer needs are constantly changing, and your ideal customer profile should change too. If the ICP is static, it will lose relevance over time: new technologies appear, behavior changes, laws are passed, and competition increases. What worked a year ago may be outdated today. Companies that do not update their ICP are at risk of losing relevance and missing out on market segments. It is important to review and refresh the profile based on new research, customer feedback, and market trends. For example, your ICP may differ by region or evolve as new pain points arise among your audience - keep an eye on this and adjust your course.
5. Difficulties with implementing and using the ICP. Even a well-written ICP will be of little use if it is left to gather dust as a beautiful PDF. Translating the profile from theory to practice is perhaps the most serious barrier. It is necessary to integrate the ICP into CRM, funnels, advertising targeting, sales scripts; train teams to work with it, regularly remind them, and update the data. You can’t do without dedicated resources and cross-functional interaction. But the game is worth the candle: companies that have managed to implement ICP in operational work achieve an average of 47% higher average check and improve the customer churn rate by 80% (i.e., retain more customers). On the contrary, poor implementation is fraught with wasted advertising budgets and lost deals. Therefore, the best agencies not only create ICP but also carefully consider how to apply it at all stages - from marketing to sales and customer success.
Common Mistakes and Missed Opportunities in ICP Development
Creating an ICP is only half the battle; it’s important to do it right. Many common approaches result in the resulting “ideal client” being of little use. Here are the mistakes to avoid and the insights that marketers often miss:
- A superficial, stereotypical profile.
One of the main pitfalls is limiting yourself to general demographic data and template characteristics (“CEO, 35-50 years old, loves golf”). Such a stereotypical ICP does not answer the key questions: what problem is the client trying to solve, why hasn’t he solved it yet, how do they perceive our solution and what is important to them when choosing? These questions are the core of any ICP, and the answers to them do not lie on the surface of demographics. They are hidden in the motives, goals, and pain points of the audience. If your profile does not provide an understanding of what specific pain point you are solving for the client and why your solution may not be suitable for them, then you have described the wrong “ideal client”. As segmentation consultant Susan Baumgartner notes, marketers are often disappointed: a beautifully described customer’s age and position do not in any way indicate what message will hook or repel them, what alternative they are considering, what doubts they have. Solution: dig deeper, focus first on problems and attitudes, putting demographics on the back burner. First, describe what your ideal customer thinks and feels, and only then add “age 40, lives in Moscow,” if it is even important.
- Relying only on internal opinion, without the voice of the customer.
Another mistake is to draw a portrait solely on the basis of team brainstorming and assumptions, without talking to real representatives of the audience. 51% of consumers believe that brands do a poor job of finding out their real needs, and only 10% believe that companies do a good job of this. However, when creating an ICP, the direct voice of the customer is often ignored: interviews, surveys, and satisfaction studies. A persona born in an office vacuum will be one-sided and out of touch with reality. It is not surprising that without reliable data, we risk missing important insights into customer motivation. In Audience Audit's practice, it has happened more than once that segmentation studies have revealed unexpected clusters of customers with motivations that no one suspected, or, on the contrary, have refuted popular hypotheses within the company. Conclusion: include the "voice of the customer" in the process - conduct interviews with the best and worst customers, and collect feedback. This will save you from major miscalculations.
- Ignoring behavioral data.
In 2025, building an ICP without looking at the real actions of users is an omission. Marketers note that behavioral signals and data on digital customer interactions often provide more valuable information than a dry questionnaire. For example, what's the point of knowing that your ICP is a "40-year-old marketing director" if you haven't studied how such directors behave: what pages they read, what emails they open, how often they visit the product. Modern tools allow you to collect this information (web analytics, CRM, activity tracking), and the best teams include it in the profile. Behavior shows intentions: what queries a person googles, what functions they click on in the demo, how long they use the trial version. These details will allow you to predict the client's next step and personalize the offer for them. If you don't use them, your ICP is blind to reality.
- The ICP is done once and “put on the shelf”.
A classic mistake is to consider the creation of the ICP a one-time task: like they made a document and put a tick. As a result, the profile becomes outdated, and employees forget about it. As experts joke, too often the ICP turns into a “nice folder on the shelf” next to the SWOT analysis and other consultants. It is literally a “lost document” instead of working for the company every day. A similar problem is when the ICP remains the property of the marketing department and is not used by sales or service. In some organizations, personas are created, but the sellers “have never heard of them” and continue to shoot at everyone in sight. Such inconsistency reduces the value of the ICP to zero. To fix the situation, implement the ICP into processes: train departments, make it part of the onboarding of new employees, use it in content briefs and advertising campaigns. And most importantly, update it regularly. Modern market leaders review the ICP at least once every 6-12 months or more often if they notice changes in customer behavior. The ICP is a “living” document. If you treat it as static, it quickly loses value and leads to mistakes.
- No negative personas.
Many people focus on describing “who we want to attract,” but forget to define “who we don’t want.” The so-called negative persona (exclusion portrait) is a very useful tool, especially if you have limited resources. For example, these could be very small clients without a budget or an industry that your product is not suitable for. Analyzing such unwanted audiences saves time and money: you clearly know who is not worth spending marketing on. As HubSpot advises, start with interviews or analysis of clients who bought from you, but brought little money or quickly dropped off - this is often the “not your” segment. By skipping the step with negative personas, the company risks wasting efforts on obviously unpromising contacts.
To summarize this section: the ideal ICP is born from data and dialogue with the market, not from the office, it focuses on the client’s motives, pains, and barriers, not just their position and age. Such a profile is reviewed and used constantly by all teams. Avoid the listed mistakes, and the ICP will become a truly practical tool, indicating where exactly your best opportunities for growth lie.
New Trends and AI-Based Solutions for ICP Development
Technology does not stand still, and the formation of ICP is also evolving. In 2024-2025, data-driven approaches and the use of artificial intelligence will come to the fore. Here are the trends and tools that are starting to change the game in the field of defining target customers:
– Dynamic, constantly updated ICPs. Until recently, customer profiles were reviewed once a year, or even less often. Now, thanks to analytical platforms and AI, companies can keep ICPs up to date on an ongoing basis. AI platforms integrate with CRM, web analytics, social networks and other sources, continuously collecting new data. Such a “live” ICP automatically reflects changes in the behavior and preferences of the audience. Businesses are able to quickly adjust marketing to market changes almost in real time. Gartner estimates that firms that regularly update customer data achieve 20% higher conversion than those who cling to outdated lists. In other words, adaptability is a new competitive advantage: a personal client profile evolves with them, allowing the company to catch new requests in a timely manner. - Automation of big data collection and analysis. Previously, to create an ICP, marketers manually researched the market, conducted interviews, and summarized data from several tables - a process that took weeks. Today, AI can do the lion's share of this work in a matter of hours. AI algorithms take on the routine: they monitor social networks, collect public data about companies, analyze behavior on the site, parse reviews, and all this almost instantly. As a result, a panel of hundreds of factors is formed that characterizes your best clients. For example, AI is able to analyze more than 1000+ data points in minutes, while a person can only handle a couple of hundred in a few days. The speed is impressive: a ready-made ICP can be obtained in ~48 hours, while manually it would take up to a month. Moreover, automation is not only faster - it is often more accurate, free from subjective human distortions. Thus, more and more agencies are adopting specialized AI tools for generating ICPs. - A surge of AI solutions for creating personas (AI persona generators). The Martech market has responded to the demand: dozens of services have appeared that promise to use AI to build an ideal client for you. For example, HubSpot launched a free assistant, Make My Persona, a number of startups (Jeda.ai, Lemwarm, etc.) offer an AI Persona Generator. Interestingly, 41% of demand generation marketers plan to use AI more actively in 2024 for more accurate targeting and personalization of messages, and therefore for developing target buyer personas. An important advantage of AI is the ability to identify hidden patterns. Machine learning algorithms can suggest unexpected correlations: for example, that your most loyal customers are users of a certain software or subscribers of a particular blogger, which no one has paid attention to before. As a result, AI helps to form an ICP with new facets that were not obvious to marketers. - ICP "expands the scope of application" - from planning to practical cases. Previously, the customer profile was more of a strategic document. Now, with the advent of generative AI, ICP has become a tool for tactical work. For example, you can upload an ICP description to ChatGPT (or another AI) and literally "chat" with an ideal client. What does this give? Marketers use this approach to: firstly, validate marketing materials - AI, having taken the role of ICP, evaluates how persuasive the text is for this client; secondly, generate content ideas - essentially conduct a dialogue "What would interest such a client? What objections does he have?"; Thirdly, test messages (letter headlines, ads, etc.) on a virtual representative of the audience. For example, expert Christopher Penn recommends uploading a detailed ICP into the language. model and ask it to evaluate content on a number of relevance criteria for this ICP. This method allows you to polish communications before launching a campaign, saving time and budget on real tests. Moreover, some advanced specialists create several “synthetic characters” from one ICP – for example, different representatives of the segment, including a skeptic, and simulate a group discussion. This helps to look at positioning more broadly and anticipate various market reactions. While such practices are only just gaining popularity, they demonstrate powerful potential: ICP + generative AI = a new level of marketing strategy development.
Case: How AI generates ICP (Elsa AI example).
One of the breakthrough tools for automating ICP is Elsa AI – a marketing assistant from the M1-Project platform. It is capable of collecting and designing a detailed profile of a target client in a matter of minutes based on minimal input data. In a recent experiment, a product marketer compared her manual work and AI: Elsa generated a full ICP based on just 8 questions, including a description of the target segment and buyer persona, their Jobs-to-be-Done, key goals, problems and “pains”, decision triggers, barriers to the deal, alternatives under consideration, specific preferred communication channels and much more. In addition to the portrait itself, Elsa also derived a value proposition, a list of benefits, recommendations for positioning and priority marketing channels. The marketer noted three things that particularly impressed her: 1) the AI’s focus on ICP — the entire offer was tailored to the client’s specific pain points and tasks, 2) the depth of development — the AI profile was no less detailed than the one she had created manually, 3) fewer template “watery” words, a clearer hit on the main messages. Other specialists, commenting on this experience, praised how the AI constructor focuses on the client’s pain points and practical tasks, which is often lacking for people when creating personas. Indeed, Elsa AI analyzes data arrays (including reviews, market data, competitors) and generates insights on the fly that previously required hours of work by analysts. At the same time, profiles in Elsa are dynamic — the platform updates them as new trends or changes in audience behavior appear. For agencies, this opens up the opportunity to create deeply developed ICPs even with limited time and budget. Overall, the emergence of such tools means that ICP development is no longer a long, labor-intensive process and is becoming much smarter and faster. An agency can get an analytically sound client profile in a day and immediately begin using it for targeting and content strategy.
Pain points of small and medium agencies when working with ICP
For small and medium agencies, the ICP topic is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the high potential is clear: focus on “your” client = reduce unnecessary costs and increase sales. On the other hand, limited resources prevent this concept from being fully implemented. Here are the most common problems small agencies face when trying to scale their ICP efforts:
- Lack of data and analytics.
Large companies can rely on large arrays of CRM data, market research, hire analysts or buy reports. A small agency often lacks such “luxury”. As a result, the client profile is often based on the assumptions of the owner or the subjective point of view of a couple of managers. As agency owners frankly admit: “We have little data to develop personas. We often have to rely on how the client describes their target audience.” Naturally, such assumptions are not always accurate - the client may be wrong about their best customers. The lack of objective data means that the ICP is either too general or biased. It is also difficult to justify the choice of segment to the client: why did we decide to target, say, CFOs, and not IT directors? Without figures and facts, the client may not believe in your ICP and will not want to change the strategy. This problem is aggravated by the fact that many clients are not ready to pay separately for in-depth market research and ICP creation - they believe that they already know their audience. The agency has to either include this work "at a loss" or not do it at all. The solution may be to use available sources (Google Analytics, social media data, small surveys) and a step-by-step approach: first, collect at least some kind of base, outline the ICP, and refine it as new data appears. Budget AI tools are also becoming an increasingly realistic option: they allow even small teams to get insights from open data without hiring expensive analysts.
- Limited time and human resources.
In a small marketing agency, every employee is worth their weight in gold and often combines several roles. It is almost impossible to assign a person who will only do research for the ICP for a week or two, project deadlines are looming. As a result, the ICP development is either done “on the run” or put off for a long time. The average agency can spend up to 30 days of manual work on creating a detailed ICP, taking into account interviews, data analysis, and coordination with the client’s team. For many, this is an unaffordable luxury. Even if you take on the task, there is a risk that the work will drag on and become outdated before it is completed. This is why it is not uncommon for an ICP to be done once for the sake of it at the start of a project and then not returned to. In addition, a lack of competencies can play a role – for example, not every small agency has an analytics specialist or strategist who knows how to conduct market segmentation. The team is strong in execution (launching advertising, managing social networks), but not in the research part. Here, AI-based tools come to the rescue again. They relieve some of the burden: they collect scattered data into a single profile and offer to fill out a standardized questionnaire. This allows for a significant reduction in labor costs. As noted by Elsa AI users, this tool reduces the time for ICP development by 50% or more, allowing for a detailed profile to be obtained in a matter of hours. One agency shared that with Elsa, they now prepare an ideal profile for the very first meeting with the client and can immediately show insights, whereas before this took weeks. Thus, small agencies are beginning to solve the time problem through automation. However, it is important to distribute efforts correctly: if resources are limited, it is better to focus on a couple of the most promising segments, but to work out their ICPs qualitatively, than to try to embrace the immensity.
- Difficulties with scaling and using ICP.
Let's say an agency has developed an ICP for a client. The next question is how to use this profile, especially if the team has limited capacity? It often happens like this: a strategist has drawn a portrait, and then the account manager and content manager act the old-fashioned way, without looking at it. Or the ICP lives in a presentation, and in advertising accounts the target is still set up broadly, “as usual”. Small agencies admit: “Our personas are not very helpful in creating content and messages”. The reason may be that the profile turned out to be too theoretical or it is unclear how to implement its recommendations in practice. To overcome this problem, you need to integrate the ICP into the workflow: for example, turn the ICP characteristics into segments of advertising audiences (upload lists of companies from the ICP to LinkedIn Campaign Manager or set interests and positions according to the portrait), set up fields in the CRM to evaluate leads according to ICP compliance and train sellers to prioritize leads with a high match. It is difficult for small teams to immediately restructure all processes, so they can implement gradually: start with one or two applications (say, change the tone of advertisements for a specific pain scenario from the ICP). Another pain is the lack of a quick effect. A client of a small agency wants to see the result now, and working on the ICP is more of an “investment in the future”. Clients are often skeptical: they say, Why waste time on these profiles? Let's drive leads. The agency's task is to explain the value and try to show quick wins. For example, using a new ICP, you can immediately identify several irrelevant segments and reduce unnecessary expenses on attracting them - this is measurable in money. Or create a more catchy message for the main pain point of the ICP and see an increase in response to the campaign. Such small successes will convince both the client and the team that the efforts on the ICP pay off. In general, for small agencies, the main recipe is optimization. It is necessary to make the most of the data that is available (even if it is not much), rely on ready-made frameworks and tools, and not strive to do it “perfectly” right away. It is better to have a working, albeit not super-detailed ICP than to have none. And technology is now really starting to play the role of an equalizer: even a small team with a good AI assistant can conduct a deep analysis of the audience, which was previously available only to corporations with an analytics department.
What Successful Agencies Do Differently When Working with ICP
The best marketing agencies in the business achieve outstanding results in large part because of how they use ICP. Their approach differs in a number of ways, from the methodology they use to how they implement it into their daily processes. Here are the key features of how market leaders work with ICP:
1. Clear focus and prioritization of ICP at the strategic level.
Top agencies don’t view ICP as a formality – for them, it is the starting point for all marketing activities. Account-Based Marketing research shows that over 80% of the most successful ABM organizations have a clearly defined ICP, and it pays off: companies with a “strong” ICP record 68% higher win rates. In other words, market winners take the time to “sharpen” the portrait of the ideal client and document it before investing in campaigns. They know that it is better to invest in the right targeting than to spread the budget thin. That’s why leading agencies often hold ICP workshops with the client at the start of a project, achieving full agreement between all parties on who our priority client is. This investment pays off: according to TOPO (a research firm), organizations with a well-thought-out ICP achieve a 68% higher win rate**. And as we remember, more than 2/3 of ABM leaders have a dedicated ICP/target accounts manager – a sign of the importance top companies attach to this function.
2. Cross-functional alignment – marketing and sales act in concert.
The best agencies know: ICP is only effective when all teams speak the same language about the client. They involve not only marketers in the development and updating of the ICP, but also the sales department, account managers, and product consultants. This ensures that the portrait is practical and applicable. Research confirms that success is only possible if both parties – marketing and sales – are aware of and involved in creating the ICP, and understand how this profile will be used in the work process at all stages. In top agencies, salespeople are trained to recognize the “ideal client” and focus on such leads, while marketing selects channels and messages strictly for the ICP. The result is a coordinated growth “machine” instead of a tug-of-war. Moreover, advanced teams expand the ICP concept to customer success and the product: everyone is guided by what type of clients are valuable to the business in order to build service and product improvements accordingly. In such companies, there are no situations where the success department retains “just anyone” – they also know the profile of the ideal client and are not afraid to recommend leaving those who are not suitable (this is exactly the same trend of “parting with non-ideal clients” according to Gartner). Thus, a single ICP acts as a compass for the entire organization.
3. Using ICP as an operational tool (not just a marketing hypothesis).
A distinctive feature of leading agencies is that they deeply integrate ICP into their workflows. For example, such agencies integrate ICP directly into the client’s CRM system: each lead/account is assigned an ICP compliance score (on a scale or checklist), and the funnel is built so that salespeople’s efforts are concentrated on the most suitable ones. Top performers also make ICP the basis of a content strategy: when planning topics, they always check whether it is relevant to the pain/goals of our ICP. When launching campaigns, they segment creatives for different personas within the ICP. If there are several ICPs (and large clients often have several segments/personas), leading agencies carefully manage the segment portfolio – their own approach and materials are developed for each. Interestingly, many high-performance agencies go beyond static PDFs: they create interactive ICP dashboards that are updated with new data. This allows you to constantly monitor changes in the characteristics of the target audience and quickly adjust tactics. In addition, leading agencies include ICP criteria in campaign KPIs: for example, they evaluate not only the number of leads, but also their "ICP-fit" (the percentage of leads that match the profile). This indicator encourages teams not to chase quantity for the sake of quantity. As a result, the quality of lead generation is much higher. It is not for nothing that RollWorks notes that 78% of leading account-based organizations have formally implemented ICP criteria in the account selection processes - this is what separates the "newbies" from the "masters". Simply put, top agencies turn ICP into a filter at every stage: from selecting target accounts to personalizing emails.
4. Constantly checking and validating ICP.
The best do not stop at the ICP they adopted once - they constantly check whether it really brings the best results. As one expert said, “We thought our target base was X, but the analysis showed Y. People are often confident that they know their client, and then get an insight that they need to adjust their focus a little.” That’s why leading agencies invest time and tools to test ICP hypotheses with data. For example, they conduct A/B tests of different segments: they launch pilot campaigns for several audiences and compare the response. Or, if resources are limited, they at least retrospectively analyze which deals were the most profitable and whether they correspond to the initial ICP – and adjust the portrait if there are discrepancies. Let’s recall the advice of one marketer from the discussion: “I may like version A of the message, but it’s not my opinion that matters, but the target’s reaction. I would simply test both options on the site and see which converts better.” This pragmatic approach (test and learn) distinguishes top agencies. They treat ICP not as a dogma, but as a working hypothesis that needs to be constantly improved. If the data shows that, say, the mid-sized business segment responds better than expected, the ICP is revised and the strategy is shifted. This is what these agencies are good at: flexibility and attention to facts.
5. In-depth development of segmentation and personalization.
High-performing agencies usually do not limit themselves to one impersonal ICP; they detail it at the level of persons and sub-trigger segments. For example, within the ICP “large e-commerce companies”, they will identify 2-3 key roles (personas) - say, the marketing director “Marina the marketer” and the IT director “Ivan the IT specialist” - since their pain points and motivations are different. For each persona, their own messages and offers are formed. Subtle segmentation differences are another feature: market leaders pay attention to the client’s readiness stages, regional characteristics, and previous experience. In essence, they build a multidimensional ICP that takes into account several slices. For example, in the ABM practice of top companies, ICP is used to prioritize the list of target accounts: first, companies that ideally match the ICP portrait are selected, then marketing personalizes communications for specific decision makers. This two-level approach (account ICP + buyer persona) allows achieving impressive results. According to HubSpot, organizations with a mature ABM strategy, thanks to ICP, attribute up to 73% of revenue to clients targeted by ICP. Top agencies actually create a system of segments, where each segment has its own mini-ICP, its own personalized funnel. And, importantly, they are not afraid of narrow focus: it is better to contact 100 companies that are ideal for you than 1000 “anyone”. The work culture is such that ICP is part of any brainstorm: “Let's do a webinar ... Wait, which ICP is it designed for? Which persona will come? How does this solve their problem? " These questions are constantly being asked, directing efforts in the right direction.
To sum it up: top agencies treat the ICP as a strategic asset. They invest time and research to create it, integrate it into their work, review it regularly, and strictly follow it in every campaign.
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