For countless years, marketing teams attracted new leads by casting a wide net and hoping for a bite. In some scenarios, they did this without little thought, in a tactic that makes most marketers squirm: “spraying and praying.”
Obviously, this is not true for every marketer, but the prevalence of these strategies led to account-based marketing (ABM). ABM focuses on generating revenue from a carefully crafted list of target accounts, instead of a generalized buyer persona. Since coming onto the inbound marketing scene, ABM has exploded in popularity, mainly due to its successes.
Before you run off to your boss with content ideas for an ABM strategy, you first need to define your ideal customer profile (ICP). Without it, you won’t have a reference to create your first list of target accounts, and you won’t be able to curate the right marketing material at the appropriate time.
Here’s an overview of setting up an ICP.
As noted, an ICP is your ideal client profile or a description of the kind of company you want to work with, or you believe it is a perfect fit for your company. So, instead of saying, “We want to work with X Company,” think more along the lines of, “Our team works well with a B2B company with 100 employees, located in the Southwest region of the U.S., have a large marketing department who are skilled at automation software, and make at least $1 million in revenue annually.”
To develop an example like that, you’ll need to look for specific company-wide and personal characteristics.
You may already be able to point out similarities between companies you currently work with to whom you deliver your best work. Are they all B2C? Are they located in the same geographic location? Find out for sure by zeroing in on these characteristics:
Not only do you want to look at a company as a whole, but you’ll want to look for certain traits among the people within that company you’ll be working with. After all, you want to market to the decision-maker in a target account, and you’ll want to have a good relationship from day 1. Ask yourself:
If you’re overwhelmed about locating these details, don’t be. There are several methods to getting the data you need to define your ICP. They include:
Now that you have some guidance on crafting your ideal clients, you can start outlining yours. You can then begin narrowing down your target accounts, and before you know it, you’ll be off to the ABM races. For any help with ICPs, messaging, or overall tactics, don’t hesitate to reach out.