What’s An ICP? Here’s Why Your Brand Strategy Needs One
If you watched our How To Build Your Brand Masterclass, you know that branding and creative expert Scott Ohene-Nyako stressed ICPs as the crucial foundation for understanding your target audience. But what does ICP mean? And how does it play into your brand-building strategy?
The meaning of ICP
“Customers are your community. They are your tribe… your active person sponsors,” says Scott. An army of loyal consumers is virtually marketing in itself. What attracts such loyalty is feeling wholly understood and served by the brand in question; therefore, if you want to build a brand that resonates with customers, you first need to examine what kind of people they are.
This is where ICP comes in. ICP means ‘ideal customer profile’: it’s the breakdown of your target customer’s persona into key areas that comprise their desires, interests and general lifestyle.
The benefit of having an ICP in your brand strategy
Devising an ICP encourages you to be more thoughtful about how you position your content and enables you to meet your customer where they are.
For example, identifying your ideal customer’s lifestyle can influence your tone of voice or brand language; knowing they prefer TikTok to Twitter will determine what your social media presence looks like. As Scott puts it, “Once we develop these kind of ICP worlds for our consumers, we can start to build even greater strategies… to make sure that we are hitting mark with our ideal customers.”
Creating your ICP
Think of your customer like a fictional character with a comprehensive back story. Give them a name and brief bio. “You must be able to paint a world of your ICPs,” Scott says. Use the six Ps below to break down the core elements of their persona. If you have more than one target customer, create ICPs for all of them.
The Six Ps
Position What is your customer’s career or profession?
Pain point What is the need they have that your business can solve?
Play How do they spend their spare time?
Platforms Where are they present on social media?
Perception of you How do you want them to feel towards your brand?
Purpose What are their beliefs and values?
Creating ideal customer profiles are an insightful exercise to put of your target audience front-and-centre of your brand strategy. “What are we doing as founders to make sure that we are meeting them at their need?” asks Scott. Knowing your customer well will help you improve your product, create content that lands, and build strong brand loyalty.
