Ideal customer profile

Also called: ICP.

An ICP describes companies, not people: trade, location, size, and the signals that make a business a good fit. A buyer persona describes the person inside it. For local lead generation, an ICP is usually a trade, a place and a qualification rule.

Write it so it can be filtered. "Small businesses that need marketing" can't be turned into a list. "Independent plumbing and HVAC contractors in the Austin metro with a website and fewer than 50 Google reviews" can, because every part maps to a field you can see.

Good ICP fields for local businesses include category, city or service area, whether they have a website, rating and review count, hours, and website platform. Fields you can't see, such as revenue, are better left out than guessed.

Revisit the ICP after each campaign. Reply rates by segment tell you which part of the definition is wrong faster than any planning session.

Example

A review-management agency's ICP: dental practices in Florida with a website, a rating below 4.5, and at least 20 reviews. The rule filters a statewide list down to the practices most likely to care.