The no-nonsense guide to Ideal Client Profiles (ICPs)
How to focus your growth efforts on the right companies
Running a marketing program often feels like coaching kindergarten soccer team. Everyone is moving in different directions and no one really knows where the goal is.
You're trying new campaigns, fresh messaging, trade shows, webinars, outbound sequences, social content, product updates…a little of everything to try to capture everyone. And after all of that activity, the same question pops up in the boardroom or the weekly leadership sync:
“Are we getting any actual leads from all of this?”
It’s the question no one wants to ask out loud, but everyone’s thinking. Because it’s maddeningly common: tons of activity, tons of effort…yet no one's scoring goals. The pipeline barely moves.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
You can do all the right marketing activities, but if they’re pointed at the wrong companies, you will not see meaningful lead flow. You’ll burn budget, stress your team out, and feel like nothing is working.
If you want predictable, consistent pipeline, you need clarity and intention about which companies are worth marketing to in the first place.
That’s where Ideal Client Profiles come in.
ICP work allows you to stop guessing, stop “marketing to everyone,” and finally start seeing real leads show up from the work you’re already doing.
This article will walk you through:
What an ICP is (and what it is not)
Why ICPs make every team — sales, marketing, product, customer success — more effective
How ICPs help you prioritize the companies you actually want to work with
A practical, objective way to build your own ICP
What an Ideal Client Profile (ICP) really is
An Ideal Client Profile describes the type of company that gets the most value from your solution and provides the most value back in return.
An ICP goes beyond “companies you could sell to.” Think: Organizations where sales cycles tend to be smoother, retention and expansion are easier, and cultural alignment makes collaboration better for you and them.
In short: An ICP describes who needs your product and who benefits from it the most.
Why ICPs matter (a lot more than most teams expect)
When companies skip or skimp on ICP development, they end up with bloated target lists, misaligned outreach, and “hope-and-pray” decisions across the business. Metaphorical soccer balls are flying out of bounds constantly.
A strong ICP unlocks alignment across every team and gets you performing like you're in the major leagues. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Sales knows where to spend time, shortens sales cycles, and avoids chasing deals that will never close.
Marketing can create targeted messaging and campaigns that actually land (instead of generic content no one remembers).
Product understands which features matter most to top-value customers.
And Customer Success can identify which customers are most likely to adopt, grow, and stick around long-term.
When everyone is aiming at the same target, everything gets easier.
The goal: Narrow your market to companies you actually want to work with
If you look at a map of the entire market you serve, how do you know which companies you should focus efforts on?
Ideal Client Profiles help us narrow down the market to the companies we actually want to work with. Instead of focusing on 200 companies who could be good clients for us, we focus on 20 companies we know will be great clients.
That’s the point of ICPs in a nutshell: You are not trying to win every company. You’re trying to win the ones that will create the strongest, most durable growth.
3 factors that make up your ICP
It's time to write the playbook. Strong ICPs are made up of three factors:
Firmographics: Revenue, headcount, number of facilities, regions served. This is information you can find readily available via LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, D&B, or other databases.
Operational traits: Processes, technology maturity, infrastructure. These are things you can infer by looking at their website.
Strategic and cultural signals: Growth mindset, safety culture, digital transformation appetite, values alignment. These are factors you can infer from their website, press releases, employee LinkedIn pages, and Glassdoor reviews.
We'll share our Towers Growth ICP so you can see what we mean. We provide growth marketing services for companies in manufacturing and industrial sectors. Based on our past client experiences, we’ve identified our ideal clients to be companies who:
→ Have a B2B sales model, with 11-50 employees, operate around the metals, recycling or concrete industries, and are either family-owned or held by a private equity company. (firmographics)
→ Provide an innovative offering that fills a clear gap in the market, have a sales team of 1-5 people, and little to no current marketing support. (operational traits)
→ Are connected to others within our current client or partner network and approach their work with an open mind, focused on finding the best solutions for their challenges. (strategic and cultural signals)
We'll share our Towers Growth ICP so you can see what we mean. We provide growth marketing services for companies in manufacturing and industrial sectors. Based on our past client experiences, we’ve identified our ideal clients to be companies who:
→ Have a B2B sales model, with 11-50 employees, operate around the metals, recycling or concrete industries, and are either family-owned or held by a private equity company. (firmographics)
→ Provide an innovative offering that fills a clear gap in the market, have a sales team of 1-5 people, and little to no current marketing support. (operational traits)
→ Are connected to others within our current client or partner network and approach their work with an open mind, focused on finding the best solutions for their challenges. (strategic and cultural signals)
How to build your ICP: 3 places to look
Before you sit down to write out all the factors that make up a great client, start by gathering evidence from a few key sources.
1. Team feedback
Talk to people who work closely with customers, like your sales, product, and customer success teams. Ask questions like: Who are our easiest customers to work with? Which deals closed fastest? And who gets the most measurable value from us?
Based on the feedback you receive, look for themes, not one-off opinions.
2. Existing customers
Pull your current customer list and look for patterns among factors like:
Revenue
Number of locations
Types of facilities
Industry segments
Growth signals
Hiring trends
Technology adoption
Ownership type
See if the most common themes align with the companies your team agrees are the best customers to work with.
The more objective your data, the stronger your ICP will be.
3. Your opportunity pipeline
Take a look through companies currently in your sales opportunity pipeline AND those who were marked “closed lost” within the past few years. Seriously — this is a gold mine of information.
See if the companies who ultimately said “no” to your offering have anything in common. And vice versa, see if those who became customers have commonalities.
Armed with this information, you can start to build your list of firmographics, operational traits, and strategic & cultural signals that create your ideal client profile.
Clarity is a competitive advantage
Most companies try to be everything to everyone.
The ones who grow fastest (and with the least chaos) are the ones brave enough to get specific..
An Ideal Client Profile is a strategic decision about where your company will focus, grow, and win.
Because when you know exactly who you serve best, every dollar, every hour, and every campaign suddenly becomes more effective.
If you want help building or refining your ICP — or rolling it into an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) program — our team can help you map the process, build a scoring model to evaluate potential accounts against your ICP, and create an outreach strategy to gain the attention of your ideal accounts.
Learn more about ABM here or reach out to our team here.
