We talk to many entrepreneurs that are thinking about testing new ideal customer profiles. These new ideal customer profiles may be outside of their typical customers. While it is good to be focused on your main ideal customer profile it is okay to test new ICPs. You may have had some inbound leads or even think there are good use cases for your solution for new organizations.. This blog covers some ideas for testing new ideal customer profiles.
Identify Targets
I would suggest being rigid with all your ideal customer profiles as a start-up. Identify organizations that best match your new ICP. Be focused on a few targets in this new market. This could be a new geography, an adjacent industry, larger client, or even something totally new. Don’t forget about new buyer personas. They may have different titles and roles than previous targets.
Outbound Effort
The new ideal customer profile will mean updated messaging. There could be new benefits and terminology you should weave into your messaging. Think about creating new content for your website that can be used. This could be around a vertical page or even a blog. This will help with your inbound marketing and provide content you can share with these new targets as part of the sales process. Set-up a cadence and start with the outbound effort. This cadence should include email and phone calls. It could also be possible to leverage LinkedIn with your outreach. The goal is to set-up discovery calls and talk to customers. From there you can test your assumptions and see how the value proposition lands with this new ideal customer profile.
Review the Results
Reflect back on the results of your campaign. How did the initial outreach go? Could you validate the customer fit with your discovery calls? Have the opportunities progressed? Ultimately you need to determine the viability of this new ideal customer profile. If it is a fit then expand the effort. Make sure you are recording everything in your CRM.
Example with VA Partners
VA Partners has a client with an industrial product that is used to refresh a space. It is great for high traffic areas and can be done very affordably. We have been helping them get into quick service restaurants and grocery chains. Together we have been able to close some large clients for multiple projects throughout their locations. As we were examining the new ideal customer we thought about the use cases, capability of multiple projects, and business pains. Seniors residence was determined to be a good choice. An initial campaign was set to a group of targets. This resulted in some significant discovery calls and has since turned into a pilot project. This organization has hundreds of facilities and multiple use cases that could also use this industrial project. We have expanded the original pool of targets and are now booking meetings in the US and Canada.
If you would like to target new ideal customer profiles, but don’t have the horsepower to do it, let’s connect and talk about how VA Partners can support you.
