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Ideal Customer Profile in 7 Phases, from Frustrations to 1-Page Brief

Builds a deep profile of your ideal customer in seven phases: frustrations and failed attempts, inner fears and identity, the buying trigger, the lookalike bad-fit customer, their own words from reviews, a check of your messaging against the profile and a one-page brief.

icpcustomer researchbuyer psychologyvoice of customermessaging
  1. Phase 1 — Ideal customer beyond demographics
    Market: [insert]

Task: define my ideal customer profile (ICP) in this market, going further than demographics. Describe:
1. The specific frustration they live with every day
2. The moment they realize they need help
3. What they have already tried
4. Why those attempts failed

Give each point its own heading.
  2. Phase 2 — Psychographic profile
    My ICP: [paste]

Task: describe the inner world of this ideal customer. Answer:
1. What do they say to themselves at 2am?
2. What are they secretly afraid of?
3. What would they love to believe they can achieve?
4. Which identity are they trying to protect?
  3. Phase 3 — Buying trigger map
    My ICP: [paste]

Task: pinpoint the moment when this ideal customer makes the decision to buy something like what I offer.
1. Which event, emotion or realization moves them from awareness to action?
2. What does that trigger look like in their real life?
  4. Phase 4 — Bad-fit customer filter
    My ICP: [paste]

Task: describe the customer who resembles this ICP on the surface but is in fact a poor fit. Which signals in their language, their behavior or their expectations reveal that they are likely to churn, to complain or to never see results?

Group the signals under three headings: language, behavior, expectations.
  5. Phase 5 — Voice of the customer
    Reviews, comments and feedback from my market:
[paste]

Task: from this material, pull out the precise vocabulary, recurring phrases and emotionally charged language that my ideal customer relies on when talking about (a) their problem and (b) the result they want.

Group the extracted language under those two headings.
  6. Phase 6 — Message-market match test
    My current offer messaging: [paste]
My ICP profile: [paste]

Task: compare the messaging with the ICP profile and tell me:
1. Where the language does not match
2. Where I address the wrong fear or the wrong desire
  7. Phase 7 — One-page ideal customer brief
    My ICP profile: [paste]

Task: write a brief of one page that portrays my one ideal customer completely. Cover: the situation they are in, what frustrates them, what they aspire to, what triggers the purchase and the precise transformation they are looking for.
Download pack .md
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