E-commerce Leads: Ideal Customer Profiles vs. Buyer Personas

You have to know your customers for your marketing efforts to work.

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Every business owner has had that hammered into their head. Otherwise, you’re just shooting in the dark and are more likely to miss your marks than hit one. 

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It’s not enough to have a general idea. You want a clear, well-defined picture of who’s most likely to buy from you. 

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Chances are that you’ve heard of two approaches to getting there: Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) and buyer personas.

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You probably even use both terms interchangeably, like many marketers.

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But while ICPs and buyer personas overlap, they serve different purposes.

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Ultimately, understanding their differences and knowing when to use each one will help you acquire and nurture better leads until you reach a sale.

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In this article, we’ll explore each and see where they fit into your lead acquisition strategy.

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1. What is an ideal customer profile?

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Imagine there’s a hypothetical company most likely to derive value from your products or services.

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That business has all the qualities of your perfect buyer — and the ideal customer profile (or ICP) describes them. 

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^{An ICP is a high-level overview of the types of customers that offer the best fit for what you’re selling.}

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It considers various factors and uses them to craft a broad profile of your audience.

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For a B2B SEO firm, for example, your perfect customer could be a mid-sized company struggling with organic traffic growth.

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A dropshipping e-commerce store, on the other hand?

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That could be a person or small business looking for convenient, low-cost ways to buy trending or niche products without worrying about managing inventory.

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Whatever the case, this kind of customer is less likely to churn and will give you high-value returns.

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The ICP narrows your focus to them and helps direct your marketing, sales, and customer support strategies.

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Ideal customer profiles are pretty useful for e-commerce businesses that concentrate on account-based marketing rather than individual leads.

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Craft an ideal customer profile well, and it could become your blueprint for finding high-quality leads.

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That way, your sales team doesn’t waste time and effort on deals they can’t close. 

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2. What is a buyer persona?

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^{A buyer persona is a semi-fictional character that embodies your customers' preferences, behaviour, motivations, demographics, and pain points.}

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It’s based on actual research mixed with educated speculation.

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Only 65% of buyers relate to the content brands release.

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Now, considering how it would put you ahead, wouldn’t you like to know the ins and outs and driving forces behind every preferred customer personally? 

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Since that’s not possible, buyer personas are the next best thing. 

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In short, they give your business a clear sense of direction and context. They help you understand who your ideal customers are and what drives them. 

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Armed with that knowledge, your marketing team, for instance, can create content that speaks directly to your target audience’s needs and pain points.

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But it can be useful for more than just marketing. Buyer personas can also provide value for sales and support teams so they can focus on the right prospects.

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It’s important to note that you can have several buyer personas. There’s no standard for an upper limit.

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3. Ideal customer profiles vs. buyer personas in e-commerce 

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At this point, you can be forgiven for failing to see any clear distinction between ICPs and buyer personas.

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After all, on the surface level, they both serve the overarching goal of helping you understand and connect with your target audience.

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But they’re pretty different. Here’s how:

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3.1 Scope and targets

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The ICP is a framework that creates a broad profile of ideal customers.

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They’re broader in scope and take into consideration a company’s overall characteristics.

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Buyer personas, on the other hand, are way narrower in scope. Instead, they zoom in on specific preferences and needs of individual buyers.

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3.2 Detailed attributes

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The ideal customer profile looks at business traits like:

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• Annual revenue
• Company size
• Industry
• Geography
• Customer base size
• Technological maturity

Conversely, buyer personas take more personal details into account, such as:

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• Name
• Age
• Income 
• Position
• Goals and motivations
• Pain points

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3.3 Marketing usage and focus

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With ICP, marketing can identify the specific segments within the broader market they should target.

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And then, they can focus on them to optimise their lead acquisition strategies. 

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On the flip side, because buyer personas give you a granular understanding of your ideal customers, you can refine your messaging and content so they actually appeal to your target audience. 

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3.4 Types of data sources

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Whether you’re crafting an ICP or buyer persona, you need data from a wide range of sources.

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For the former, you’ll primarily draw from external sources like industry reports, company databases, and the like.

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On the other hand, buyer personas rely more on internal sources, like your customer-facing teams and CRM.

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Surveys and interviews with existing customers can also provide valuable insights.

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4. How to use ICPs and buyer personas to target leads

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Want to send more quality leads into your sales funnel? Here’s how to get the ball rolling with ICPs and buyer personas:

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4.1 Establish your ideal customer profile

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Your ideal customer profile should be ready to go before you get to prospecting and qualifying leads. Establishing one doesn’t have to be complex. 

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Start by looking at your current best customers. Who are they? What common traits do they share?

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Think about things like their industry, company size, revenue, and the challenges they faced before finding your product or service.

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Once you’ve got that list, analyse the data for standout patterns and attributes correlating to value. Figure out the “what” and the “why.” Clearly document your findings, showing the key attributes.

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4.2 Develop detailed buyer personas

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Now that you have your ICP, you can develop personas within your established ICP framework.

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Think of them as profiles of individual customers within the broader scope of your ICP. For instance, a persona could represent a key decision-maker within a company. 

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Extensive research is the first (and most important) component of developing a detailed persona. Without that, you’re working on assumptions. 

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Surveys, interviews, website traffic analytics, and more can help you gather the necessary information.

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Extensively analyse the data, and then you can build your persona. There are many free templates online, such as HubSpot’s Make My Persona template.

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4.3 Identify key attributes of target leads

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Time to drill down into the specific attributes of your target leads.

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By that, we mean looking out for the identifiers that can help you recognize a high-quality lead early on.

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For individual buyers, you’re focusing on demographic details like age and location.

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But also, what problems are they trying to solve? What’s driving their purchasing decisions?

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4.4 Align messaging with ICPs and personas

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With your mannequins ready, it's time to tailor suits to fit. Remember the scopes we covered earlier? 

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Your ICP represents the broader picture, so your messaging should address general challenges and goals that resonate with this group.

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But you’ll want to get more up close and personal with buyer personas. Personalise your messaging to offer targeted solutions to problems.

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For example, a business offering SEO strategy for enterprise clients knows now to focus on how its solution can tackle specific issues its clients face.

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4.5 Segment leads based on attributes

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This stage involves dividing your collection of leads into smaller lists (groups or segments) based on their characteristics. 

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Segmentation is important because it allows you to deliver targeted and relevant messages rather than generic pitches.

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You wouldn’t want to send the same message to a struggling startup and a towering enterprise, after all.

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We touched on the attributes earlier. You can segment based on:

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• Demographics
• Industry
• Company size
• location
• Behaviour
• Technology stack, and more.

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4.6 Craft personalised outreach strategies

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Meaningful interactions will drive sales engagement and ultimately lead to closing more deals. But how do you make your outreach meaningful to your audience? You got it the first time — personalising them.

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You’ve already done the necessary research and categorization, so now it’s time to put that to work.

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For example, if you’ve identified a lead from a small business that abandoned a cart, you could reach out with, “Hi [lead’s name],” before highlighting their problem and how you can solve it.

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4.7 Use data to refine profiles and personas

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You need data to create your ICP and personas — and to tweak them.

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As long as you want them to remain accurate and relevant, the journey doesn’t stop with their development.

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What to do?

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Continue collecting quantitative and qualitative data from relevant sources like user research (interviews, surveys, focus groups, etc.), emails, apps, social media, CRM, industry reports, and more. When you find outdated or inaccurate characteristics, adjust them.

4.8 Track engagement and adjust tactics

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Those personalised outreach messages from the previous point? You can’t just send them and forget them.

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How, then, would you know if they’re effective? By tracking engagement and other KPIs, you get to see how your leads are responding.

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From there, you can adjust your efforts accordingly.

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5. Can you use ICPs and buyer personas together?

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What’s better than using an ICP or a buyer persona? Using them in tandem.

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So, yes, you can (and should) use both frameworks together. In fact, that’s the best way to harness their power. 

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You already know the ICP provides a broader overview, so you’ll use it as a foundation. It will help you identify high-potential accounts worth targeting.

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Once you have that nailed down, the buyer persona comes into play.

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Now, you can take a more detailed look at the individuals within those organisations and focus on their relevant attributes to target your marketing and sales efforts.

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At the end of the day, deals are between people, not companies.

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Some customers are a fit for your business, while others aren’t.

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Ideal customer profiles and buyer personas allow you to focus on the first group to optimise your lead acquisition efforts and make more sales.

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In this article, we compared and contrasted both frameworks and discussed the process of leveraging them to target the right leads for your e-commerceecommerce business.