How to Develop Your Ideal Customer Profile

You’ve built an exciting new product and you know it can help farmers and food producers. The challenge is, you're not sure exactly who your target customer is or how to communicate your product to them. You have a limited budget and can't afford to waste money on marketing that doesn't connect. So, where do you start?

You have to answer the single most important question for any founder: "Who exactly is my customer, and what problem does my product solve for them?"

Without knowing who your target customer is, your marketing and sales efforts are just guessing. Having a strategy starts with knowing who you're talking to and what they care about, so you can position your product to get their attention and help them decide to buy. The foundational document that provides this clarity is your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

This guide will give you a step-by-step process for creating an ICP that will provide clear direction for who you’re talking to, what they care about, and how to reach them so you can increase sales and grow your business.

Part 1: Your ICP is your most important strategic asset

Before we dive into the "how," let's get clear on the "why." In the early stages of a startup, creating an ICP can feel like an academic exercise, a "nice-to-have" that you can get to later. In reality, it’s some of the most critical work you can do.

Without a clear ICP, you risk:

• Wasted ad spend: Targeting broad audiences on platforms like LinkedIn or Google Ads without knowing if your true customer is even there.
• Ineffective messaging: Writing website copy and sales emails that talk about your product but fail to connect with the customer's actual problems.
• Generic content: Creating blog posts and social media updates that no one reads because they don't address a specific need.
• Team misalignment: Your product team builds for one user, while your sales efforts are talking to another, leading to internal friction and a confusing customer experience.

Conversely, a well-defined ICP allows you to:

• Attract better leads: Your marketing acts like a magnet for the right customers, and a filter for the wrong ones.
• Improve conversion rates: When your messaging resonates with your audience, they’re more likely to take the next step, whether that's booking a call or making a purchase.
• Guide product development: You get clear insights on how to improve your product based on real customer needs.
• Align your team: The ICP becomes a north star for your entire company, ensuring everyone is working together to serve the same customer.

Part 2: The core components of your ICP

A great ICP isn't a 10-page report. It's a concise, one-page document that brings your ideal customer to life.

It includes a profile of your target customer, their key characteristics, their motivations and pain points, and how you can connect with them.

All this info goes on one page so it can be easily referenced by your product, sales, marketing, customer service, and anyone else who interacts with your customers to help them meet your customers' needs.

To build one, think about the following four key types of information:

• Firmographics: The "who" of the organization. This is the objective data about the business you’re targeting.
  
  Examples: Industry (e.g., row crop, livestock, specialty crop), farm size (acres/head), annual revenue, ownership structure (e.g., family-owned, corporate), geographic location.
  
• Demographics: The "who" of the individual decision-maker within that organization.
  
  Examples: Job title (e.g., owner, farm manager, agronomist), age, education level, tech-savviness
  
  
• Motivations & pain points: The "why" behind their actions. This is where you move from data to insight.
  
  Examples: What are their primary business goals (e.g., increase profitability, improve soil health, ensure succession)? What are the biggest challenges standing in their way (e.g., rising input costs, labour shortages, regulatory pressures)
  
  
• Buying behaviour: The "how" and "where" you can reach them.
  
  Examples: What channels do they use to get information (e.g., specific publications like The Western Producer, trade shows like Agri-Trade)? Who do they trust (e.g., their independent agronomist, a university extension specialist, other farmers in their network)? What is their process for making a major purchase
  
  

The goal isn't to create a laundry list of every possible characteristic, but to identify the specific traits that are most relevant to whether or not they are a fit for your business, to help you define your truly ideal customer.

Part 3: The 4-step process for building your ICP

Now that you have an idea of the information you need, here's a four-step process to gather it and build out your ICP:

Step 1: The internal hypothesis

Start with the expertise you already have. Get your co-founders, sales staff (if you have them), and product team together for a 90-minute workshop. Use a whiteboard or jam board and map out your assumptions for each of the components above. This exercise aligns your team and gives you a clear hypothesis to test.

Step 2: External research

Before you start one-on-one interviews, you can learn a lot by listening to public conversations. Look for clues about your potential customers' pain points and motivations in places like:

• Industry forums: Search for topics related to the problem you solve on agricultural forums or Facebook groups.
• Social media: Look at the comments on posts from major brands and industry publications in your space. What are people complaining about or asking for?
• Competitor reviews: Read the reviews for competing products. What do customers love? What do they hate? These are valuable clues.

Step 3: Customer discovery interviews

Your hypothesis is only a guess until you validate it with real people. This is the most important step in the entire process.

• How to find people: Leverage your network. Ask investors and accelerator mentors for introductions. Reach out to your existing early customers. If you have a budget, offering a $100 gift card for 30 minutes of someone's time is a great investment. Aim for 5-10 interviews to start seeing clear patterns.
• How to conduct the interview: Your only goal is to listen and learn. Fight the urge to pitch your product. Ask open-ended questions about past behaviour, which is a better indicator of what people will do in the future than asking them what they think they would do. And don’t ask if they like or would use your product - they will always say yes!
  

Sample questions:

1. "Can you tell me about your operation and your role there?"
2. "What are your biggest priorities for the business over the next 12-18 months?"
3. "When it comes to [the problem you solve], what's the hardest part of that?"
4. "Walk me through the last time you tried to find a solution for that problem. What did that process look like?"
5. "What, if anything, have you tried in the past that didn't work?"
6. "When you're looking for information about new technology or practices, where do you typically turn?"

Step 4: Synthesize & document

After your interviews, gather your notes and look for patterns to validate or disprove your hypothesis.

• Did the challenges people talked about align with the problem you thought you were solving?
• Did their beliefs and behaviours line up with what you thought you knew about them?
• Did their trusted publications and information sources match your assumptions?

Pull out the most common themes and use them to update your ICP. Replace your initial assumptions with these evidence-based insights.

Part 4: Putting your ICP to work

The finished ICP document is not meant to sit in a folder. It is an active, strategic tool that becomes the essential input for the two most important parts of your commercial plan:

1: Informing your brand positioning and messaging

Your brand positioning defines who your company is in the marketplace, and your key messaging is the story you tell about your products and services. To make that story compelling, you have to know what your audience cares about so you can speak to their needs. Your ICP provides the essential insights for crafting a message that connects. Your ICP answers: "Who are we talking to and what do they care about?"

2: Informing your go-to-market plan

Your go-to-market plan is the set of actions you take to reach your customers. What you know about your ICP is a roadmap for this plan. It tells you exactly which channels to use, which events to attend, and what tactics will be most effective. There's no need to guess whether you should be investing in trade shows or digital ads when your customers have already told you where they spend their time. The ICP answers: "Where do we need to show up to reach them?"

How a marketing strategist can help

Don't know where to start? A marketing strategist like me can help. 

I’ve developed dozens of brands and hundreds of marketing plans, and I always start by defining the ICP. I can help you craft your initial hypothesis, conduct research and interviews, and synthesize a clear customer profile that aligns your team and lays the foundation for your marketing and sales efforts.

I also offer additional services like position & messaging development and go-to-market planning, as well as fractional marketing strategy and management services to help you implement your marketing strategy within your organization. Get in touch if you’d like to learn more!

Your strategy starts here

Building a deep, evidence-based understanding of your customer is the single most important investment you can make in your business. It’s not just a marketing exercise, it’s a strategic tool that provides the clarity and confidence you need to build a product customers love, deliver a message that connects, and create a company that lasts.