Moving your business forward with your ICP

Your ICP isn’t something you set and forget.

“Your ICP is ever evolving. It's not something that's set in stone. As your product gets better, your go-to-market strategy changes, your company grows, and you get more resources, you can expand that [definition]. But it's not something where you say, we're going after these types of customers forever.”

Daniel Murray, Head of Media at Sales Impact Academy

Make sure to revisit your ICP as you evaluate going after new markets and as your business changes. For example, as you move upmarket you may need to rebuild your ICP, as Frame.io did. Or, you may want to update your ICP as your success criteria changes. Maybe you originally focused your ICP on companies that deliver top-line revenue growth by using initial bookings and ARR as your success criteria. As your business grows and matures, your focus may shift to retention and reducing churn, so you may want to optimize for lifetime value (LTV). Though there is no one right time or rule to reevaluate your ICP, in general, doing an lifetime value (LTV) ICP analysis is a good idea once you have ~$10M ARR and two to three years of renewal data.

If you make changes to your ICP, you want to ensure that your go-to-market teams update their playbooks to reflect the new focus. An ICP isn’t effective if it just lives on a slide.

Here are some ways teams should be thinking about making go-to-market strategy changes based on a new ICP definition.

• Marketing: All programs should be targeted at your ICP. Think of all the channels and tactics mentioned in the previous chapter and where you may need to make changes. Your lead scoring model, ad targeting, and website personalization will all likely need to change.
• Customer success: Are all your new ICP customers getting the VIP treatment? Ensure your customer success team is equipped with updated targeting so they make prioritization adjustments to focus on upsells, renewals, and reducing churn.
• Sales: Sales team compensation and targets may need to be adjusted to reflect a new ICP. For example, going after an upmarket segment could mean new methods of outreach and new quotas based on higher ACV.
• Product and engineering: Your product roadmap and functionality are interrelated to your ideal customer. If you make a change to your ICP, say to target enterprise companies, your product or service may need more robust functionality. If you move in the opposite direction and want to target consumers, your product needs to be built to support a high volume of users.

We hope this guide helped you understand, define, and activate your ICP. After all, identifying and narrowing your targeting is how you drive scale and find efficiency in the funnel.