Your ICP is probably wrong (and it's costing you money)
In the past two weeks, I've had two meetings with sales leaders and their CEOs about producing content for their ICP.
And both times, the CEO asked: "What's an ICP?"
I'm not judging. Normal people with actual work to do aren't obsessing over marketing acronyms.
But if you're spending money on sales and marketing, this three-letter acronym might be the difference between growth and waste.
What is an ICP (and why most people get it wrong)
"ICP" stands for Ideal Customer Profile.
It's not a buyer persona. A buyer persona is about a person. An ICP is about the type of company that's most likely to:
Buy your product
Succeed with it
Stick around
Be profitable
Most companies define their ICP with something laughably vague like:
"C-level execs at enterprises"
"DevOps engineers at mid-sized SaaS companies"
That's not an ICP. That's a horoscope—broad enough to sound right but too vague to be useful.
What a real ICP actually includes
A proper ICP has teeth:
Company specifics: Industry, size, location, maturity
Active problems: The business challenge they're trying to solve right now
Tech landscape: Systems, tools, or infrastructure they already use
Implementation readiness: Budget, team size, technical capacity
Disqualifying factors: Early-stage, wrong team structure, conflicting platforms
It's a mix of company data, tech landscape, buying patterns, and deal history.
A good ICP lets your team confidently say: "This account is worth pursuing" or "This one isn't worth our time."
No more guessing.
Why a vague ICP is burning your money
Without a clear ICP, your go-to-market strategy turns into expensive chaos.
You'll waste budget on:
Ads targeting people who will never buy
Content that decision-makers scroll past
Sales calls with prospects who were never going to close
When your content isn't built for the right audience, it doesn't matter how clever it is.
It won't land.
It won't convert.
And your sales team will keep complaining about lead quality.
The solution: Sales and marketing alignment
The best ICPs aren't created in marketing silos or executive retreats.
Sales brings the ground truth from actual customer conversations.
Marketing brings audience insights and competitive research.
Together, they build something that reflects reality, not fantasy.
From there:
Sales can build a target account list based on strategy instead of gut feeling
Marketing can create campaigns that speak to real problems
Content starts driving revenue instead of just pageviews
Mistakes that kill your ICP effectiveness
Here's how companies sabotage themselves:
The aspirational ICP: "We're targeting Fortune 500 companies!"
Great, but which ones? With what problems? What makes them start looking for solutions?
Without specifics, you're not building strategy—you're writing a wishlist.
The slide deck ICP: Marketing creates a beautiful document that sales never sees or uses.
Sales keeps pursuing whatever accounts feel right. Everyone stays misaligned, and no one knows why campaigns aren't working.
The rear-view mirror ICP: You simply copy your current biggest customers without asking:
Are they actually profitable?
Do we want more like them?
Did they succeed because of fit—or despite massive effort on our part?
The set-it-and-forget-it ICP: Your ICP from last year is probably wrong for today.
Markets change. Products evolve. If you're not reviewing regularly, you're navigating with outdated maps.
Moving from theory to practice
This isn't abstract. A clear ICP is the foundation for every revenue decision you make.
I just wrapped a full video series on selling to technical buyers that covers this in depth. It walks through everything from understanding technical buyers to creating content that actually helps close deals.
If you've been treating "ICP" like just another buzzword, hopefully this helped you see it's a foundational tool.
The clearer your ICP, the more efficient your entire go-to-market becomes.
