Target market

Customer Targeting

What happens if we target a product at everyone? We can get radically different requirements, a bloated product and confusing feedback. You will find tools to model your target customers for B2C (business to customer) and B2B (business to business) at the bottom of this page.

Ideal Customer Profile

A single Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) representing similar customer needs will give your product clear direction. Selecting the right ICP to match your offering will also help you achieve the highest potential revenue. This is because when customer’s needs are met by a product they are more likely to buy it.

ICP selection during growth cycle stage

  • Start – Optimise your ICP definition

  • Growth – Prioritise a single ICP

  • Scale – Consider changing your ICP as the market becomes saturated

  • Maturity – Change your ICP to continue to grow

Start growth stage

The early stages of growth carry great risk, particularly in crowded mature markets. To counter this, it is advisable to target a customer group with niche needs and better serve them. When successful, you can pivot later on to a broader group.

Customer personas we serve

Why is there the option to record more than one customer persona on the canvas (not just an ICP)? You may find your product appeals to more than one customer group in the following scenarios:

  • Product growth - Your product has grown broad enough to appeal to a wider group of customers. Perhaps you are a business-to-business (B2B) seller who started with larger enterprises. You found the market saturated and highly competitive. You decided to pivot your ICP to smaller companies to increase profit.

  • Multiple pricing tiers - You may have a pricing strategy where specific tiers are targeted at different groups. You can create cheaper pricing tiers for more price-sensitive customers or those with a simpler use case who will not see value from a full offering. In this case, ensure this strategy is clear to your teams. Avoid these groups being very different from each other when starting out.

Overall, the ICP focuses your strategy on achieving the highest revenue. This will not lose you money. You can still sell to customers who don’t fit this criteria and want to buy from you.

The B2C Customer Persona and B2B Company Profile canvases below contain full instructions on how to select your ICP. Additionally, B2B buyer and user persona canvases are provided.

B2C Customer Persona

Customer personas can help us model our target customers. Where a business sells directly to customers (B2C), the product user is typically the person who is buying. Click the persona picture or this link for the full guide.

B2B Company Profile

Where a business sells directly to other businesses (B2B), they need to profile the type of company they are selling to. Click the picture or this link for the full guide.

B2B Buyer Persona

Where a business sells directly to other businesses (B2B), there can be a variety of people involved. This can include people from finance, technology, legal and so on. Click the persona picture or this link for the full guide.

B2B User Persona

Another type of B2B persona is that of the user. The people using the product can be different to those who are buying. These are the people that you can gather feedback from and test new functionality with. Click the persona picture or this link for the full guide.

B2B User Persona