ICP vs Buyer Persona: what are the differences, and which are their characteristics

If you are not in the marketing world, you may confuse the concept of Ideal Costumer Profile (ICP) with the Buyer Persona.

Do not worry, it is totally logical that you are not able to determine what are the characteristics of each one if you are just starting out in marketing.

We are not going to fool you.

Defining the differences between the ICP and the Buyer Persona is important if you want to crown yourself in the world of conversion or boost the sales of your business.

Why?

Keep reading and we will let you know.

What is an ICP or an Ideal Costumer Profile?

Let’s get down to business. Beating around the bush gets us nowhere and at Meeting Dots we have many good things, but above all we are productive!

ICP is the acronym for Ideal Costumer Profile, a marketing tool that will help you a lot.

It is common that, when talking about the ideal customer, people think directly about the Buyer Persona of a business. However, the reality is that both concepts are different.

The ICP is a tool used by B2B businesses to define the profile of a target customer account.

In other words, it is a support and innovative tool that has been developed thanks to the new B2B sales techniques.

It consists of making a complete description of those businesses that could be the ideal customer for your company.

You can create different types of ICP within your sales strategy, depending on the number of businesses that may be part of the list of your potential customers.

In order to develop your ICP correctly, you should have clear some points regarding your business: size, budget, sales cycle, industry in which you operate and products or services in the market.

Once you have done this, you should cross-reference your data with the one you consider is the ideal company you should approach to expand your business possibilities. In this sense, take into account the following data to define that ICP:

• Size of the company.
• Industry in which it operates as a business.
• Revenues.
• Current technologies and/or services used to develop as a business.
• Hierarchies.
• Geographic location.
• Pain points of your ideal company.
• Purchase intent.

By putting your data and your ICP’s data face to face, you will have a much clearer picture of what you and your ideal company need. Thus, your B2B sales strategy will be more focused, and your resources will be better allocated.

Do not forget what we always tell you here: the key to success in the B2B world is segmentation and personalization.

A Buyer Persona is…

As we have just mentioned, the ICP is normally used to develop marketing strategies in the B2B area, while the Buyer Persona can be used in both B2B and B2C contexts.

The Buyer Persona allows us to represent the fictitious profile of our ideal buyer.

In order to define it, we rely on market studies and research based on real data from people who have already bought our product or service, as well as data on our competitors’ buyers.

This data will provide us with a fundamental business structure and context, also it will make easier for us to create content. In addition to that, be more productive and align our business with an important reality in the area of sales.

Main differences between the ICP and the Buyer Persona

Having said all this, here are the main differences between the ICP and the Buyer Persona.

Open your eyes! ;)

• While the ICP is most commonly used in the B2B context, the Buyer Persona is as useful in the B2B world as it is in the B2C.
• The ICP has a very different approach than the Buyer Persona. The first one focuses on the analysis and description of the company that is your ideal customer. The Buyer Persona is designed to define a fictitious person who could become the perfect buyer.
• The goal of the ICP is to focus on a target company and the Buyer Persona helps us to adjust our Inbound Marketing and content strategy.

That is all.

Although the terms are often confused, the truth is that its essence is what makes the main difference.

Reasons why you should define your ICP and Buyer Persona

Firstly, it is that knowing the challenges, objectives and characteristics of not only the target companies, but also your ideal buyer will lead you to reach more interesting and qualified customers for your business.

In addition, thanks to both tools we humanize the sale. We must not forget that we sell to people, and we connect with them by being human and not robots.

The ultimate reason is that the better we define the ICP and the Buyer Persona, the more relevant the base content of our Inbound Marketing strategy will be and, therefore, the higher our conversion rate will be.

We have done it again. ☺

We have clearly defined the differences between the ICP and the Buyer Persona, but above all we hope we have helped you understand why they are different and why you should not talk about these terms as if they were synonyms.

We are waiting for your comments in case you have any doubt!

Remember, if you need to start defining your ICP and your Buyer Persona, but you do not know how to do it and you need help, we are waiting for you behind this screen to give you a hand with it.