Why You Need an Ideal Customer Profile

Do you really need an ideal customer profile before you start marketing your CPG business?

Yes. Knowing exactly who you’re talking to, who you’re creating content for, and how to position your product so that they care, is essential for successful marketing.

If you’re a pre-launch or early-stage CPG business, your ideal customer profile will be a work in progress. Hopefully you’ve worked with a brand strategist to start creating this profile, but until you’re selling your product, you won’t actually know who’s going to buy. You can operate on ideas, best guesses, and who’s on your waitlist, but ultimately you need to launch, test, and reiterate.

What is an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)?

An ideal customer profile is a fictional character that represents your actual customers. Think of it like a summary: it’s a summary of all your customers into one, generalized profile. 

Why Do You Need an ICP?

You need an ideal customer profile to guide your decisions. A customer profile will help you better understand who your customer is, what motivates them, and how you can relate to them. All of which helps you better understand how to sell to them. 

You’ll use your customer profile daily: when you’re planning your social media calendar, writing your social media captions, and designing your posts. You’ll also use your customer profile when deciding what products to create, who to hire, and how to grow your business.

How Do You Create an Ideal Customer Profile?

Step #1: Identify Who’s Buying From You

Your ideal customer is someone who is completely obsessed with your brand and products. They make repeat purchases, they organically spread the word about your brand, and they engage with you on social media. 

I recommend using data to identify your ideal customer, rather than pulling ideas out of thin air. Like I mentioned earlier, when we’re starting a business we often think we know who our ideal customer is, but once the purchases start flowing we might end up with a totally different demographic. 

Check out your social media insights and Google Analytics to gather data on your customer like age, gender, location, and other identifiers.

Step #2: The Community Persona Questionnaire 

Now that you’ve gathered data on your ideal customer, you probably know their age range, gender, location, and basic interests. 

But how does that help you create social media content for them? In short: it doesn’t.

Hang on! I didn’t have you do step #1 for nothing. Let me explain. 

This data is a super limited view of your ideal customer and alone it doesn’t give you a clear picture of who your ideal customer is. But it does give you the foundation. 

You can build on that foundation by filling out the questionnaire I use when onboarding new social media management clients.

To create your customer profile, work through the following questions intentionally, with as much detail as possible. Consider the conversations you’ve had with your customers, the comments and feedback on your social media posts, and the reviews on your website.

• The Basics: Where does your customer live? What job do they have and why did they choose it? How much do they make? 

• Their Interests: What are their interests and values? How do they spend their free time? What do they like to see on social media? 

• Their Problem: What problem do they have and how do you solve it? Where do they find you and how can you relate to them? 

Now you should have a crystal clear idea of who your customer is. 

You should know where they are in their life, what keeps them up at night, and what they want to learn more about, all of which you can use to create social media content that’s tailored to them and their needs.

You’ll also know where to find them on social media, which will help you create your social media strategy.

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Wait, Who Am I?

Hiiii! 👋🏻 I’m Sarah, a CPG social media strategist with over 10 years of experience. I went from starting a clean beauty blog right out of high school to managing social media for Canada’s largest wellness retailer. Now I live in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina, helping high-growth entrepreneurs get SEEN so they can build a crazy fun life their business supports, and not the other way around.

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