Many early-stage B2B SaaS companies make a common mistake: they start by defining their Total Addressable Market (TAM), but they fail to narrow it down to the right audience. While a TAM gives you a broad view, it’s simply too wide for an effective GTM strategy, especially when you're just starting.
The solution?
Define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to focus on the customers who are the best fit for your product.
When you don’t do this step, your marketing and sales teams risk operating with a "spray and pray" mentality, casting a wide net across your TAM in hopes of finding a good fit. This approach is inefficient, especially for younger companies with limited time and budget.
If you target the wrong companies, create incorrect messaging, and promote the wrong value propositions, you will end up wasting time and resources – leading to missed opportunities.
Creating an ICP helps segment your market to identify the best-fit customers so that your team can focus on strategies with the highest likelihood of success.
Our free template includes fields for firmographics, technographics, and job-to-be-done analysis, ensuring a well-rounded ICP.
Don’t wait until your sales funnel runs dry! Download our updated ICP template today to refine your targeting and accelerate your 2025 growth goals.
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Your ICP is a clear outline of your ideal customers – the ones you want more of – the ones who:
Think of your ICP as the guiding light for your sales and marketing teams. It tells them which companies are the perfect fit and helps identify what to look for to find more of these ideal clients.
Remember: The ICP should not be used as a strict "accept or reject" mechanism. You may encounter companies that fall outside your ICP but still make excellent customers. The ICP’s primary function is to provide clear guidance for outbound prospecting.
At Kalungi, one of the first things we do when we start working with our partners is refine their ICP. This foundational step influences almost all the GTM (Go-To-Market) strategies that follow.
For B2B SaaS companies, where the sales cycle is long, budgets are scrutinized, and competition is fierce, an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is more than just a “nice-to-have”.
Instead of spreading your efforts thin across an overly broad market, your team can channel resources toward prospects who are most likely to convert, renew, and advocate for your solution. This precision is especially critical for early-stage SaaS companies where every dollar spent on marketing and sales needs to drive results.
It helps your marketing team craft campaigns that resonate deeply with your audience and your sales team to approach prospects with confidence. By speaking directly to the needs, pain points, and aspirations of your ideal customers, you not only attract the right buyers but also differentiate yourself in a crowded marketplace.
Ultimately, an ICP is about finding the right customers. The ones who stay loyal, provide referrals, and help your SaaS business scale predictably.
Your Ideal Customer Profile doesn’t need to be overly complex. In fact, simplicity is key.
If your ICP is too strict, you might limit your reach. If it's too broad, it defeats the purpose of narrowing down your focus.
To strike the right balance, start with a detailed ICP. When it’s time to scale, you can adjust your filters to expand the market segment.
Although they’re often used interchangeably, an ICP and a buyer persona serve distinct purposes in your marketing and sales strategy.
An ICP describes the type of companies that are the best fit for your solution. It focuses on firmographics (e.g., company size, industry, revenue), technographics (e.g., tech stack), and buying behavior at an organizational level.
For example:
The ICP is your north star for targeting businesses that are likely to generate the highest lifetime value. It guides your account-based marketing (ABM) strategy and sales prospecting efforts.
A buyer persona zooms in on the people within those companies who influence or make purchasing decisions. It focuses on the individual’s demographics, goals, challenges, and preferences.
For example:
In a typical B2B SaaS company, there are usually three key personas to consider:
Understanding the roles and motivations of these personas helps you tailor your messaging and strategies to address each group’s unique needs.
While your ICP defines who to target at a company level, buyer personas define how to engage the individuals within those accounts effectively.
An effective go-to-market strategy requires both ideal customer profiles and buyer personas. Start with your ICP to identify high-potential companies, then use buyer personas to craft tailored messaging and campaigns for the decision-makers and influencers within those organizations.
By leveraging both tools, you can approach every prospect with precision, maximizing your chances of converting leads into long-term customers.
Your ICP strategy will change depending on your current growth stage:
If you're unsureif you’ve hit PMF, here's a great litmus test to gauge your PMF:
How many of your customers were referred by existing ones?
If the answer is 30% or more, you’re likely on the right track. This is a good indicator that you’ve found product-market fit within a particular segment of your customer base.
Other Indicators of PMF:
Segmenting your customers becomes crucial for scaling when you've reached product-market fit.
At this stage, firmographics, technographics, and demographics are effective primary methods for segmentation.
Start by analyzing your current customer dataset. Look for patterns or clusters that represent the customers you want to attract more of.
If you’ve hit product-market fit, focus on leveraging the B2B Customer Profile Outline to ensure you target the right businesses rather than just individual personas.
If you’re using our Ideal Customer Profile template, look for clusters where the data already points to common characteristics of high-value clients.
Firmographics focus on the company-level characteristics of your ideal customers. Use the following questions to guide your analysis:
Is there any partnership or business model (B2B or B2C) that makes them easier to approach? Identifying firmographic data is critical when designing your Ideal Customer Profile template.
Technographics help you analyze the technological landscape of your target customers. Key questions include:
By understanding the technographics of your target, you can more precisely identify which businesses are the perfect fit for your B2B Customer Profile Outline.
If you're still working towards PMF, avoid segmenting your Ideal Client Identification Guide solely based on traditional criteria. At this stage, it's better to rely on psychographics and job-to-be-done characteristics for segmentation.
Understanding these factors helps refine your Target Customer Profile Framework, ensuring that you're targeting customers who resonate with your product's value proposition, even if you're still experimenting with product features.
Demographics examine the specific individuals within the organization, whether they are decision-makers or end-users. Key questions include:
Understanding demographics ensures that you're targeting the right people within your ICP. By using an Ideal Customer Profile template, you can refine your outreach to focus on high-impact decision-makers.
The Job-to-be-done framework centres on the problem your customer is trying to solve. By understanding the specific friction and pains in your customers' workflow, you can tailor your solution perfectly to their needs.
Here are some questions to guide you:
By focusing on the job to be done, you can identify the real challenges your target customers face and position your solution as the ideal fit.
When you're building out your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), it's crucial to distinguish between filters and signals. This distinction plays a significant role in refining your target customer profile framework and identifying the right prospects.
Filters are used to remove irrelevant segments of the market. Think of them as tools for eliminating accounts that don’t meet your key criteria. This helps you create a shortlist of ideal candidates, which becomes your Specific Addressable Market (SAM).
You can use these filters to build your anti-ICP. Knowing what you don’t want is almost as valuable as knowing what you do.
Once you have your shortlist from the filters, it’s time to use signals to determine which companies to prioritize.
Signals act as indicators that certain companies are a better fit than others. They help you identify the accounts most likely to convert into customers. By using signals, you can categorize your accounts as tier 1 or tier 2, ensuring you're focusing your resources where they matter most. These signals may include:
Integrating filters and signals into your Ideal Client Identification Guide allows you to create a targeted, strategic approach that maximizes your marketing efforts.
At Kalungi, we see three ICP mistakes over and over, they are:
One of the biggest ICP mistakes is trying to appeal to everyone. When your targeting is too broad, your messaging becomes generic, making it difficult to engage the right audience.
Imagine a farmer choosing between Donagh & Sons – The Farmer’s Bank vs. Ameribank – The People’s Bank. The niche-focused option wins every time because it speaks directly to their needs.
Instead of chasing your Total Addressable Market (TAM) from day one, focus on a Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM), a well-defined niche you can win. As you grow, you can expand your reach strategically.
Many SaaS companies build ICPs like B2C brands, based on vague personas rather than data-driven insights. Knowing that your ideal customer Beaumont enjoys yoga and drives a Kia might help with branding, but it won’t help your sales or demand gen team find actual prospects.
A strong ICP is actionable, based on clear targeting criteria.
Your ICP should guide every function, content marketing, ABM, and outbound sales, by providing specific characteristics that teams can use to find, engage, and convert leads.
Your ICP is not a one-time document. It’s a living strategy that should evolve as your company grows. Early assumptions are often wrong, and real-world data will reveal who your best customers actually are.
Great marketing is iterative.
Test campaigns, analyze results, and refine your ICP based on what works. You may even need to pivot entirely as new opportunities emerge. Companies that cling to an outdated ICP risk misallocating resources and missing their best-fit customers.
A high-impact ICP is:
By avoiding these common mistakes and keeping your ICP dynamic, you’ll ensure your marketing and sales teams stay laser-focused on the customers that drive the most value.
Now that you’ve developed a clear and actionable Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), it's time to take the necessary steps to ensure it aligns with your broader Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and adapts over time.
These five next steps are crucial in maximizing your sales and marketing efforts for growth in 2025 and beyond.
Create a centralized, easily accessible document containing all relevant ICP details. Collaborate with your leadership, sales, and marketing teams to get sign-off and ensure everyone is aligned.
A well-organized document will serve as a powerful tool that keeps your teams focused on targeting the right customers. To help you get started, check out our customizable ICP template that’s designed to streamline this process.
After segmenting the market and identifying your ICP, the next step is to create detailed customer personas.
These personas should reflect real individuals within your ideal companies, users, influencers, and decision-makers. By building personas based on your ICP, you ensure that your messaging resonates with the specific people who will benefit from your product.
Learn more about our methodology to build buyer personas and get our free template to help define these key roles.
With your ICP in hand, the next step is to scope out the size of your market.
This is where you begin list building and calculate your Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Available Market (SAM), and Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM). These metrics will guide your account-based marketing strategy and ensure that you're focusing on the highest-value accounts.
By strategically narrowing your market size, you can set realistic targets and expectations for growth in 2025.
Now that you’ve defined your ICP, it’s time to tailor your GTM strategy.
This is where you decide where your sales and marketing teams should focus their efforts, whether inbound, outbound, or a balance of both. Inbound marketing takes time to build but is a sustainable, long-term strategy. On the other hand, outbound tactics may provide more immediate results, especially in an emerging or niche market.
Consider balancing both approaches based on your company's resources, goals, and customer personas.
Don’t let your ICP become stale. As your business evolves and markets shift, it’s essential to update and refine your ICP regularly.
Keep open communication with your sales, marketing, and customer success teams to ensure you're capturing the latest insights. You may also want to develop subset ICPs as you grow your product offerings. The key is to remain flexible and adapt as your business matures.
If you haven’t updated your Ideal Customer Profile recently, now is the time to do so.
B2B marketing is constantly evolving, and staying aligned with your ideal customers will ensure that your team is focused, strategic, and ready to hit your growth targets this year.
Download our updated ICP template today and get started on refining your market focus for the most effective and efficient sales and marketing strategies in 2025. Act now and set your business up for success!
At Kalungi, we specialize in helping B2B SaaS companies like yours define, refine, and leverage ICPs to drive measurable results. Whether you're looking to improve targeting, optimize your messaging, or scale your marketing efforts, our team of SaaS specialists and experienced fractional CMOs is here to guide you every step of the way.
Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how we can help you focus on the right customers to maximize your growth in 2025 and beyond!
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