ICP Research

Build comprehensive ideal customer profiles for targeted marketing, including community discovery and voice-of-customer language extraction.

Install

git clone https://github.com/thatrebeccarae/claude-marketing.git && cp -r claude-marketing/skills/icp-research ~/.claude/skills/

Workflow

1. Gather Product Context

• What do you sell?
• Key features and differentiators
• Pricing model and range
• Current customers (who buys today?)

2. Define Market

• Industry / vertical
• Company size (employees, revenue)
• Geography
• B2B vs. B2C vs. B2B2C

3. Build Persona

Demographics:

• Job title and seniority level
• Department and reporting structure
• Company size and revenue range
• Industry and sub-vertical
• Geography and timezone

Psychographics:

• Daily responsibilities (what fills their calendar)
• Goals they are measured on (KPIs, OKRs)
• Frustrations and daily friction
• Career aspirations
• How they stay informed (publications, podcasts, communities)

Buying Behavior:

• Who influences the decision?
• Who approves the budget?
• What is the buying process? (self-serve, demo, RFP, committee)
• Evaluation criteria (price, features, support, integration)
• Typical buying timeline

4. Map Pain Points

Category	Questions to Answer
Time	What takes too long? What manual work do they hate?
Money	Where are they wasting budget? What costs too much?
Risk	What keeps them up at night? What could go wrong?
Quality	Where is output inconsistent or error-prone?
Growth	What blocks them from scaling?

Score each pain point: Frequency (1-10) x Intensity (1-10) = Priority Score

5. Identify Objections

Objection Type	Response Strategy
Price	ROI calculation, cost of inaction, payment flexibility
Time	Quick setup, done-for-you options, time-to-value metrics
Trust	Social proof, case studies, free trial/pilot, guarantees
Need	Cost of status quo, competitor pressure, market trends
Authority	Executive summary, ROI one-pager, pilot proposal

6. Map Buying Triggers

External triggers:

• New funding round or budget cycle
• Leadership change (new CMO, VP)
• Competitor pressure (lost deal, feature gap)
• Regulatory change (compliance deadline)
• Failed vendor or tool (contract end, outage)

Internal triggers:

• Missed targets (revenue, growth, efficiency)
• Team complaints (process pain, tool frustration)
• Process breaking at scale
• New initiative requiring new capabilities
• Budget cuts forcing consolidation

7. Community Research

Discover where your ICP gathers online and extract their exact language.

Platforms to search:

• Reddit (subreddits by industry/role)
• Facebook Groups
• Discord and Slack communities
• LinkedIn Groups
• Quora and Stack Exchange
• Industry forums
• YouTube comments
• App review sites (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot)

Search templates:

"[industry/role] frustrating OR annoying"
"why is [process] so hard"
"alternatives to [competitor]"
"[tool] vs [tool]"
"best [tool type] for [use case]"
"I switched from [tool] because"

What to extract:

• Exact phrases and vocabulary they use (voice-of-customer)
• Pain points with emotional language
• Evaluation criteria they mention
• Competitors they compare
• Objections they raise

Classify community members:

• Actively seeking: ready to buy, asking for recommendations
• Aware but stuck: know the problem, not acting on it
• Venting only: complaining but unlikely to change

8. Craft Messaging Angles

For each pain point, create:

• Headline: attention-grabbing statement
• Supporting proof: data point, case study, or testimonial
• CTA: specific next step

Output Format

See REFERENCE.md for the complete ICP profile template.

Key Principles

1. Real language over marketing language. Use the exact words your ICP uses, not polished marketing copy.
2. Pain over features. Lead with what hurts, not what you built.
3. Specificity wins. "VP of Marketing at a 50-person SaaS company" > "Marketing leaders."
4. Validate with data. Community research > assumptions.
5. One ICP per profile. If you serve different personas, create separate profiles.

For templates and frameworks, see REFERENCE.md.