All terms
Growth
ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
The specific customer type your product serves best — defined by firmographics, behaviour, and the job they hire you for — not by generic demographics.
By Daniel Reyes · Last updated July 22, 2026
In plain English
One sentence: who is your product a 10x fit for, and why? Get this wrong and every downstream decision (channel, pricing, feature roadmap) is wrong by inference.
Example
Not: 'B2B SaaS companies.' Yes: 'US Series-A SaaS companies with 25-80 employees, a sales team of 3-8, and no dedicated RevOps hire yet.'
Why it matters
An ICP-driven company can hand-pick prospects, message with precision, and price with confidence. An ICP-less company chases every warm lead and dilutes its positioning every quarter.
Common mistakes
- Confusing ICP (fit) with target (reach) — target is a subset of ICP that you can reach today
- Writing an ICP that sounds like everyone (fluffy adjectives, no numbers)
- Never revising it — ICPs tighten as you learn which customer type retains + expands