Fix your marketing by fixing this first

Hey there.

New year, new name. This newsletter now carries a title that fits better with the Three Horizons approach, and a little less like “stuff I write between client calls” (although that is often still the case).

Today we’re digging into Ideal Customer Profiles.

Not flashy. Not new. But absolutely foundational. And often ignored.

This is the work that decides what gets built, who you talk to, and what actually moves the needle. Most early-stage companies breeze past it. Not because it’s unimportant, but because it’s not loud. It doesn’t demand attention. There’s no Slack message that says “define our ICP.” No investor email asking for your buyer persona doc.

But this is the step that shapes everything else. Your messaging, your website, your sales motion, your roadmap. Skip it and you end up guessing. Building for the wrong person. Launching things no one cares about.

So if you haven’t made time for this yet, make it now. Before you ship another feature no one asked for. Before you rewrite your homepage again, hoping this version will finally convert.

Let’s get into it.

Jeff

Create your own urgency

No one’s asking for this work.

There’s no task assigned to it. No external deadline. No one tapping you on the shoulder saying, “Hey, we need sharper segmentation.”

But people are asking for it. Through stalled deals. Through low conversion. Through confusing feedback on your last campaign.

The most important marketing work doesn’t come with a deadline. You have to create one. If you don’t, it gets pushed to “later.” And later rarely happens.

So how do you actually get started?

Talk to your customers. Not once. Not in a survey. Real conversations. Record them. Listen back. Look for patterns. Why did they choose you? What did they try before? What almost made them walk? What do they not care about at all?

Look at your happiest customers. Who renews early? Who shares your name in their Slack channels? Who champions you internally? What do they have in common?

Talk to sales. Or if you’re still early, talk to yourself. Where do pitches hit? Where do they fall flat? What objections keep coming up?

Study your losses. Closed-lost deals often teach you more than the wins.

Understand your customer’s world. What they read. What language they use. What events they go to. What terms make them roll their eyes. Especially if you’re using them on your homepage.

Then test. Try one message with urgency. One with credibility. One with outcomes. See what gets a response. This isn’t a quarterly workshop. It’s a daily habit. A muscle. It only gets stronger if you use it.

And if you wait for someone to ask you to do it, it’ll already be too late.

The tension of multiple ICPs

Most companies have more than one.

A buyer. A user. A budget holder. A technical lead. Someone internally who pushes things through.

That’s normal. But don’t try to speak to all of them at once.

Every piece of marketing needs a single focus. One person. One problem. One job to be done. If you try to speak to everyone, you end up with vague, forgettable language that hits no one.

Focus on one.

Get the right people in the room

This isn’t a solo marketing exercise.

You need the founders. Sales. Product. Customer success. Maybe even a customer or two. Otherwise, you’re just guessing. And guessing is expensive. Good ICP work often surfaces tension (one of the annoying parts of marketing is that most of the important stuff surfaces tension).

Better to have those debates now than months from now, after you’ve burned your budget building for the wrong person.

This shapes your budget

Knowing your ICP isn’t just helpful for writing headlines. It changes your entire go-to-market strategy.

A clinician and a digital health operator don’t read the same things. They don’t go to the same events. They don’t use the same language. If you’re not clear who you’re targeting, your budget will drift toward the wrong channels. You’ll blame the ads, or the copy, or the agency.

But the issue started further upstream. You were never clear on who you were trying to reach. Your ICP should shape where you show up, how you show up, and just as importantly, where you don’t.

Takeaways: Start here

Talk to five of your best customers

Ask why they bought, what they tried first, and what nearly made them say no. Record it. Find the patterns.

Map your wins and losses

Who converts quickly and sticks around? Who drags their feet or churns? Start segmenting from there.

Audit your homepage

Is it speaking to one person with one clear problem? If not, simplify.

Get sales, product, and CS in a room

Ask each team who they think you’re building for. If the answers don’t match, you just found your next strategy meeting.

Pick one ICP to start with

Build everything around them. Messaging, content, campaigns. Once it clicks, expand from there.

There are three things that are really hard in marketing:

1. Picking the right thing to do.
2. Starting to do it.
3. Doing it well.

Simple. Not easy. Like most of the work that separates great marketing from the rest.

Defining your ICP checks all three boxes. It’s the right thing. It’s hard to start. And it’s even harder to do well. But once it’s done, everything else works better.

If your marketing feels scattered, or your funnel isn’t converting, this is the first place I look. Not the channel. Not the CTA. Not the headline. The clarity on who it’s actually for.

You won’t see the payoff in a dashboard next week. But your strategy, messaging, spend, and roadmap all sit on top of this.

So make it a priority. Pick a deadline (even if you make one up).

And if you’re in the middle of it and want a second opinion, feel free to reach out.

‍

Yours in marketing, Jeff