Finding your Ideal Customer will drive performance

A deep dive on why testing & analyzing who your customer really is can unlock sustainable performance for your brand.

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TLDR

• What is ICP & why it matters
• Market issues with identifying customers
• Creative testing allowed the Pencil team to identify we were messaging our ICP incorrectly
• Analysis + Focus on segments will help you deliver better experiences for the customers and more impact for your business.

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Now for the fun stuff 👇

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ICP = NORTH 🌟 without it you can't deliver creative that cuts through.

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The first question you should answer is: who is your ICP or IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE.

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Unlike the term “target customer,” which is often used to describe any company that might buy a product or service, the ICP is focused on the most valuable customers and prospects that are also most likely to buy. ... It aligns marketing, sales, service and executive teams to the highest-value accounts. *

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The tidbit to really hone in on is how your ICP is focused on your MOST VALUABLE customers and prospects. If we have this definition a lot of the work we do around it is easy to align on. Without it, there can be a lot of work being done without much impact.

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From a Pencil customer 👇

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"I think one of the mistakes we've made so far is, would be testing all these different avenues of creatives, different angles, targeting different avatars and what that's resulted in this is just to confuse the algorithm. It that has no idea whom we're trying to go after"

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They haven't aligned on who is their most valuable customer. How are you able to deliver the best creative or targeting to deliver & capture value from prospective buyers?

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The standard strategy a media buyer will give you is to focus on broad audiences and your audience will find you. The algorithm will figure what creative makes the most sense. What if you haven't though?

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We have found many users want to:

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• let the message find their users based on features or options. This can work, but can also be fatal. What if you find the wrong type of person?
• Is every customer really worth it?

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We ran an A/B test with Pencil ads after we had found our own initial message wasn't driving results with the right customers coming to our site.

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Our initial hypothesis: Focus on the features of our Creative AI or Explaining the product in detail would drive results.

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What we found was this didn't attract the users we knew would benefit most from Pencil after months of learnings from our current customers.

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We reviewed our Gong calls, shared notes from sales calls, and went into communities we knew our customers were active in. We came upon a unique insight, RUNNING A BUSINESS IS HARD. Even with all of the technological advances, there isn't much down time, and wasting money on ads that don't drive results is an IMMENSE WORRY.

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When it came time to create a new ad, with that insight, we input the information about our ICP into Pencil and the below line of copy emerged.

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"Stop grinding. Generate new ad ideas from your assets in 1 click"

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The results were very promising.

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• Cost per lead went down 64%
• New Ads Maintained lower CPL's
• Qualified Leads rose from 10% to 33%

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What this has allowed us to do is have confidence in our message to customers and re-invest the capital into acquiring new customers, who we are dedicated to helping grow their business. (Virtuous cycle, anyone?)

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There are two lessons we took from this.

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• Taking a step back to analyze who your best customers are and if you understand them well enough should be a regular for every business. Whether your B2B or DTC, your customer is 👸/🤴.
• Testing this fast, allowed us to iterate and find the right message.

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This is why running new ads is so important to the lifeblood of a business. Where else do you have access to:

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• Billions of eyeballs + low minimum scope on signal

(Minimum Scope = the minimum data set we need to determine whether an ad is a winner or a loser)

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What you need to do:

• align an ICP that feels: warm, viral, and repeatable.
• segment their problems
• create new creative to run and find what rings true with them (using Pencil ✏️, of course)
• Double down + iterate.
• work on new pathways in the background while your WINNERS SCALE.

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Your customers are waiting for you, you just need the key to 🔓 unlock them.

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CREATIVE IS THE KEY TO FINDING YOUR CUSTOMERS! 🔑

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Bonus 🙌 -> A use case map to help you think through how you're messaging your customers vs. what the data you have on them says. Is there a difference? 

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* https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/the-framework-for-ideal-customer-profile-development

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