Since the dawn of time, marketers have wondered what actually resonates with their target customers. Us influencer marketers are no different.

We spend weeks, if not months, trying to understand:

• Which types of creators influences them the most
• What kind of content does our target customer like
• What keywords do they use to communicate their problems
• …And so much more
  

In this article, I’ll share:

• how you can get the answers to all these questions via a thorough ideal customer profile (ICP) research
• how to use these insights about your ICP to (drastically) improve the impact of your influencer marketing campaigns

What is ICP research (and why should you do it)?

An ideal customer profile is a comprehensive blueprint of your target customer. It includes everything from basic details (like your customer demographics) to advanced insights (like what messaging your buyers love).

The key here in ICP research is going beyond the basics. You don’t just want to know your ICP’s demographics, but also their pain points, needs, interests, and behaviors. When you have such deep data about your ICP, you can tailor your influencer campaigns to be more effective.

For example, if you know your ICP uses TikTok for entertainment, craft guidelines and ideas to create entertainment-centric content in your influencer briefs.

The next question: is ICP research really necessary? According to Andreea Moise, founder at HypeMaven, it’s non-negotiable:

Andreea Moise

Influencer Marketing Consultant, Hype Maven

All the ICP info you collect will give you a blueprint on the types of creators and content your ICP genuinely enjoys and follows. It will make vetting easier because you’ll have a good idea of what interests your ICP – especially regarding different types of content & creators.

Andreea says most of the problems marketers face stem from not having in-depth knowledge about their ICP.

An in-depth insight into your ICP is one of those magical, invisible things that elevates a plain influencer marketing campaign to a powerful one. Andreea says ICP research also creates realistic expectations for your influencer marketing goals. She explains with an example:

Andreea Moise

Influencer Marketing Consultant, Hype Maven

From ICP research we know our customers spend time on TikTok to be entertained. So I know that TikTok is TOFU, high recall content only. I’m gonna adjust my influencer fit criteria based on that.

When should you practice ICP research?

At what stage of your influencer marketing strategy should you conduct ICP research? Ideally, you should have some always-on methods to collect customer insights – like post-purchase surveys. You can also bake more extensive buyer research – like 1:1 calls – into your quarterly planning.

But for the times that it’s not possible, it’s imperative to conduct ICP research before you start vetting influencer profiles for a campaign. Why? Because your findings from the ICP research will help you choose the right influencers who are the perfect brand fit.

For example, if your ICP research revealed that your consumers love edutainment (aka educational entertainment) content, you’ll find creators who already share similar kinds of posts.

Once you’ve mapped out your campaign details, goals, and KPIs, proceed into ICP research.

What should you find out about your customers during your ICP research?

ICP research sounds simple enough: know more about your buyers. But what should you know, exactly? What questions should you ask? What data points should you collect?

There are three primary levels for ICP research:

Level 1: demographic details

Basic demographic insights will help you narrow down your fundamental targeting criteria. For example, if most of your buyers reside in the U.S., you don’t want to partner with a creator who has followers predominantly in Canada.

You should know:

• What is the age group and gender split of my ICP?
• What is the income and education level of my ICP?
• What location/region(s) does my ICP live in?
• What is my ICP’s occupation?
  

Anyone creator who doesn’t fit into your demographics criteria gets filtered out of the campaign. It’s the basic check to ensure you aren’t reaching the wrong audience in your creator partnerships.

Level 2: product-related details

You need to understand why your current buyers buy from you. This will help you double down on the strategies and messaging that resonates the most with your future buyers. For example, if you understand which are your product’s top-selling features (and why), you can focus on them while creating influencer content.

You should know:

• Customer’s mindset before buying: what prompts your buyers to try your product? Why did they choose your product over competitors? Which similar products did they try before choosing your brand?
  
• Customer’s experience while using your product: how do consumers use your product? Do they use it regularly? If they could single out one to three standout features about your products, what would they be?
  
• Customer’s feedback after using your product: what results have buyers achieved with your product? What was life like for them before they had purchased your product? What would they say if they were to recommend your product to someone proactively?
  

The discoveries you make at this level can dictate your influencer content. For example, you can clarify your messaging to include the features your current buyers love the most (because your future buyers will, too!). You can also practice a comparative analysis of how your product stacks against competitors and craft compelling case studies.

Level 3: behavioral details

Understanding your ICP’s behavior will help you determine which kind of content leaves a lasting impression on them. In this level, you want to swim the farthest shore and discern how your ICP behaves and what triggers their behavior.

You should know:

• In which social media channels does my ICP spend most of their time? Which is their primary and secondary platform?
  
• Which platforms help/prompt your buyers to buy a product? Which networks do they trust and rely on for product recommendations for products similar to yours?
  
• What was the latest content that your customers saw that convinced them to buy or try something?
  
• What type of content do your buyers predominantly watch on their feed – educational, entertaining, or inspirational?
  
• What was the last piece of content they shared with someone and why?
  
• What was the last piece of content your customers searched for on their preferred social media platform? Why did they search for it there?
  
• What are some of the content topics your ICP watches/searches on their social media feed? This can be topical themes like nutrition content, wellness content, beauty content, etc., or it can be types of content like hauls, videos, GRWM videos, etc.
  
• Which content creators do your buyers watch on a regular basis? Why? Which content creators convinced them to buy a product?
  

⚠️ Note: All influencers are creators but not all creators are influencers. There are a ton of creators who publish fantastic content, but they don’t have a purchasing influence on their audience. Partnering with creators who don’t have influence is a good choice when you want to repurpose the influencer content for your own creative assets. But for your influencer marketing efforts, you need to find influencers who truly impact your ICP’s purchase decisions.

Nycole Hampton, former Senior Director of Marketing at GoodRx, advises marketers to revise their expectations when partnering with creators who don’t have influence:

Nycole Hampton

Senior Director of Marketing, GoodRx

You have to be smart and understand a creator’s value. They don’t necessarily have influence, so don’t expect to get a faithful audience out of them. But maybe you can derive good content, a platform you can whitelist from, etc.

Behavioral insights into your ICP are priceless. They can help you not only choose the right influencers, but also tailor their content to fit your buyers’ platform behavior. If you use surveys, you can also ask for examples from your buyers – further helping you get content for inspiration.

The questions above are just examples of what you can use. You can customize them to fit your needs, niche, and type of product. The goal is to get both quantitative and qualitative data to build your ICP.

Record the responses you get in a sheet and start connecting the dots. Soon, you’ll know which platforms you should focus on, what kind of influencers you should look for, and what content you should ask them to share.

For example, let’s say you sell sports shoes. Now, you might’ve thought the main differentiator of your brand is your price, but your research proves otherwise. Consumers repeatedly say your shoes are ‘comfortable and soft, and super affordable for the quality.’ Now you know affordability is important, but it comes in second.

Conclusion: you can now focus on asking your influencers to focus on the fact that your sports shoes are more soft and flexible than others in the market.

⚡ A pro-tip: differentiate between the content topics your buyers consume that’s brand-related and non-brand related. For example, if you sell skincare products, skincare is a brand-related interest. But if many of your buyer segments are also into fitness, that’s a non-brand related interest. You can spark some creative ideas and place your brand in non-brand related topics like “GRWM on the trail” to have a partnership that tugs right at the heart.

Andreea says this helps brands shift the spotlight from themselves and focus how buyers act on their interests:

Andreea Moise

Influencer Marketing Consultant, Hype Maven

Brands usually go on a rampage of creating content that goes “me, me, me our product is amazing” when they just focus on brand-related interests.

She continues:

Andreea Moise

Influencer Marketing Consultant, Hype Maven

What they should be saying is, “I fully understand your lifestyle and I am aware of the place and space I occupy in it, and I will you on that journey.

Take this partnership between Adobe Stock and Bibi Jane Angelica. Now, Bibi Jane Angelica isn’t your typical tech creator recommending video editing products. But she flawlessly (and poetically!) combines her passion for creating videos with Adobe’s product by honing in how video making helped her express herself – and how Adobe fits into it all.

Adobe knows their ICP’s isn’t solely following tech creators. So, they partnered with Bibi more than once to bring their message to light.

Knowing the full picture of your ICP also gives you more freedom and confidence to experiment with new niches and test different kinds of influencers. ICP research gives you the backing and wiggle room to brainstorm out-of-the-box campaign ideas.

How to collect data about your ICP?

Here are the top five ways you can collect the above data on your ICP research:

1. Customer surveys: introduce regular customer surveys in your post-purchase experience. Try to ask customers for concrete examples of the kind of content they like, watch, and search for. The easiest way to introduce your response rate in these surveys is to incentivize customers with something – like a gift voucher.

The oil company Graza, for example, offered a 12% promo code in exchange for customers filling out their surveys. 

You also want to practice careful segmentation here to get the most bang for your buck. For example, when asking product-related questions, it’s best to pick repeat customers who purchase frequently from you.

2. 1:1 customer interviews: the most straightforward way to get more insights about your ICP is to speak to them directly. Calls are helpful because you can immediately ask any follow-up questions and go into the details more than any other medium.

The problem? Interviews aren’t scalable – especially if you’re a small team. It’s also a heavy-lift ask from a buyer.

Our advice: a single customer interview is still a goldmine of info about your ICP. Build regular customer interviews in your planning as much as feasible.

Again, be strategic here about the customers you choose to interview. For example, monitor who gives the most generous, detailed, and insightful answers in your customer surveys regularly and ask this customer if they’d be willing to schedule time for an interview.

3. Review mining: review mining is the process of digging deep into the reviews your buyers share on your website, third-party sites (like Amazon), or niche communities (think Reddit). It’s also a good idea to scrape the comments of your competitors and influencer partners to see how your ICP communicates and what they need.

For example, these reviews of Joydays can immediately help understand the strengths of the product (low in sugar, satisfies sweet cravings, good texture) and its weaknesses (small in size, a bit overpriced).

You can even find a unique influencer content angle in these reviews to target new mothers.

To understand buyer preferences, try to find the most common patterns in customer reviews. Review mining can’t replace surveys or interviews, but they’re a good supplement – and one you can keep always-on in the background to have a pulse of your ICP.

4. Niche-specific consumer behavior reports: many companies release a niche consumer behavior report to help people understand how people are buying and what factors they’re considering before making a purchase.

For instance, take the Avon Future of Beauty Report. They studied women's consumer preferences in the UK, Italy, Poland, Turkey, South Africa, Philippines, and Romania.

If you sell sustainable skincare products, findings from this report can help you gauge what your target buyers care about the most – so you can ask influencers to highlight these in their content. It’s a good idea to look out for multiple reports and find patterns.

⚠️ Note: be careful to study the research methodology and demographics to ensure the participants in a report overlap (as much as possible) with your ICP.

5. Historical customer analysis: you can also conclude some basic details (like demographics, occupation, etc.) by analyzing your past customers.

• Are they all from a specific region?
• Do they order more at certain times of the year?
• Does a certain product/flavor get the most repeat orders?

Try to identify the common characteristics between all your existing customers. These insights can form the foundation of your ICP research.

Mixing all of the above methods will give you a holistic picture of your ICP. But remember ICP research isn’t a one-and-done task. Social media behaviors and consumer preferences evolve (although not overnight!). Schedule time to understand how platform-centric preferences are updating consistently. 

ICP research eliminates the assumptions

Doing influencer marketing (or any kind of marketing, really) without knowing the ins and outs of your ICP is like shooting a dart in the dark. Conducting ICP research ensures you’re taking data-informed decisions rooted in rock-solid reality, not airy assumptions.

ICP research can sound extensive and daunting, but once it’s done, you’ll feel much more confident in approaching your influencer marketing campaigns, testing new kinds of creators, and experimenting with out-of-the-box content formats. Bye bye, blindspots 👋

Once you’ve got a clear picture of who your customer is, all that’s left to do is find out who they follow. Luckily, Modash has the most powerful influencer search engine on the market (where you can search for influencers based on the criteria you’ll establish in your ICP research). 

The best part? You can try it out completely free.