How do you define an ICP?
The starting point is your best current customers. Analyze the accounts that bring the most revenue, renew without friction and get real results with your product, and look for the pattern they share. That pattern translates into concrete criteria, such as industry, employee range, country or the situation that led them to buy. The result should fit in a few lines and let you answer one simple question fast, does this company fit or not.
It helps to keep the ICP apart from the buyer persona. The ICP describes the target company, and the persona describes the specific person who decides or influences inside it. They work in sequence, first choosing the account, then choosing who to talk to.
What data do you need to build one?
Two sources cover a first version. The external one is firmographic data about each company, such as industry, size, country and web presence. The internal one is your own history, which accounts closed fastest, which renewed and which left the best margin. Crossing both produces an initial profile that then gets refined with every quarter of real sales.
Where the ICP proves its worth is when applied to a real list of companies. It is the difference between wandering a trade show looking at booths and arriving with the priority accounts already identified. That crossing is DataOrigin’s core feature. The platform compares your ICP against the exhibitor list and attendees of each show and ranks the companies with the best fit, so lead generation starts weeks before the event. Our guide on using your ICP at trade shows walks through it step by step.