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An ideal customer profile (ICP) describes one kind of customer you want more of: who they are, what they want, what gets in their way and how they buy. Your AI team writes for the profiles you keep, and you can pick one on each post, email or journey. This guide creates a profile for Northwind’s newest wholesale target, the owner of one neighborhood café in Portland buying about 20 lb of coffee a week, from one sentence, then corrects what the AI wrote.

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Start a new profile

1

Open Ideal Customer Profiles

In the left rail, click Marketing, then the Ideal Customer Profiles card.
The Customer Journey Maps card and the Ideal Customer Profiles card, outlined, on the Marketing page

The Ideal Customer Profiles card

2

Click New ICP

Ideal Customer Profiles with the search box, All, Active and Archived, and the New ICP button outlined

New ICP

A blank profile opens, with the AI Avatar Builder on the left.

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Let the AI build it

1

Describe the customer

Under Start this ICP with the assistant, click I will describe the customer. The message box starts with “Create an ICP for”; finish the sentence with who they are, what they buy and what they care about. Click the send arrow.To have the AI choose a customer from what it knows about your business instead, click Draft it from my business.
The AI Avatar Builder with Start this ICP with the assistant, I will describe the customer outlined, and the outlined message: Create an ICP for the owner of one independent neighborhood café in Portland, Oregon who buys about 20 lb of coffee a week from a local roaster, and the send button outlined

Northwind's description

2

Watch it fill in

A line at the top says The assistant is working on this ICP. Each section updates here as it is written. It names the profile, writes a short description and a typical quote, fills each section, and adds a portrait and a picture for the background story. Northwind’s took about six minutes.
The profile Morgan, The Consistency-First Café Owner, with its name outlined, the portrait outlined, the description, the quote, the Background Story with its picture, and the Demographics, Psychographics, Goals, Pain Points, Behaviors and Story tabs each with a green dot, and the Images tab, outlined

The finished profile

A green dot on a tab means that section is filled in.

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Read it and correct it

The AI marks what it guessed. Read each tab and change anything that is not true of your customers.
1

Go through the tabs

Each tab holds one part of the profile, such as Pain Points, with Pain Points, Challenges and Frustrations. Click + Add to add a line, or the × at its end to remove one.
The Pain Points tab outlined, Pain Points and Challenges with four pain points outlined, and the + Add link outlined

Pain Points

2

Rewrite what reads as a note

Some fields may read like the AI’s notes rather than the customer, such as a quote that starts with “Composite planning voice” or a location ending in “(user-specified)”. Rewrite them in plain words. Northwind kept only the customer’s words in the quote and set the location to “Portland, Oregon: one neighborhood café”.
3

Click Save

Click Save at the top right.
The profile header with the quote rewritten to I need the cup to taste like our cup every day, the coffee to arrive on a dependable weekly rhythm, and new baristas to learn how to make it that way., outlined, and the Save button outlined

The corrected quote, then Save

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Put it to work

The new profile is first in the list and counts under Active. Active profiles are the ones your AI team writes for: you can pick it under Who is this for when you start a post or an email, and on a customer journey.
Ideal Customer Profiles with Active (8) outlined and the new card Morgan, The Consistency-First Café Owner, Updated just now, outlined

The new profile, active

To stop using a profile, open it, click … at the top right, then Archive ICP. It moves to Archived.

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Good to know

  • By hand works too. Type the name, description and each tab yourself and click Save; the AI is optional.
  • The AI does more than write. Besides the text, it makes two pictures, the portrait and the story picture, and it uses your AI credits, so start it once and correct the result by hand.
  • Public URL gives a link that other AI tools can read the profile from. Anyone with the link can open it.
  • More: Draft a Case Study, Email or Social Post and Map Your Customer Journey use your profiles.