It is essential for businesses to know what sales verticals are in order to be successful. Sales verticals are markets with different needs and requirements that require a tailored approach when selling into them. It's important to understand how each market differs, in order to best serve their unique needs.
A sales vertical is a way to classify your ideal customer profile. Marketing is about understanding your customers, who they are, what they want, and how you can help them.
When it comes to selling products or services, knowing exactly who you’re selling to will help you tailor the approach so that the right person buys from you. That thought is at the foundation of all marketing efforts—think of it as “customer acquisition = marketing strategy”.
The idea behind creating multiple ICP rather than just one isn’t simply for having enough room to list every single possible characteristic that describes your perfect buyer; instead, by thinking in terms of Verticals, marketers recognize that customers respond differently to different types of marketing.
The ideal customer profile for an insurance agent is vastly different from the one you’d use to target a new brand owner of any age, and yet the same person could be either one (or both!) depending on his or her current status and goals. This allows marketers to make certain assumptions about who is most likely interested in their product or service before they even start building campaigns.
As mentioned earlier, one of the main reasons to use a sales vertical is to gain potential insights into your ideal buyer. Another reason is to gain access to them!
By segmenting your market, you’re able to target specific demographics that might otherwise be impossible or fruitless. Even if some of these groups are smaller than others—which they likely will be—they still represent an untapped market that comprises part of your overall customer base.
Figuring out exactly what makes each group tick can help increase your conversion rate considerably down the line.
It’s also important because not only does it allow for targeted advertising, but it helps you craft personalized content that has both broad appeal and deep meaning for specific subsets of people. delves deeper into why sales verticals are so powerful and how to create one for your business.
The best way to find a Sales Vertical is for you or one of your marketing team to sit down and start brainstorming. As brainstorming sessions go, this one should be pretty fun since all you’re doing is thinking about what makes your ideal customer tick.
If the term ‘vertical’ sounds like it might fit into an organizational chart or flowchart—similarly to how you would separate departments in a business—you’re on the right track! A sales vertical distinguishes your customers by their demographic and psychographic characteristics.
Most companies go through the process of creating a business plan for their product or service. This plan usually includes information about the demographics, psychographics, and geographic status of their target audience.
However, many businesses fail to take into consideration why these potential customers are interested in their business; thus resulting in failed attempts at attracting new clientele.
An ideal customer profile (ICP) goes beyond the amount of money your demographic earns each year to determine what type of personality they have that will make them purchase your specific product or service. You must understand why this individual would rather choose your business over others like it.
It's important to know how much disposable income they will be spending on items like yours due to the fact that most businesses are failing or being forced to close due to "poor sales performance."
If you are trying to attract new customers but have been unsuccessful, it's time for you to build your ICP sales. By doing so, you will be able to develop vital strategies and tactics aimed at penetrating your market while providing value-added services.
This customer profile is created in order for you to better understand how high of a return on investment (ROI) your product or service will generate once purchased by them.
It also provides insight into what products/services these people want that can be delivered through your company after studying their behavioral patterns and habits. With this knowledge, you will know why they prefer your product over another one like it and figure out what your product or service, and the market as a whole, is missing that will complete and complement their needs.
An ICP (ideal customer profile) is basically a description of your "ideal" client that looks like the perfect fit for your business. It can also include characteristics like their location, social demographics, income level, etc which allows you to find other people who share similar qualities and could potentially become customers.
Without them (or even with incomplete ones), it makes it really hard to know where to focus marketing efforts towards or who will eventually buy from you so creating ICP are crucial if you want to expand your horizons as a web-based retailer. In this example, we wanted our life insurance agency client to reach people who were older and wanted to talk about their life insurance needs.
This way, we know who our client's target audience is so they can focus more on reaching out to them instead of wasting money on lost leads or finding buyers who don't fit the bill.
ICP sales give businesses an edge on whether they should pursue a new target audience after they have spent years establishing themselves in another one. This profiling system is crucial when trying to decide which markets to go after as well as those to stay away from due to low customer demand and high competition.
When you know who your ideal customers are and what demographics fit into that persona, it's easier for you to find relationships within those markets that can turn you into lifelong customers and brand advocates. The goal here is not only to acquire new clients but retain them as well by creating a unique selling proposition (USP) that represents the heart of what you stand for.
By conducting market research, you can discover your core strengths and weaknesses by determining which demographics are most likely to buy from you based on their lifestyle preferences.
This information will help you adjust your business strategy if it's not efficient enough to reach these specific groups while also helping expand into new markets that will be more welcoming to your product or service. It is important to note that ICP sales differ significantly between industries because each company serves a different purpose through its services/products.
The first step in building your ICP is to compile a list of all the people who have bought from you before. Make sure they are currently buying within this niche as well. It is important to state that they must have made at least one purchase over the last six months, but ideally three or more purchases during that time span.
If not, then what would be the point? These people are already aware of your business and its offerings so do not include them on the list. Remove any clients who may have had bad experiences with you or left unsatisfied with their initial orders because this could affect their opinions of your company later down the road.
To create an ICP, you must have a list of your customers for reference. This could be from your website or store but if not, reach out to individuals who have already purchased from you and ask whether they would be interested in taking a small survey about why they chose your product rather than others within its industry.
Take note of the demographic profile that fits into your target audience. Is it one person or a combination? You can then broaden this by conducting research around the country or even the world depending on how big your company is.
If you are just starting out with building an ICP, don't worry too much about all the little details at first. You will learn more about them when you conduct research later on.
Focus your attention on the basic demographics that they all have in common to determine where they fall in relation to each other. This will allow you to see which groups they are in just by looking at their age, gender, race/ethnicity, income level, educational background, and marital status among others.
Now that you have an idea of what your company would realistically want its ideal customer to be, it's time to actually get down to business by creating a solid profile for this potential customer.
To do this, you need input from all directions starting with asking current customers questions like "who are you" or "what kind of person buys from us" but also involves researching industry trends along with doing the initial research into something/someone who matches your ideal customer profile.
For example, you can research what specific age groups use Facebook the most, which would help to determine where to advertise since older people are less likely to be on Facebook compared to younger generations.
After compiling this information from step two, you must now go back through it again but only focus on the ones most likely to buy from you once more since these are the most important for businesses. Using this data-driven approach will help guide how you reach out to these specific people with marketing messages tailored towards their likes/dislikes, beliefs, and values that they hold.
For instance, if you find that most of your current customers are males in their mid-30s who like to wear blue jeans while listening to rock music, then reach out to this same demographic at the next concert near you with samples of your new line of socks.
Once you have a clear understanding of who your customers are and how they best fit into demographics, it becomes much easier to know where/how to advertise or even find new buyers because you know what tends to draw them in (or turn them away).
This is especially helpful if you are selling something really niche like life insurance since it helps narrow down your audience so instead of wasting money trying out ads for Harley Davidson motorcycles or medical devices for seniors, you are focusing only on the people who are likely to buy your product for the right reasons.
When it comes to marketing, having an ICP is crucial since not knowing where/how to attract certain buyers can be a big problem if you want your business to grow. If left alone, it could cause you to spend money on ads that don't work or lose good leads because they didn't fit the profile you were looking for in the first place so take this information and get started creating an ICP today!
Usually, with any new vertical there is something wrong with how it is currently being handled and you want to do better.
For example, we were called by an insurance intermediary wanting to find out why their sales were so low and what we could do about it. What was happening was that people would put off buying insurance unless they already had enough money saved up (the trigger) but most of these individuals don't really think very far ahead into the future since it is hard to anticipate what will happen.
This is why we were able to help the agency by creating a better sales funnel and orienting some of their copy towards getting customers to buy life insurance while they were thinking about it.
Before you can formulate a hypothesis and plan out your test, you need to conduct some research around the issue that you are trying to solve with this new vertical. If you already have an idea on what might work then do more research anyway because it could end up saving or making you more money at the end which is always good.
Here, our team at FBG does lots of reading (blogs) and watching (podcasts) but also finds people who had already done similar projects before us to ask them questions about what they did.
The next, and possibly the most important part of this whole process is coming up with an idea to test for this new vertical. This is where you need to put all that research into action by outlining your plan of action for seeing if it will work or not.
Be sure to also take into consideration how much money you are willing to risk on testing out your hypothesis which can be done in different ways like limiting the number of times you use ads/media buys/etc or setting aside.
A certain amount of funds specifically for trying your new idea out.
For example, we wanted to see if making people pick their life insurance first instead of last (when it would be a pain in the butt to switch from one plan to another) would increase conversions so we created a different ad that featured messages about how life insurance should be taken care of while you are living and set up our test campaign.
This is where you get to put all that time and money into action by launching your idea into an audience and seeing what happens next. With Facebook Ads, this is where A/B testing comes in really handy by allowing you to have two or more ads that do similar things but have small differences between them so you can see which works the best.
This takes a good bit of patience since even if one ad has a better click-through rate (CTR) then there is no way to know if that is because of the particular message or something else and you might need to keep switching between your ads for a while before noticing any trends.
When it comes to selling products, there are some companies who decide they want to sell more by breaking into different markets.
For example, say an e-commerce store only sells one type of item but wants more sales, they can try expanding on what they currently sell by adding related items (a clothing store selling shoes) or going after a completely different industry that has similar demographics (an insurance company offering mortgages).
The first part of this process involves creating an ideal customer profile (ICP) and then using it to analyze what markets would be best for your company.
By analyzing what is germane for an industry rather than concentrating on individual preferences, companies know exactly how to market themselves based on what is relevant and most effective for them. This will allow businesses to hone communication efforts so they can connect with target audiences, interact with them and influence their behaviors which is why ICPs matter more now than ever before.
So owners, managers, and marketing experts must understand that by using this three-step process, they can obtain the necessary information to build a company's Ideal Customer Profile for creating successful businesses.
