Why Your ICP Isn’t Working - and What to Do About It
- Iain Acton
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
You’ve done the workshops.
You’ve built the persona decks.
Your team think they have aligned on a clear Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
You’re targeting the right companies.
In the right industry.
With the right tech stack and revenue range.
But…
The response rates are low.
The messaging feels flat.
Your conversion metrics aren’t moving - and you're quietly starting to wonder:
Did we get the ICP wrong?
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Most ICPs look good in a deck but fall apart in the real world.
And it’s not because they’re wrong.
It’s because they’re built from the outside in.
The Problem: Your ICP Is Too Shallow
Most ICPs are defined by surface-level traits:
Industry
Headcount
Revenue
Tech stack
Job title
That’s fine for targeting on LinkedIn.
But it doesn’t tell you why someone buys. It doesn’t tell you:
What job they’re trying to get done
What pain they’re experiencing
What outcome they’re chasing
What transformation they’re really craving
Why they’ll say yes right now
This is the gap.
And this is why founders and growth teams often find themselves frustrated when outbound flops, ads don’t land, or messaging gets ignored.
“We were targeting the right industry, but solving the wrong problem. Even the best copy didn’t matter.”— Growth lead at early-stage SaaS company
Most Startups Are Building for Ghost Personas
They look real. They’re in the deck.
But no one actually knows if they’ll buy.
Here’s what usually happens:
A few early users show up.
You reverse-engineer a persona from LinkedIn filters.
You build your ICP.
You start scaling messaging and GTM.
But you skipped the most important step:Validating whether that segment has the right intent.
The kind of intent that drives urgency, decision-making, and budget.
You Don’t Need Just One ICP — You Need ICP Options
Your ICP shouldn’t be a final decision.
It should be a testable hypothesis.
In fact, if you haven’t tested at least 3–5 customer segments with different jobs-to-be-done, emotional triggers, and struggles, you’re probably guessing.
That’s why we don’t start with personas.
We start with intent.
At Market Fit Mastery, we use the Intent ICP Strategy Pack to uncover:
Which segments are struggling with a specific job
Where urgency and willingness to pay are highest
What messaging aligns with their moment of highest demand
We turn guesswork into structured hypotheses - and help founders validate before they commit.
How to Fix a Broken ICP
If your ICP isn’t working, don’t panic.
It doesn’t mean your product is broken.
It means your focus is off.
Here’s what to do:
1. Reframe Your ICP as a Job-to-Be-Done
Move beyond “mid-market ecommerce companies using Stripe.”Instead, ask:
“Who’s urgently trying to streamline multi-currency payouts across vendors?”
That’s a job. That’s intent.
2. Prioritize Segments by Urgency & Willingness to Pay
Evaluate your segments not by company size — but by:
How critical the job is
What it costs them to delay solving it
Whether they’ve tried (and failed) with other solutions
That’s where real demand lives.
3. Validate With Light-Weight Tests
Don’t wait until after you build the roadmap or write 50 cold emails.Use:
JTBD interviews
Concierge MVPs
Offer tests with outbound or messaging prototypes
You’ll learn more in 10 conversations than 10k ad impressions.
The Takeaway
If your ICP feels off - it probably is.
Not because you targeted the wrong company……but because you misunderstood what that company actually needs right now.
Surface traits ≠ buying signals
Roles ≠ intent
Personas ≠ urgency
Want to get clarity?
This is how you go from guessing to growth. Stop wasting months building for the wrong segment.
Let’s get to work.
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