icp-research

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Translated

Build detailed ideal customer profiles with pain points, objections, buying triggers, and messaging angles. Includes community research to find where ICPs gather online and extract their exact language. Use when researching audiences, creating buyer personas, or developing targeted messaging.

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Sourcethatrebeccarae/claude-marketing

Added on2026-04-29

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add thatrebeccarae/claude-marketing icp-research

SKILL.md Content

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ICP Research

Build comprehensive ideal customer profiles for targeted marketing, including community discovery and voice-of-customer language extraction.

Install

bash

git clone https://github.com/thatrebeccarae/claude-marketing.git && cp -r claude-marketing/skills/icp-research ~/.claude/skills/

Workflow

1. Gather Product Context

What do you sell?
Key features and differentiators
Pricing model and range
Current customers (who buys today?)

2. Define Market

Industry / vertical
Company size (employees, revenue)
Geography
B2B vs. B2C vs. B2B2C

3. Build Persona

Demographics:

Job title and seniority level
Department and reporting structure
Company size and revenue range
Industry and sub-vertical
Geography and timezone

Psychographics:

Daily responsibilities (what fills their calendar)
Goals they are measured on (KPIs, OKRs)
Frustrations and daily friction
Career aspirations
How they stay informed (publications, podcasts, communities)

Buying Behavior:

Who influences the decision?
Who approves the budget?
What is the buying process? (self-serve, demo, RFP, committee)
Evaluation criteria (price, features, support, integration)
Typical buying timeline

4. Map Pain Points

Category	Questions to Answer
Time	What takes too long? What manual work do they hate?
Money	Where are they wasting budget? What costs too much?
Risk	What keeps them up at night? What could go wrong?
Quality	Where is output inconsistent or error-prone?
Growth	What blocks them from scaling?

Score each pain point: Frequency (1-10) x Intensity (1-10) = Priority Score

5. Identify Objections

Objection Type	Response Strategy
Price	ROI calculation, cost of inaction, payment flexibility
Time	Quick setup, done-for-you options, time-to-value metrics
Trust	Social proof, case studies, free trial/pilot, guarantees
Need	Cost of status quo, competitor pressure, market trends
Authority	Executive summary, ROI one-pager, pilot proposal

6. Map Buying Triggers

External triggers:

New funding round or budget cycle
Leadership change (new CMO, VP)
Competitor pressure (lost deal, feature gap)
Regulatory change (compliance deadline)
Failed vendor or tool (contract end, outage)

Internal triggers:

Missed targets (revenue, growth, efficiency)
Team complaints (process pain, tool frustration)
Process breaking at scale
New initiative requiring new capabilities
Budget cuts forcing consolidation

7. Community Research

Discover where your ICP gathers online and extract their exact language.

Platforms to search:

Reddit (subreddits by industry/role)
Facebook Groups
Discord and Slack communities
LinkedIn Groups
Quora and Stack Exchange
Industry forums
YouTube comments
App review sites (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot)

Search templates:

"[industry/role] frustrating OR annoying"
"why is [process] so hard"
"alternatives to [competitor]"
"[tool] vs [tool]"
"best [tool type] for [use case]"
"I switched from [tool] because"

What to extract:

Exact phrases and vocabulary they use (voice-of-customer)
Pain points with emotional language
Evaluation criteria they mention
Competitors they compare
Objections they raise

Classify community members:

Actively seeking: ready to buy, asking for recommendations
Aware but stuck: know the problem, not acting on it
Venting only: complaining but unlikely to change

8. Craft Messaging Angles

For each pain point, create:

Headline: attention-grabbing statement
Supporting proof: data point, case study, or testimonial
CTA: specific next step

Output Format

See REFERENCE.md for the complete ICP profile template.

Key Principles

Real language over marketing language. Use the exact words your ICP uses, not polished marketing copy.
Pain over features. Lead with what hurts, not what you built.
Specificity wins. "VP of Marketing at a 50-person SaaS company" > "Marketing leaders."
Validate with data. Community research > assumptions.
One ICP per profile. If you serve different personas, create separate profiles.

For templates and frameworks, see REFERENCE.md.