On finding your favourite users
The method to find your ICP and ECP fast
Read Time: 4.10 Minutes
Like many entrepreneurs and thought leaders in business stated before, there is one key formula you have to hit in order to get successful with your idea.
Building a great product and finding the right customers.
Let's focus on customers today.
In general most founding teams or product leads are not doing enough sales at all anyway. Therefore it can be hard to find your users starting out.
It is easy to focus on something you can achieve alone, building a good product, instead focusing on something that needs goodwill from some others like sales.
But as we all know, no customers, no business.
Because we all know the saying:
"First time founders focus on product. Second time founders on distribution."
But what can you do about it?
At first, as an easy rule of thumb, you should do so much sales and marketing work that you start to think this is probably too much.
Usually then you make enough effort.
And of course there is one core problem you have to solve BEFORE you invest so much energy into sales activities.
Find your ideal customer profile. (ICP)
A task which is easier said than done. Sometimes it's a real problem to segment and understand the different customer groups you can show your product to.
And it's important to find the right ICP or even your ECP. (Early Customer Profile)
ECP or ICP? Just a short explanation here.
In general you are looking for your ideal customer profile regarding your product, but like any group of customers you have the early adopters and the normal people who buy then they have proof by others (usually the early adopters) that the solution is battle tested.
So the ECP is the part of your ICP which you should address first, because these customers tend to also buy early stage products.
Now back to the main question. What is a great method to find your ICP?
Inspired by the "Bullseye Method" (see link and the end) which is there to find your right marketing channel, I thought of the following in terms of finding your customer group:
To learn who is your ICP you have to build a hypothesis which person can be your ideal customer and then test through talking to these groups.
Easy and clear.
But where to start? This is where the "Bullseye Method" comes in.
Think of three different but possible ICPs for your product. Then talk to them and test your beliefs and hypothesis why you thought they could be your ICP.
Compare your ICPs and analyze which of these customer groups fit in the most.
If you have a clear winner use that ICP. If all three are not really suitable. Repeat the process.
Use your learnings from the interviews before to get more specific with your second round.
Do this until you hit. "Bullseye"
And now the power trick. Search for the early adopters in your ICP group and start addressing this person's first.
This raises the likelihood of your product success immediately only by investing some time to talk to your customers.
-End-
The Bullseye Method - by Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares
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