Getting started with long-form lead generation

First things first: let’s talk about what your ideal customer looks like.

Define your ideal customer profile

Your ideal customer profile (ICP) is all about understanding who your dream customer is—and the best way to talk to them. If you don’t know who or what this customer is, you can’t accurately identify their pain points, which translates into a pipeline full of low-intent prospects.Defining this up front will help shape your entire lead generation strategy—and dictate which topics your long-form content will explore. When you’re planning major content pieces that will underpin so much of your prospect’s journey, you want to make sure you’re talking about the right things. It’s likely that future customers will look like your current ones, so that’s a great place to start. Break down your customer base, picking out the attributes that are useful for building a profile. Who are they, and what are their key features?

To define this further, you can split those attributes into two categories;
Companies and Personas, like so:

Companies:	Personas:
Company Industry Company Size Geography Annual Revenue	Job Title Job Function Job Seniority Years of Experience

Three tips for a well-defined ICP

01.

Prioritize your best customers

Don’t kick off by working through your whole customer base; focus on those who have the highest lifetime values, the longest relationships, or the biggest contracts—whatever you think represents the ‘best.’

02.

Focus on the challenges you want your ICP to help solve

For example, if your pipeline has low intent, focus on deals with the highest conversion rate. If deals take a long time to close, focus on the customers who commit quickly.

03.

Think about what comes next

As you’re working through the exercise, think about what’s missing from your existing customer base—who should you be reaching that’s not already represented in your network?