---
name: "icp-and-positioning"
description: "Define who the product is for and why they would pick it, so every later piece of marketing has something to be measured against."
triggers: ["icp", "ideal customer", "positioning", "who is this for", "value proposition", "messaging", "target audience"]
version: "1"
---
# ICP and positioning
Use this before any campaign, page or sequence. If the answers do not exist yet,
getting them is the work.
## Narrow until it hurts
An ideal customer profile that fits most companies is not a profile. Push on
each of these until the answer excludes someone:
- The situation they are in, not the industry they are in. "Just hired their
second salesperson" beats "B2B SaaS".
- The trigger that makes this urgent this month.
- Who feels the pain, and who signs. When these differ, you need two messages.
- What they do today instead — the spreadsheet, the agency, the intern, or
nothing. This is the real competitor.
## Positioning in one sentence
Fill this in with no adjectives:
> For **[situation]** who **[trigger]**, we **[what we do]** so they **[outcome
> they would state themselves]** — unlike **[the current alternative]**.
Test it three ways. If a competitor could sign their name under it, it says
nothing. If the customer would not use those words, it is our language, not
theirs. If the outcome cannot be observed, it is not an outcome.
## Alternatives are not competitors
Most deals are lost to inertia, not rivals. Write down what doing nothing costs
them, in their units — hours, missed replies, rework. That number is the
campaign.
## What to hand back
One page: the situation, the trigger, the buyer and the user, the current
alternative, the positioning sentence, and three proof points that are true
today. Mark anything you assumed rather than heard, and list the two questions a
customer call would settle.
## What not to do
Never invent a persona with a name, a photo and a coffee preference — it feels
like progress and decides nothing. Never claim a differentiator the product does
not have yet; write it under "what we would need to be true". Never fabricate
customer quotes.