Creating an Ideal Customer Profile for Enterprises

I started with internal sales data: where we were winning, which verticals showed higher win rates, year-over-year trends, and the titles/personas involved in deals that moved forward. We focused heavily on wins to put gasoline on what was already working. I layered in product usage data where available. Then I used Gong to go deep on a handful of ideal won customers—listening to calls all the way through the sales cycle rather than sampling randomly. That showed when the champion appeared, who else got pulled in (users, budget holders, IT/security, finance, CMO), where reps hit friction, and how the buyer journey actually unfolded.

From that we built a clear ICP and discrete messaging “flavors” for each persona: video/creative leaders cared about one set of outcomes; creative directors about speed, quality, and differentiation; IT/security about protecting unreleased work; finance about ROI; CMOs about brand differentiation and moving faster. We narrowed to accounts that fit the ICP and the right personas inside them instead of boiling the ocean.

Next we sold the plan internally. Product marketing’s job is to sell inside before outside. We took the data-driven story to the head of marketing and head of sales, got buy-in for a more targeted campaign, and locked a source-of-truth brief (overview, analysis, personas, messaging) that everyone signed off on. From there we spun up landing pages and ads (reusing existing case-study quotes and creative matched to those personas), equipped BDRs with sequence messaging, and enabled AEs on who they would meet and how to handle objections at each stage. We treated BDRs and AEs as separate enablement motions and ran focused sessions with their leaders. Externally, the campaign led with insights and social proof (“don’t take it from us—here’s someone in a similar role”), remained on for later-stage personas (CMO, IT, procurement), and gave champions ROI calculators and leave-behinds so they could sell when we weren’t in the room. We prioritized director/manager/creative-technologist entry points first, then turned on executive engagement once internal momentum existed.

We relied on CRM/sales win-loss data and year-over-year analysis, product usage data where we had it, and Gong (plus similar call-recording platforms) to listen to full deal cycles and pull AI-generated summaries and voice-of-customer language. The internal brief/deck became the single source of truth; we reused existing case studies, quotes, and Adobe/Frame creative rather than creating everything from scratch. Enablement covered BDR sequences, sales objection handling, landing pages, persona-specific ads, and ROI tools for champions.

Narrowing to ICP-fit accounts and persona-specific messaging created higher-quality pipeline and accelerated how fast we could move those deals. The same source-of-truth brief let marketing, BDRs, and AEs stay coordinated, and leading with customer insights plus proof made it easier for champions to carry the story internally to IT, finance, and the CMO.