The Messaging Mistake Costing You Customers

AI may be upending the marketing playbook of the past decade, but the fundamentals still matter — especially when it comes to defining and aligning around your ideal customer profile (ICP). Nailing this can become a serious competitive advantage.

Happy customers can help clarify ICP

Happy customers don’t just renew: they reduce acquisition costs by giving you testimonials, referrals, and social proof. That’s not just a Customer Success or Product win. It signals that Marketing and Sales are aligned on who the right customer is, and that insights are flowing freely between teams.

Messaging without a clear ICP = noise

Every sales call, ad campaign, and social post relies on more than copywriting chops. It demands deep familiarity with your best-fit customer. If you miss the mark, your messaging might still sound good, but it won’t convert.

ICPs evolve. Your feedback loops should too

At a scaling company though, your ICP can evolve substantially over the course of a year, so messaging standards can’t just be a static document passed around once by a founder or marketer: Sales and Customer Success teams need to be deeply integrated in the marketing feedback loop.

Questions to tighten targeting

Consider how you can make sure your teams are aligned on the right customer. Ask questions like:

• What recurring objections is Sales hearing that Marketing should address?

• What traits define your most engaged customers, and how does that insight travel from Success to Marketing?

• What happens if renewal rates drop, or customers aren’t using half your features/offerings?

A siloed Success team might treat this gap as an education challenge, but getting Marketing and Sales in the loop can help you recognize when your target customer isn’t quite who you assumed it was.

AI makes it easier to improve your targeting... if you build for it

If anything, AI and automation are making it easier for small companies to identify trends like this in unstructured data (like call transcripts), and passing that between teams for quicker iteration. Teams just need to be intentional about how they set these systems up.