The most generous thing a brand can do is be specific. Here is exactly who Striveloom is for — and why publishing your ICP publicly is the smartest positioning move an agency can make.
The most generous thing a brand can do is be specific.
Most agency websites describe an ideal client in terms so broad they describe every business that has ever hired an agency: "We work with ambitious companies who want to grow." That sentence is not a positioning statement. It is a placeholder for one.
Generosity in positioning means giving the buyer the information they need to know — quickly and honestly — whether this agency was built for them. The buyer who reads your ICP and knows within three sentences that you are exactly right for their situation has been given a gift. The buyer who reads a generic positioning statement and has to book a discovery call to find out whether the agency has experience in their context has been given a burden.
Specific is generous. Generic is a waste of everyone's time.
We have a public ICP page. It states, specifically, who we are for — and who we are not.
This is what we know about the buyers we serve best.
They are founders or marketing leads at companies that have achieved initial product-market fit and are now facing a digital growth problem: not enough qualified traffic, a website that does not convert at the rate the product deserves, a content strategy that produces volume without authority. The company has typically tried solving the problem in-house and learned enough to know they need a specialist.
They have a budget. Not "we have some marketing budget" — a specific budget, already allocated, with clear success metrics attached to it. They know what a good outcome looks like and they will recognize it when they see it.
They believe the relationship with an agency should produce more capability inside their company, not more dependency on the agency. They are not looking for a vendor to outsource thinking to. They are looking for a partner who teaches while building.
They are skeptical of agencies. They have been burned before — by overpromising, by vanity metrics, by reporting that looks like progress and is not. Their skepticism is healthy. We serve it by being transparent from the first conversation.
That description rules out a large portion of the market. That is the point.
The /not-for-you section of our ICP page is equally specific.
We are not for companies that need a vendor, not a partner. If the engagement is being managed by someone whose primary job is to make sure the agency delivers the brief without requiring thinking from the client side, we are not the right match.
We are not for companies where "success" is defined by the number of deliverables rather than the quality of outcomes. We do not count blog posts. We count conversions, leads, and revenue attribution.
We are not for companies without allocated budget. The "let's see what you can do first" framing is not a relationship we can serve well. We have seen what it leads to and it is not good for either party.
We are not for companies looking for the cheapest option in the category. We are not the most expensive option in the market. We are the right option for buyers who understand that the difference between a mediocre result and a measurably excellent one is real and worth paying for.
The fear about publishing a specific ICP is the same fear about radical positioning: we will lose business.
The answer is the same. Yes. The business that was never going to result in a good engagement.
The buyers who read a specific ICP and recognize that they do not fit leave the page without booking a call. That is efficient. Those calls would have been unproductive. The time saved on both sides is the benefit.
The buyers who read a specific ICP and feel described — who read the paragraph about their situation and think "that's exactly where we are" — arrive at the discovery call with a fundamentally different posture. They are not there to evaluate whether to hire the agency. They are there to confirm what they already suspect from the ICP: that this is the right match.
The conversion rate on that discovery call is structurally higher. Not because the agency is better at sales. Because the buyer arrived having already completed most of the evaluation process, using the public ICP as the evaluation instrument.
Striveloom data: after publishing the public ICP page, average time-to-decision on discovery calls declined by 40 percent. Not because we started rushing buyers. Because the qualification process had already happened before the call began. The call became a confirmation, not an introduction.
The specific ICP signals something important: the agency knows what it is good at.
An agency that can describe its ideal client in precise, specific terms is an agency that has reflected carefully on where it creates value. That reflection is not common. Most agencies describe their ideal client in the broadest possible terms because they are afraid to exclude anyone. The fear of exclusion prevents the clarity that would attract the right buyers faster.
Edelman's Trust Barometer research shows that B2B buyers rate "vendor self-awareness" — the vendor's honest assessment of their own strengths and limitations — as a top-five trust signal (Edelman, 2025). An agency that says "this is exactly who we are for, and this is exactly who we are not for" is demonstrating self-awareness. Buyers find that credible.
The specific ICP also signals expertise. When an agency can describe the buyer's situation — the specific problem they are facing, the specific belief they hold about how it should be solved, the specific prior experience that makes them skeptical — buyers infer that the agency has seen this situation before. Pattern recognition is the product buyers are actually buying when they hire a specialist.
The more specific the ICP, the stronger the inference that the agency has solved this problem before.
The common mistake in ICP development: defining the target client in firmographic terms only.
Company size. Industry. Revenue range. Geographic market. These are the easy dimensions. They are also the least useful, because they describe the company's characteristics rather than the buyer's situation, beliefs, and decision-making context.
A meaningful ICP includes:
The specific problem the ideal client is facing, described in the client's language rather than the agency's. The belief the ideal client holds about how the problem should be solved. The prior experience that brought them to the point of seeking outside help. The decision-making process they will use to evaluate and select an agency. The outcome they will consider successful, stated in measurable terms.
The ICP that answers all of these is not a demographic profile. It is a character portrait. A buyer who reads it and recognizes themselves does not need to be convinced that the agency is a good fit. They feel described. And feeling described is the beginning of trust.
First Round Review's research on go-to-market strategy for service businesses consistently finds that the companies with the strongest initial traction are those whose positioning describes a specific buyer's problem so precisely that buyers feel the company was built for them (First Round Review, 2023). The feeling of being understood is the most powerful sales signal available — and the specific ICP is how it is created at scale.
You can read our full ICP at striveloom.com/about and explore the services built for it at striveloom.com/services.
The ICP you publish today should not be the ICP you publish in two years.
Every engagement adds data. The clients who became the best referral sources share characteristics. The clients who produced the most friction share different characteristics. The engagements where the team performed at the highest level share a context. The engagements where the team felt consistently underpowered share a different context.
That data updates the ICP.
An evolving public ICP is a better signal than a static one. It tells buyers that the agency is paying attention — that it is learning from experience and refining its understanding of where it creates value. The agency that updates its ICP publicly every twelve months is demonstrating the same intellectual honesty it applies to client work.
The ICP is not a promise etched in stone. It is a current best understanding of who the agency serves well — updated as the evidence accumulates. Publish the current version. Update it when the evidence demands. Be transparent about what changed and why.
Write your current ICP. Not the one you aspire to. The one that describes the clients you have served most successfully in the last twelve months.
What did those clients have in common? Not just industry and size — the specific problem they were facing, the specific belief they held, the specific outcome they were seeking, the specific way they evaluated whether they had achieved it.
Then write the anti-ICP. The clients who generated the most friction, the most revision cycles, the lowest satisfaction, and the fewest referrals. What did they have in common?
The gap between the two descriptions is your positioning. The ICP is the positive version of the line you are drawing. Publish it. Link to it from your homepage. Include it in your proposal process.
The buyer who reads it and feels found will trust you before the first call.
That is the goal. Not to attract everyone. To matter, deeply, to someone.
Specific is generous. Be specific.
An ideal client profile is a specific description of the buyer type an agency serves best — including the problem they face, the belief they hold about how it should be solved, the prior experience that brought them to seek help, and the outcome they will consider successful. Publishing it publicly converts discovery calls at higher rates because buyers arrive having already evaluated their own fit against the agency's stated criteria. Edelman Trust Barometer research identifies vendor self-awareness — the honest assessment of who the agency serves and who it does not — as a top-five trust signal in B2B vendor selection.
Beyond firmographics, a meaningful ICP describes: the specific problem the ideal client is facing, in the client's own language; the belief the ideal client holds about how the problem should be solved; the prior experience that brought them to seek outside help; the decision-making process they will use to evaluate agencies; and the outcome they will consider successful, in measurable terms. The ICP that answers these questions is a character portrait, not a demographic profile. A buyer who reads it and recognizes themselves feels understood — and feeling understood is the beginning of trust.
The buyers excluded by a specific ICP are buyers for whom the fit was unclear. Discovery calls with unclear fit generate the highest time cost and the lowest conversion rate. Publishing a specific ICP moves the qualification process from the discovery call to the ICP page — buyers self-select before booking. The buyers who book after reading a specific ICP arrive pre-qualified. Striveloom data shows that publishing the public ICP page reduced average time-to-decision on discovery calls by 40 percent, without reducing the quality of clients who reached out.
Review and update annually, using engagement data from the past twelve months. Which clients became the best referral sources? Which produced the most friction, the most revision cycles, the lowest satisfaction? Which engagements saw the team performing at their highest level? Those patterns update the ICP. An evolving public ICP signals intellectual honesty — the agency is learning from experience and refining its understanding of where it creates value. The current version is a best understanding, not a permanent definition. Publish the current version. Update it when the evidence demands. Be transparent about what changed.
When an agency can describe the buyer's specific situation — the exact problem, the exact prior context, the exact decision-making factors — buyers infer that the agency has seen this situation before. The more specific the description, the stronger the inference that the agency has solved this problem for multiple similar clients. Pattern recognition is the product buyers are purchasing when they hire a specialist. The specific ICP makes the pattern recognition visible before the first conversation, which is why buyers who recognize themselves in a specific ICP arrive at discovery calls with significantly higher purchase intent than buyers who encountered a generic positioning statement.
The anti-ICP describes the clients an agency does not serve well — the buyer types, situations, and engagement structures that consistently produce friction, revision cycles, low satisfaction, and few referrals. Publishing the anti-ICP alongside the ICP is a double trust signal: it shows the buyer exactly who the agency is for and confirms that the agency has thought carefully about where it creates value and where it does not. The anti-ICP also reduces wrong-fit discovery calls more efficiently than the ICP alone, because some buyers who would not recognize themselves in the positive ICP description will recognize themselves in the negative one.
Founder & CEO of Striveloom. Software engineer and Harvard graduate student researching software engineering, e-commerce platforms, and customer experience. Builds the agency that ships like software — one team, one pipeline, one platform. Writes on AI agencies, web development, paid advertising, and conversion optimization.
Radical positioning means drawing a line so clear that most buyers self-select out before the first call. That's not a risk. That's the strategy.
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| Generic ICP | Specific ICP |
|---|
| "Ambitious companies who want to grow" | "Founders at post-PMF SaaS companies with $2M-$15M ARR facing organic growth plateau" |
| "Marketing leaders at B2B companies" | "CMOs at professional service firms with 50-200 employees who have tried content and want attribution" |
| "Companies that value quality" | "Buyers who have been burned by an agency that delivered deliverables instead of outcomes" |
| Attracts everyone, qualifies no one | Qualifies buyers before the first call |
| Requires 45-minute discovery call to establish fit | Fit is largely established before the call begins |
| Signals: we don't know who our best clients are | Signals: we have done this before for people exactly like you |
