Marketing Icp Research

marketing-icp-research

Owns "who exactly buys, what they call the problem, where they hang out, who else they listen to". Foundation for copy + channel + SEO.

Triggers

• Brief contains "ICP", "target audience", "buyer persona", "customer research", "audience".
• Or invoked by marketing-orchestrator / marketing-campaign-planner early in a campaign.
• Or no ICP doc exists for the brand under marketing-studio/.research/icp/{slug}-{date}.md, or the latest is >180 days old.

Inputs

• brand slug
• feature (optional) — if researching for a specific feature's adopter segment
• seed (optional) — known customers / quotes / interview transcripts
• competitorReviews (optional) — G2 / Capterra review URLs to mine for vocabulary
• documents (optional) — list of local PDF / DOCX / TXT paths (customer interview transcripts, market reports, regulatory docs). When supplied, call app.server.pi_ceo_docparser.parse_document(path) to extract text + metadata before LLM analysis. The parser is deterministic and preserves page boundaries (doc.pages) so the LLM can cite "p. 3 of interview-2026-05-06.pdf" when surfacing pain quotes. See skills/pi-ceo-docparser/SKILL.md for the contract. Skip + log when doc.error is populated; never let a missing PDF dep break the research workflow.

Method

1. Seed from BrandConfig. audience.primary and audience.secondary are the starting hypothesis; this skill validates and deepens them.
2. Firmographic / demographic block:
   • B2B: industry, company size (employees, revenue), funding stage, tech stack, geography.
   • B2C: age, income, life-stage, geography, behaviour cohort.
3. Role block (B2B only):
   • Decision maker (signs the cheque) vs. champion (drives the project) vs. user (touches the tool) vs. blocker (legal / security / procurement).
   • Each role: title variants, seniority, KPIs they're measured on.
4. Pain hierarchy — list 5-10 pains, then RANK by:
   • Frequency (daily / weekly / monthly / annual)
   • Severity (cost of not solving, in money or time)
   • Awareness (does the customer already articulate this pain or only realise it after?)
5. Trigger events — concrete moments that move someone from "aware of pain" to "actively shopping". E.g. for Synthex: "model accuracy regression in prod", "auditor flags PII in training set", "new compliance regime announced".
6. Vocabulary mining — exact phrases the customer uses, not the seller's terms. Pull from review sites, Reddit, Slack communities, sales-call transcripts. Tag each with frequency.
7. Watering holes — places this ICP gathers, in priority order. Newsletters, podcasts, conferences, Slack/Discord communities, sub-Reddits, LinkedIn creators they follow.
8. Buying process — step-by-step from trigger to signed contract. Average length, gates, common objections, deal-breakers.
9. Anti-ICP — who LOOKS like a fit but is wrong. Saves wasted ad spend.

Output

marketing-studio/.research/icp/{slug}-{YYYY-MM-DD}.md (template at marketing-studio/frameworks/icp-canvas.md):

# ICP — {brand}{ - feature?}
Date: 2026-04-28

## Firmographics / demographics
…

## Roles
- Decision maker: …
- Champion: …
- User: …
- Blocker: …

## Pain hierarchy
1. {pain} — frequency / severity / awareness
2. …

## Trigger events
- …

## Vocabulary (exact phrases)
| Phrase | Frequency | Source |
| --- | --- | --- |
| "model drift in prod" | high | r/MachineLearning, G2 reviews |
| … | … | … |

## Watering holes
1. {newsletter / podcast / community} — why
2. …

## Buying process
1. Trigger → …
2. Awareness → …
3. Evaluation → …
4. Decision → …
5. Procurement → …

## Anti-ICP
- {segment} — looks similar but {why wrong}

Plus structured JSON sibling.

Boundaries

• Never invent customer quotes. If sources are thin, label fields "needs primary research" and propose 5 customer interviews.
• Never use BrandConfig.audience as the final answer — it's the seed, this skill is the validation.
• Never mix B2B and B2C frameworks in the same doc.
• Never publish an ICP without an Anti-ICP section.

Hands off to

• marketing-copywriter (uses vocabulary + pains for hooks and headlines)
• marketing-channel-strategist (uses watering holes for channel selection)
• marketing-seo-researcher (uses vocabulary as keyword seed)
• marketing-positioning (refines value prop with the validated pain hierarchy)

Per-project keys

• PERPLEXITY_API_KEY — review-site scraping, community mining. Missing → produces seed-only doc with explicit "fill via interviews" placeholders.
• OPENAI_API_KEY / ANTHROPIC_API_KEY — vocabulary clustering, pain ranking. Missing → returns raw extracts.