An ICP is a planning document, not something you paste into a tool. It doesn’t go on the website or get submitted anywhere. It shapes the decisions you make in each part of the work. Here’s where it gets used.
1. Writing the prompt list
This is the main use. Each ICP tells you who is asking, what they’re worried about, and what details they include. For your solar client, the “homeowner adding a battery” ICP produces prompts about outages, backup hours, and battery lifespan, while the “small business” ICP produces prompts about ROI, tax benefits, and downtime. Without the ICP, you’d write generic prompts like “best solar company.”
2. Deciding what content to create
Each ICP’s questions become pages and blog posts. If the homeowner ICP keeps asking “how many panels do I need for a 3-bedroom house?”, that’s a page. If the business ICP asks about payback period, that’s a case study and a calculator. The ICP also tells you what to write first: start with the segment that is most profitable for the client.
3. Writing the content itself
The ICP guides tone, examples, and depth. A page for homeowners uses simple language, monthly bill examples, and rooftop photos. A page for business owners uses ROI figures, financing options, and project timelines. Use the words your ICP uses, not industry jargon.
4. Choosing where to build off-site presence
The ICP tells you where those buyers research. If homeowners ask on Reddit and local Facebook groups, build presence there. If business owners rely on industry associations and trade publications, go there. It also shapes which review platforms and directories to prioritize.
5. Tracking visibility
When you run monthly checks across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the others, you group the results by ICP. That shows you things like “we appear for homeowner prompts but not for business prompts,” which tells you where to put effort next.
6. Reporting to the client
ICPs make reports meaningful. Instead of “you appeared in 30% of prompts,” you can say “you appear in 50% of homeowner battery prompts and 10% of commercial prompts, so we’re focusing on commercial next.”
7. Beyond AEO
The same ICPs are useful for the client’s ads, sales scripts, email follow-ups, and website messaging, so it’s worth sharing them with the client’s team.
A simple way to apply it
Make a table with one row per ICP and these columns: who they are, their trigger, their top 10 questions, the content that answers each, and where they research. That table becomes your working plan.
If you’d like, I can draft the ICP table for the solar client with example entries for the three segments.
