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My system for turning ICPs into actionable messaging

One question I get asked a lot on podcasts is some variation of: “How do you create messaging and copy that work for different decision-makers?”

The biggest misconception most marketing leaders have about B2B decision-makers is thinking they are their ICPs.

If you’re selling a project management tool for agencies, you might say, “Our ICPs are freelancers, agency owners, consultants, or project managers.”

Useful, but still too broad. That only tells you who they are—not how they actually make decisions in the real world.

So the first question I always ask myself when working with a client is: What are your ICP archetypes?

I divide these into four groups:

Check signer The budget owner. Final authority on whether money moves. Their lens is ROI, risk, and strategic alignment. They’re asking: “Will this decision pay off, and can I defend it to the board?”

Manager The operator who oversees implementation. They translate strategy into workflow. Their concern is efficiency, reporting, and accountability. They’re asking: “Will this make my team faster, smarter, more reliable?”

Daily user The person in the trenches. They live inside the tool or process day-to-day. Their focus is usability, time saved, and whether it actually solves their problems. They’re asking: “Will this make my work life easier, or just add hassle?”

Influencer (internal/external) The voices who shape perception but don’t hold the purse strings. Internally, that might be a trusted team lead or specialist. Externally, it could be industry thought leaders, analysts, or even AI-driven recommendations. They’re asking: “Is this credible, current, and respected in our space?”

Once you’ve mapped your ICPs into these archetypes, you can start to see the dynamics of how decisions really get made.

For example, in a mid-sized agency with 10–30 people:

• Check signer: the founder
• Manager: department director
• Daily user: department expert
• Influencer: Internal (key team members) + External (industry thought leaders)

This gives you a starting point for deeper research—interviews, surveys, behavioral data, review mining—so you can study the whole unit, not just individuals. Because in B2B, they rarely make decisions in a silo. The risk of choosing the wrong vendor can make or break someone’s career. Which means decisions are as emotional as they are rational.

Forrester now calls this the “buying network,” and it’s grown beyond the company walls: third parties, analysts, industry influencers, and as mentioned, even LLM recommendations and partner ecosystems. They all weigh in.

In other words: it’s a noisy, crowded environment. More than it’s always been.

To cut through, you have to show up as a trusted partner, almost a member of their network, not just another vendor.

That’s why I’ve started talking less about conversion rate optimization and more about conversion experience optimization. Your goal isn’t just to bump numbers, but to improve the buying experience for the entire network.

And messaging and copy are at the heart of that experience.

So, who do you prioritize?

The last piece of the framework is knowing who to prioritize—so your site, emails, sales collateral, and creatives all line up into a cohesive, low-friction (and yes, comfortable) buying journey.

The way I find out when I work with teams, is by asking:

• Marketing: Who do you help? How do you segment them?
• Sales: Who do you speak to first? Who do they need to convince next?
• Product: Who are you building for? What jobs-to-be-done are you addressing?
• Support: Who typically reaches out for help? Who do they report to?

Cross-checking those answers against my own research gives me the narrative structure—and the right sequence—for messaging across every channel.

When you build messaging with these perspectives in mind, you’re not just writing for “a CMO” or “a VP of Growth.” You’re engineering a decision environment that helps the whole buying network move toward yes.

It’s a big change from an answer like “We help agencies who need to complete projects faster and more efficiently.

The takeaway?

Don’t stop at defining ICPs as roles.

Break them into archetypes, study how the unit/network makes decisions, prioritize who matters when, and create messaging that speaks to each role’s priorities.

That’s when copy turns into an optimized conversion experience.

DISCOVERY

Use "meta-prompting" to get better results with AI

​Here's a very useful article by Dharmesh Shah, on how to get better outputs from any of your prompts. His solution? Ask AI.

I especially like how he sees getting experience proimpoting AI as shaping your "intuition" for what works. It's definitely what I've found in my daily repeat use. In a way, the better a copywriter you are, the better you are at prompting.

RESONANCE

Takuan Soho, The Unfettered Mind

Have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Chris

Chris Silvestri Founder & conversion alchemist

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