Get hyper-specific about your ICP

Casie says: “Get hyper-specific about what your ICP (ideal customer profile) actually needs.

The era of generic SEO content is over. AI overviews already own those answers. They already own those broad surface-level questions, and the only way to really stand out is to understand what your customers want.

Who is your target audience? What do they want? What do they struggle with? What's missing from the AI summaries? What are the insights that they can't get anywhere else?

I use the term ICP because I like the idea that you have an ideal customer: This is who they are. This is what they want. This is what they're asking. When you really break it down, that's who you want to be targeting, and that's who you're writing for. Understanding that is so important.”

Is there only one ideal customer that you pinpoint?

“No, it’s just who is buying from you. There might be multiple customers.

For example, we have a community for in-house general legal counsel. Even though our customer is general counsel in-house, they might be from a tech company, a public company, or a venture fund. At the end of the day, they have all of these same things in common.

The things that are important to them are what's important to everybody. It's a customer; we're just putting it all together.

It’s similar to personas. People used to pay tens of thousands of dollars for slide decks that would say, ‘This is Joe, and Joe likes this.’ The basics are: What are they looking for? What are their needs? What is it that they want? What do they need to know?”

How do you establish who that ideal customer is, and what information do you include in that profile?

“20 years ago, SEOs were mainly doing keyword research. Then, that evolved into content research, talking to the sales and support teams, and maybe even talking to some of your customers to get a sense of what they want. That hasn't changed. Now, we actually have more data at our disposal.

I just did an analysis where I took all of our customers and put them into a spreadsheet. It had their titles, how long they've been a member, the types of companies they were at, etc. I asked Gemini, within Google Sheets, ‘What are the common factors here? What are the commonalities between these people? What are some things they might be interested in?’

All of that stuff is at our disposal now, which is really fantastic. At the end of the day, when we're thinking about SEO and we're thinking about content, we're thinking about what our customers are searching for. That hasn't changed. We're still looking for the same things. We're looking to see what's showing up on search. We're looking to see what's showing up on ChatGPT. We're looking at forums.

We're looking to see what people are talking about and what they care about. If you know who those people are, you can get a sense of what they actually care about.”

Why does an SEO need to know this information, and how do you use this information?

“I have never seen a bigger change in search in the 20 years I've been doing this. I truly believe that the search landscape has fundamentally changed, with the advent of AI and Google really focussed on that, with ChatGPT, with Reddit, and with people spending time elsewhere. People say that the younger generation doesn't go to Google.

This is such a huge shift, and the way that we do SEO has had to change as well. My background was always in content marketing: creating the content that's going to show up in search, get people interested, and drive them to our site. That broad catch-all content that once pulled in traffic is not working anymore because we now have the AI overviews answering that.

Anything more generic, that we used to rely on for visibility, just doesn't have the same impact. That's clear to anyone who has a website or has done anything of that nature. You need to understand your ICP, and understand their needs – and be specific, because we can't compete at that surface level anymore. You have to own the specific conversations they're having. You need to know that AI can't replicate what you’re producing.

In 2026, the winners are going to be the people who go deeper and deliver content that's tailored, driven by expertise, driven by data, and can't be generalised.

What is that second layer of content? What is that second layer of questions? If you have research, that can't be replicated. Answers to specific things about your product or your industry can't be replicated. That is so important. We can't just create generic content anymore.”

Does keyword volume matter anymore?

“I have no idea. I recently read that around 60% of searches don't go to the website anymore, and no one clicks from them.

To me, you now need to think about the opportunities. You still need to understand the keywords, but you also need to understand where people are searching for these things. Your strategy might need to go beyond creating content for Google and think about how to create content for other platforms that LLMs might be pulling from as well.

I don't know if volume matters. It gives you a baseline, but you should always take keyword volume with a grain of salt. It shows you that people are looking for it, but does that always mean that your audience is looking for it? Not necessarily.”

Do you need to create different bits of content for different platforms, or do you try and serve each platform from the same piece of content?

“I've always been a big fan of building something that you can utilise and repurpose in different places.

We put out a compensation survey every year. It's a pretty big deal. We only share it with our members, for the most part, but we also include snapshots of it that can be used in different places. We have a blog about it that might give some general statistics that could be picked up in search. We built a document for LinkedIn; we use it for LinkedIn ads and we use it for our general LinkedIn profile, as well.

There are different pieces of it that we can use, but it's also about understanding what matters to those people in those places. People in different places want different things.”

If 60% of visibility on the SERP doesn't get a click, how do you measure success nowadays?

“It's an ongoing process. Pretty much everyone has seen their organic search traffic decrease, but if you're putting out good content and things that are interesting, what does that engagement look like? How is that impacting your pipeline? Are you getting more leads? Are you getting more customers?

There is still something to keyword visibility. Are you showing up for those specific intent-rich queries that are tied to the things your customers are talking about? The person who runs our digital has created reports to show whether or not we are generating visibility and traffic from LLMs. Are we touching all of these different places?

At the end of the day, your search traffic might be down, but how is it showing up in other places? How is your pipeline impacted? Are they still finding your content? We recently built a blog post that had a bunch of AI prompts for lawyers. Just yesterday, it drove a form fill, and that person came from ChatGPT. We are able to track some of that to see how it's impacting and where it's coming from.

You can still measure; it's just challenging and different.”

How do you decide where to publish a particular piece of content?

“Again, it's about understanding where your audience is. I can't tell you how many times I’ve had clients say, ‘We want to be on Facebook,’ but their customers are not looking for accounting software on Facebook. That is not where they are.

Why don't we create some content for LinkedIn? There's an opportunity to have a LinkedIn newsletter, or we could do some ads, or whatever it might be. We could get your founder publishing there because that's where their audience is.

It’s about understanding where your audience is looking. I bring this up every year, but there are very specific communities that people hang out in. There are Slack channels, for example. At my last company, we were working with a lot of e-commerce brands. I can't tell you how many Slack channels there are that are filled with e-com leaders chatting, sharing content, and sharing things they did.

I’m now in the legal space, and there are so many legal forums and places where people are talking. You have to do the research to see where people are. Then, it's just a case of engaging. If you get into something like that, it's a little bit different. You can't just spam people with your content. However, if it's valuable, it's a great place to have it. Someone then shares it, and suddenly it's getting picked up.”

In your content, are you specific about who it is written for, or do you just write in a way that is likely to appeal to your ideal customer?

“It's important to write specifically to them. That's something that my opinion has changed on, over the years. You used to be able to write something that's a little bit more general, but because of these changes, that's really important.

Recently, we wrote a very specific in-house counsel's guide to AI compliance. That is a very specific target audience and a very specific piece. That specificity has become so much more important.

You have to understand who the different people in your ICP are. There might be multiple personas who care about the same things, but you may now have to write specifically to them.”

Casie, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“Search has inherently changed, and the broad content we used to write is not going to work anymore.

Understanding your ICP, going to that second level of questions, and going deeper into what isn't being answered in the AI overviews or by ChatGPT will be the key to your success.”

Casie Gillette is a Senior Director of Member and Sponsor Marketing at The Suite. Find out more over at TheSuite.com.