Improve the quality of inbound leads and the commercial value of converting clients. The business needed to shift away from attracting small, low-value accounts toward clients who matched its actual capabilities and pricing.

The business was generating enquiries — but too many were the wrong fit. Small clients, compressed fees, and sales conversations that started at the wrong price point. The marketing was working in the sense that it was producing leads. It wasn't working in the sense that it was producing the right ones.

The root cause was a lack of ICP clarity. Without a precise definition of the ideal client — not just their industry, but their pain points, their buying triggers, their decision-making structure — the messaging was broad enough to attract everyone and specific enough to compel no one in particular.

The fix required marketing and sales to work from the same picture. I started there.

I worked closely with the sales team to build out detailed client personas grounded in real commercial experience, not assumptions. The personas went beyond firmographic data to capture the specific pain points, priorities, and objections that characterised the clients the business most wanted and most reliably retained.

From there I used those profiles to make two connected changes.

First, targeting — refining the channel mix and account selection criteria so marketing spend and effort was concentrated where the right clients actually were.

Second, messaging — rewriting the core value proposition and supporting content to speak directly to the decision-makers we wanted to reach, using the language of their problems rather than the language of our services.

The result was a tighter, more deliberate marketing posture: fewer broad claims, more precise positioning.

Run a quarterly ICP review with sales to pressure-test the personas against recent wins and losses — keeping the targeting sharp as the market and the business evolve.

Segmentation isn't a one-time project; it's an ongoing feedback loop between marketing intelligence and commercial reality. The personas we built were the foundation. The next step is making sure they don't go stale.