| name | icp-research |
| version | 1.0 |
| last_updated | "2026-05-19T00:00:00.000Z" |
| author | genesys-growth |
| description | Build structured ICP documentation by scraping case studies, testimonials, and solutions pages from your website. Produces firmographics, champion + economic buyer personas, pain points, decision criteria, anti-ICP, customer proof points, and voice-of-customer synthesis. Writes to marketing/icp/ICP.md as the canonical ICP every downstream skill reads. Triggers - "icp research", "ideal customer profile", "persona research", "customer segments", "who are our customers", "build ICP" |
| goal | Build a structured ICP from website signals + win-loss data so every downstream skill works from the same definition of the customer. |
| outcome | marketing/icp/ICP.md with firmographics, champion + economic buyer personas, pain points, anti-ICP, voice-of-customer. |
| primitive | research |
| ontology_type | icp-profile |
| review_gate | 2 |
| inputs | {"required":[],"recommended":["competitor-research"]} |
| outputs | [{"type":"icp-profile","feeds_into":["positioning","product-messaging","funnel-strategy","content-strategy"]}] |
| owned_by_agent | researcher |
| mcps_used | ["exa"] |
| triggers | {"slash_commands":["/icp-research"]} |
| status | draft |
icp-research — Stage 1 + 2 research skill
The article's Example 1 Day 5 skill. Reads your website + win-loss patterns (if available) + competitor outputs (if locked) and writes a structured ICP to marketing/icp/ICP.md. This file is canonical from creation — every downstream skill reads it.
When to use
- Day 5 of Example 1: after competitor research + win-loss data exist, build the ICP synthesis
- Quarterly refresh of ICP (markets shift)
- New segment exploration ("we're adding a healthcare vertical — re-run ICP for that segment")
- After major win-loss shift (5+ recent losses in a segment → re-run ICP)
When NOT to use
- For behavioural simulation of an ICP buyer (use
/icp-behavioural — not in V2 quickstart)
- For interview prep against a single account (use
/customer-interviews — not in V2 quickstart)
- For competitor research (use
/competitor-research)
- For positioning strategy (use
/positioning after ICP locks)
How it works
- Inputs: your website URL (required). Optional: list of representative customer URLs, win-loss patterns from prior cycle, competitor aggregate.
- Reads (Exa MCP for fresh data): website case studies, customer pages, testimonials, blog posts, About / Solutions pages.
- Optionally reads:
marketing/competitors/aggregate.md (if locked) to inform "anti-ICP" framing; recent win-loss data from marketing/win-loss/win-loss.md (if /win-loss-analysis has run).
- Produces a structured ICP with these sections (matches the PulseAnalytics example at
marketing/icp/ICP.md):
- Firmographics — company type, revenue stage, team size, funding, geography, industry
- Champion persona — title, tenure, reporting, owns, their week, JTBD, job-context triggers, pain points (priority order), decision criteria
- Economic buyer persona — title, motivation, decision criteria
- Anti-ICP — who NOT to sell to + why
- Where they hang out — acquisition channels with rationale
- Customer proof points — populate as real customers ship (start empty with
[UNAVAILABLE] notation)
- Voice of customer — verbatim quotes by theme (populate from
/win-loss-analysis over time)
- Every claim tagged with confidence per
.claude/rules/ontology.md. Invented metrics forbidden — use [UNAVAILABLE] instead.
- Writes to
marketing/icp/ICP.md (overwrites prior canonical; git history preserves prior versions).
Invoke
/icp-research https://yourdomain.com
Or with optional inputs:
/icp-research https://yourdomain.com + read these 3 case studies: [URLs]
Example output
See marketing/icp/ICP.md for the PulseAnalytics example seed. Notice the structure repeats per persona (champion + economic buyer); pain points are priority-ordered; anti-ICP is explicit; VoC + proof points start [UNAVAILABLE] and fill as data lands.
Dependencies
- Reads from: your website URL (required);
marketing/competitors/aggregate.md (optional, recommended); marketing/win-loss/win-loss.md (optional, recommended — produced by /win-loss-analysis)
- Reads via Exa MCP (optional): website + recent customer-facing pages
- Writes to:
marketing/icp/ICP.md (canonical, every downstream skill reads here)
Customization
Add a custom segment (e.g., "Enterprise tier") by extending the firmographics section with a segment-table — different revenue/team-size cuts get different champion personas. The Genesys-internal version supports segment-by-segment ICPs; the quickstart simplifies to one ICP and one champion.
Edit pain-point priority order based on real customer conversations as they happen. Pain priority drives messaging hierarchy downstream.
Where this fits in the Example 1 chain
Day 1-3: /competitor-research × N → per-competitor files
Day 3: /competitor-aggregate → competitor canonical
Day 4: /win-loss-analysis → win-loss canonical (marketing/win-loss/win-loss.md)
Day 5: /icp-research (THIS SKILL) → canonical ICP
Week 2: /positioning reads ICP.md + competitor aggregate
Refresh cadence
Quarterly. Trigger sooner on major win-loss shift, new segment entry, or major change in champion-persona vocabulary.
