ICPSignalYou know the name of the category your product belongs to. Your customer might have no reason to know it yet. They know that work keeps getting lost, that somebody has to copy the same information twice, or that a process takes longer than it should.
I'd start there. If you only search for the language on your own homepage, you may be asking people to understand your solution before you've even found them.
Describe the day the person is having
Take the product name out of the description for a moment. What is the person trying to finish? What gets in the way? What do they do when the current process fails? Those questions give you language to investigate.
Here's a made-up example. A client review product might use the phrase ‘approval workflow.’ An agency owner might say, ‘My client keeps commenting on the wrong version.’ Both can point toward the same problem, but the second gives you a situation you can recognize.
Make a small translation list
Write down three product capabilities and the problem each one addresses. Then describe how a person might explain that problem without knowing your category. Treat these phrases as hypotheses until you see real conversations that support them.
I wouldn't try to produce fifty phrases in one sitting. Start with a few that you can explain clearly. Broad words can bring in unrelated discussions, so keep the audience and constraints beside each example.
| Fictional product capability | Problem language to investigate |
|---|---|
| Version history | We cannot tell which file the client approved. |
| Guest feedback | Clients will not create another account. |
| Centralized comments | Feedback is spread across email and chat. |
Let actual conversations correct your wording
Read the posts you find. Do people use the language you expected? Are they talking about the same problem, or does the phrase mean something else in that community? Save the wording with a link and enough context to remember what it referred to.
Don't turn one striking sentence into a conclusion about the entire market. It is evidence from one conversation. Look for additional examples, including ones that challenge the way you currently describe the problem.
Put the situation into your profile
An ideal customer profile, or ICP, describes who you can help and why. In ICPSignal, include the task, the frustrating part, the requirements you can meet, and exclusions for similar-looking situations that don't fit.
Review the profile before activating discovery, then inspect the original posts behind the matches. If the results miss the point, change the description using what you learned. I would keep repeating that small loop until I can explain why a post belongs in the feed. Understanding the customer's language is work worth doing.