Stop Guessing, Start Try-Storming: 5 Years of ICP & Persona Lessons

Has your go-to-market (GTM) strategy’s DNA evolved since 2021, or are you still anchoring campaigns to the same static buyer personas from your product launch days? If those personas haven't been updated with fresh data or augmented by AI, you're likely leaving qualified pipeline on the table. The landscape has shifted dramatically.

An analysis of marketing conversations from January 2020 to December 2024, drawn from a Deep Research search across English-language sources, with a focus on LinkedIn and supplemented by marketing blogs, Twitter/X, Reddit threads, and AI/UX forums, shows a clear move away from one-off persona templates toward dynamic, continuously updated customer profiles. High-performing commercial teams adopted this shift by integrating cross-functional ICP and persona models, which increasingly leveraged AI for real-time analysis and refinement.

Why revisit five years of data? Because it exposes the widening gap between teams that “try-storm” (rapidly test and refine hypotheses) and those stuck “guessing” based on outdated templates. Try-storming, short-cycle, iterative experimentation, has become a table-stakes approach across GTM disciplines. Teams that skip it end up with generic messaging, declining engagement, and commercial teams that quietly lose faith in marketing.

From 2020 to 2024, publicly indexed content reveals a pivotal shift: conversations have moved from fixed buyer personas (the kind most of us, including myself, used to document and categorise) toward living, AI-enhanced profiles. By 2023–2024, AI-generated personas weren’t just a theory; they had gone mainstream. Marketers began using generative tools to simulate, test, and evolve personas in real time, a trend I’ve eagerly explored myself.

From 2021 to 2025: Shifts in Language, Tone, and Sentiment

The qualitative change in content has been just as significant as the quantitative shift. The language and tone marketers use when discussing ICPs and personas in 2025 are very different from 2021. To illustrate, here’s a quick “Then vs. Now” comparison:

The very definition of “ideal customer” has expanded to include context and timing (intent signals, buyer behaviour) alongside firmographics or demographics. In terms of sentiment, there’s a sense of pragmatic excitement as marketers recognise that continuously tuned ICP/persona models can yield real results, like faster sales cycles and less wasted spend.

As one 2025 article put it, the highest ROI comes when you “combine both: target the right organisations with ICPs, then win over the right people with buyer personas.” In other words, ICP and persona are both strands of the DNA and can form a truly personalised approach. This represents a significant mindset shift from the “ICP vs. persona – which do I need?” discussions that were common in 2021.

The Rise of AI in Persona and Segmentation Work

AI is helping unify what used to be disparate data points into a single source of truth about your customer. Customer Data Platforms and AI-driven analytics can connect the dots between firmographic (account-level) data and individual behavioural data, giving a 360° view of “who to target” and “how to engage them.” The payoff? More precise targeting and personalisation at scale.

Please be mindful, AI should not replace interviews and human insight, but instead be viewed as an assistant to augment it! The emerging best practice is to use AI to handle the heavy data crunching, then have marketers interpret and fine-tune the findings, as well as incorporate feedback from the wider commercial team. The sentiment in 2025 content is that AI empowers marketers to finally operationalise the “persona” concept on a large scale.

ICP + Persona: Toward a Unified, Dynamic System

The most important takeaway from the past five years is the realisation that ICP and personas are complementary tools that work best when used together in an ongoing cycle. In the early 2020s, many companies treated their ICP definition as separate from persona building or prioritised one over the other. Now, commercial teams approach them as an integrated system: ICP defines the target (the right accounts or customer types), and personas inform the approach (the right messages, channels, and solutions for the people within those accounts).

Unified thinking also means shared metrics and teamwork. When all parts of the commercial team agree on who to target and the targeting approach, you avoid the classic scenario of Marketing generating leads that Sales deems low-quality due to a mismatched targeting approach.

Big misconception

Most commercial teams still believe they must perfect an ICP or persona before launching campaigns. Reality: The winners try, storm, micro-versions, learn, and iterate. Waiting for a perfect definition kills momentum.

Rather than setting your ICP/personas once and forgetting them, treat them as living constructs that are revisited frequently. For example, after every major campaign or each quarter, analyse:

• Did we see new types of accounts engaging that weren’t in our ICP?
• Do we need to adjust our ideal profile criteria?
• Are certain messaging points no longer resonating with our “VP of Finance” persona?
• Did we discover a new pain point in recent customer calls that we should incorporate?

This feedback loop ensures that your ICP and personas continue to reflect reality.

So, what does all this mean for your GTM strategy today? In practical terms, marketers should treat ICPs and personas as a dynamic, two-layered targeting system. The top layer (ICP) aligns your organisation on which accounts or customer segments to prioritise, incorporating not just firmographics, but also timing/intent (who’s “in-market” now). The second layer (personas) guides how to effectively engage those targets, informing campaign tone, content, and sales outreach tactics that resonate with specific buyer motivations. And underpinning both layers is data and technology, especially AI and automation, to keep the system current and scalable. The end goal is a GTM engine that consistently focuses on the highest-potential buyers with the most relevant messaging, maximising pipeline efficiency, targeting accuracy, and messaging alignment at once.

Your next move

You can try to rank your top five accounts right now based on real intent and persona fit. How would this change your next campaign?