Economic conditions have started to tighten up for small businesses. There have been frequent talks of a possible recession looming on the horizon, adding to the already growing threat of higher interest rates.

In light of this, it's time to revise your sales strategies. Protect yourself from growing economic threats by focusing more directly on your core market. You can do this by creating a customer profile or buyer persona.

Using this tool, you'll be able to get the most out of your limited resources and maximize growth during what promises to be a rocky economic situation. In this article, we'll explain what a customer profile is and walk you through the basic process of creating one. From there, you can take the steps necessary to focus your efforts and get the most out of your small business.

What is a customer profile?

At its most basic level, making a sale involves forming a connection with a potential customer. Your products and services generate a specific value — you need to find the buyers who most benefit from that.

Your job is to discover the people most receptive to your message. Meanwhile, you want to burn the fewest resources possible in the process. A buyer persona provides an excellent tool in this effort.

In essence, a customer profile defines the perfect consumer of your products and services. In other words, you are describing the individual or business that would get the most out of becoming your customer. This will let you target your efforts and achieve sales as efficiently as possible.

A customer profile defines the perfect consumer of your products and services.

A quality customer profile will consist of multiple layers of information. Here are some of the key data categories to include:

• Demographic information

• Geography

• Purchasing profile

• Behavioral profile

• Needs and pain points

• Goals and aspirations

What are the benefits of creating a customer profile?

With interest rates rising and the prospects for the economy becoming murkier, you need to get as much bang for your buck as possible. That's where buyer personas come in. This tool lets you target your resources to the people most primed to connect with your products and services. Here are some of the specific benefits you can expect:

Better targeting of marketing

As we've noted, this represents the core benefit of customer profiling. You can focus your resources on the customers most likely to respond to your message. This lets you maximize the efficiency of your approach, which will ultimately contribute to an acceleration of long-term growth.

Boosts key sales metrics

As you become better at focusing your marketing efforts, the success should appear in measurable ways. You'll see an improvement in crucial KPIs throughout your organization. These can include better numbers in areas like:

• Customer acquisition costs

• Churn rate

• ROI

Improved product development

With a detailed buyer persona, you can get more efficient about adding features to your current slate. You'll know how your core client base operates and how they use your products and services. From there, you can upgrade your existing offerings in the most effective way possible, as well as chart out the best areas for new development.

Smoother customer relations

A customer profile doesn't just help you find new customers; it also improves your connection with your current client base. A firmer understanding of your place in the market will let you devise the best customer relations approach possible.

Enhance your brand building

More effective sales, tighter product development, and a first-rate customer service model will combine to enhance your overall reputation. In this way, a strong customer profile becomes foundational to your brand-building efforts.

How to create an customer profile

Now that you've seen some of the benefits you can derive from a customer profile, it's time to think about how to implement the process. With that in mind, here are some steps to consider as you plan your buyer personas:

Collect data

A customer profile ultimately exists as a summary of insights gained through research about your offerings and their market. As such, data collection represents the crucial first step. The more you know about your current customer base and the wider supply/demand dynamics in your industry, the more accurate your profile will become.

Include multiple voices

Make the production of your buyer personas a company-wide project. It touches on multiple aspects of your business — from marketing to production to the shape of your recruiting efforts. Given this broad impact, you'll benefit from gaining input from various parts of your team.

Use technology

Technology can help you create your personas. The right software can help you conduct a more efficient process. At the same time, you'll have a structure in place that lets you produce a more accurate end product.

You can leverage tech at multiple stages in the procedure. Start with a strong data-collection backbone, driven by the right technology. From there, you can find additional customer profiling tools that can inform your final buyer personas.

Regularly solicit feedback

Your customer profile shouldn't be set in stone. The profile will evolve along with your offerings and as the market undergoes changes. Given this dynamic, you should regularly update the details to make sure your personas stay current.

Customer feedback represents the most direct way to achieve this. Routinely solicit comments from your current clients to understand how they extract value from your business. This information will be central to defining your ideal customers going forward.

Using a customer profile to optimize your small business

In times of economic uncertainty, it's crucial to focus your sales efforts. By targeting only your core market, you can lower your costs while maximizing your potential earnings. Use the information provided here to pinpoint that target market via a buyer persona and make the most out of your limited resources.