How often should you audit and update your buyer personas?

[JorieMunroe]

Buyer personas can be created through research, surveys, and interviews — all with a mix of customers, prospects, and those outside your contacts database who might align with your target audience.

But like all data, even information you gather on your audience (your personas) can go out of date. After all, business models change, companies merge or shift direction, and your audience can (and likely will) evolve. In your professional opinion, how often should you audit and even update your buyer personas?

*To learn more about this, check out the Using Buyer Personas in HubSpot lesson via HubSpot Academy. 

[ERampling]

It's definitely something to do yearly in line with planning and strategy

[CatPetersen]

every 6 months

[NGantzhorn]

Hello,

We are learning that it is important to audit and update our buyer persona as our business and services evolve.  Any change reflects on the prospective buyer, so we are constantly looking to how to engage our target audience, and who they are.

[ELinheden]

Depending on new knowledge and growth of the business bu at least yearly.

[TGarcia]

Yearly 
Hello

[Don_Crow]

Auditing and updating Buyer Personas is a two-prong approach to me. One, it should be part of at least one of your overall MarTech and database hygiene and two, they should be reviewed and updated every time you have a significant change to your business (product rollout/rollback, services change, price increase/decrease, etc.).

[ashleylafleur]

Question: why would you choose to use a persona vs using contact filters when setting up campaigns?

[MLemke]

Every time you launch a new campaign.

[asqui]

We just updated our personas after 3 years; however, one key tip I would recommend is to invite a third party to collaborate with you, as we did. Objective opinions from other marketers really helped us make the familiar unfamiliar, and pick out new opportunities -- and an entirely new persona to boot.

[JCaragher]

Annually.

[CGabriel2]

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[MPoynton]

Every 6 to 12 months, I would say... the bigger the database, the more often buyer personas need to be cleaned up and checked.

[KHernandez]

I think annually would be the best option but this also depens on the type of business.

[YAdmin]

Yearly

[HAnand7]

Hello JurieMunroe

[MGlenn]

This would vary by business and could be yearly, quarterly, or less. 

[NBurkart]

I would say that we should update our personas as needed but at least check them once a year

[CGabriel2]

I think you should audit and update your buyer personas based on your current job or when you make major purchases. I think your buying personas will always evolve with time and age. For example as you make less money your buying persona is different and will change one you make more therefore I think you should access buying persona based on life events. 

[JfMoncada]

This is very ambiguous, you can do it yearly, but with the current trends about marketing everything changes so fast, I would say minimum every six months.

[AnnaliseHartley]

I would think annually unless you have a change in your business/customers that would imoact personas. 

[SHeisselberg]

Half yearly is ideal but yearly is sufficient.