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But like all data, even information you gather on your audience (your personas) can go out of date.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. 

[NLauwers]

Buyer personas are never complete. You'll always get new insights from ever-evolving needs on the client-side, and ever-evolving solutions on the company side that spark a new understanding of needs at the client-side. Don't wait for the end-of-the-year cycle but update as soon as needed.

[NS-Zoe]

You should audit or update your buyer personas every six to twelve months.

[stinaguzman]

Yearly, but in current times six months might be more appropriate since things have been changing so much.

[SKrieg]

In my past roles, I have audited every six months based on communication data and updated yearly. Since moving to my new organization, we do not have personas, so that is a major project for me to head up, with support/buy-in from the team at large. 

[JamesC100]

As needed by market trends.

[HubSpotMember]

So we are in a start up company, so I would say we should discuss it a little more often. Maybe like every 3-6 month 🙂 

[Lorrie]

I agree with a yearly review

[jagjitbehl]

hello

[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.