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But like all data, even information you gather on your audience (your personas) can go out of date.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

[SGamit]

Buyers persona effects the Marketing strategies so it should be updated every six months and if the is a large shift in the market like pandemic as it could change you demographics of buyer

[IshaanaMCherian]

Buyer personas play an effective role, only when the details are as accurate as possible. So, the same should be reviewed every 6 months, and changes should be updated accordingly. This step should also be part of the marketing strategies adopted by brands always, thereby enabling the latter to always know their potential customers better and therefore target better through the marketing tactics planned.

[AKalima]

every 2 weeks

[MAnbuchelvan]

Based on the level of experience and level of understanding, A buyer persona can be evolved at different stages found on the level of growth of the company. And also a persona doesn't specify as a one-character behavior. It can be determined based on the product's opinion, review, and/or feedback.

[TanuSobti]

Hi Jorie, 

Overall it should be quarterly, depending on the business. However,  more frequently, updating the persona should be done based on campaign insights if any new campaign or topical content is going on.

Regularly updating your buyer's persona helps you understand your customer in detail and plan the marketing strategy accordingly.

[omprakash11]

How often should you audit and update your buyer personas?

Hi Guys,

The buyer persona should be updated based on the campaign's performance, which could be monthly or quarterly. The obejctive of the buyer perosna is to engage users at different level of their journey.

[MMcWatters]

Hi,

I believe buyer personas should be updated based on feedback from your campaigns. In addition you should have a timeline to review personas. Lets say every 3-4 months. Not necessarily change them, but review them and compare them to the feedback from your campaigns. If you find that your customers are deviating from what you expect then it is time to update your personas.

[MinnKhantOo5]

6 months after 6 months

[taylorsabanal]

Depending on the business, I think auditing buyer personas quarterly would be considered good practice.

I do want to note that I don't believe this necessarily means they require updating every quarter, rather I trust that regularly scheduled audits ensures the business is kept on track with their goals and their growth. Once the data from the audit has been analyzed, then it can be decided if they need to be updated or not.

[amyrichardson]

depending on the business, quarterly or semi-annually 

[MRavalMehulR]

Hi everyone, my name is Mehul Raval from India. I completely agree market is completely dynamic where we can observe sudden shift in value prepositions perceived by our prospects. So, we have to keep on tracking them through best possible tools. It can not be timed as it has so many variables.

[Vspence]

In Higher education, they change in demographic ways on an annual basis. Phychographic changes more slowly, this is what we base our contact types or personas on.

[rosagalvez]

It depends on the business:

• Depends on the rythm of changes in the social or professional environment of the audience
• Depends on the rythm of new products/services

But whatever periodicity we decide, it is important to be constant and to respect the amount of time decided.

[FRecio]

Buyer personas need to be updated at least every quarter.  with this you are up to date on the info of your customers.  This includes weather related businesses.

[JWaymire]

Once a year ( in the Fall) 

[EncikTech]

It all depends on the nature of the business. Some companies need to change their buyer persona with every new product that they launch while some can just stick to the one they have created initially throughout their lifetime because their nature of business is targeting only one kind of customer. 

[CMingus]

This varies on the type of business and the services offered.

Some never need to be updated because of the standard socioeconomic type of customer the business targets as their standard customer. Think customers on Medicaid or living below the state's set poverty line.

While other companies need to update monthly as their customer base changes. Think DTC customers of any retail store.

There is no set answer with a standard response for this question.

[MSerdan]

You should Always keep it up to date, A lot of people feel a year is a good ab=mount of time but I feel quarterly is best as you always should just double check with customers and a lot can change over short periods of time when not paying attention to the details. 

[JCholewa]

I would say that at least once a year, the buyer personas should be assess to determine whether or not they should be updated or changed all together.

[DAncient1]

For young companies, it's important to plan for a persona audit/update relatively early.

Initial buyer personas are often highly assumptive since the organization is moving fast and meaningful first-party data is limited.

It's ok to have assumptive personas at first, as long as A) there's a clear way to gather data-driven understanding of buyers and B) the audit+update project is planned and allocated (it's easy for it to get deprioritized!).

[DeuceBrandt]

The buyer personas has a lifecycle in that at first you have to identify your persona types for the higher education space we have students/potential students, high schools administrators/counslors, employers who hire our students after graduation, and the graduate who returns back to the school for new training or to recertify before certification expire. So for this example these personas would be updated at least yearly or as often as quarterly as where you are in each of the area lifecycles and even according to the calendar type.