New Year, New Goals: Refresh Your Buyer Persona!

Refreshing a buyer persona means reviewing, with recent data, whether the profile on which campaigns are based still describes real buyers and the business's current objectives. It is done at the start of the year, or whenever the market, the offering or the results change, because an outdated profile makes campaign focus, ad targeting and ROI reports imprecise.

Imagine the first planning meeting of the year at a private university that recruits graduate students. The admissions director presents the results of the previous cycle and explains that campaigns are still being sent to the same lists, with the same messages that worked two years ago. The chief financial officer asks why the cost per application grew by a third, and nobody can explain it. Emails are opened less, discounted tuition offers are barely claimed and advisors comment that candidates ask things the material does not answer. The profile of the applicant that the team drew at the time no longer matches the person who fills out the form today.

That dissonance is the earliest sign that the buyer persona has been left behind. We have come a long way in determining the buyer persona, and the effort and time invested have not been in vain, because it is one of the most important steps in building an inbound strategy. But a changing and constantly evolving market demands that objectives be reviewed periodically in line with the buyer personas, because they can become obsolete and end up affecting the performance of marketing strategies.

Why does a buyer persona become obsolete and what does it cost?

When buyer personas become obsolete, campaign focus, ad targeting and ROI reports become imprecise. The consequence is that the team feels it is not getting the expected results and therefore loses money without knowing exactly where. The problem rarely appears all at once. It builds up in small deviations: a channel the buyer stopped using, a new objection the salesperson does not know how to answer, a competitor that redefined what counts as a good offer.

Nielsen Norman Group puts it with an idea that is useful for management: a buyer persona is a representation of data, and data changes. In its analysis of personas as living documents, it warns that outdated personas stop being used and that those that are not used end up discarded, with the risk that the organization abandons the tool altogether. In other words, the cost of an obsolete profile is not only that of poorly targeted campaigns, but also that of losing the discipline of deciding with a shared image of the customer.

A nuance is worth adding to guard against excess zeal. The same organization notes, in its guide on when to revise personas, that there is no defined schedule for updating them and that the reasonable approach is to review them when there is a real change in the business or in the user base. In a survey of 156 UX professionals, those who updated their personas quarterly or more often rated their impact at 5.5 out of 7, compared with 4.5 for those who did so every one to four years and 3.9 for those who did so every five years or never, although the study clarifies that the difference between the last two groups was not statistically significant. The management reading is twofold: do not wait for years to pass, and do not review just for the sake of reviewing.

An illustrative example in financial services helps to see it. Imagine a consumer finance company that built its profile around the formally employed 35 to 45 year old who applies for a loan at a branch. Two years later, a good share of its applications comes from mobile phones, from younger people with variable income who compare three offers in an afternoon and expect an answer in minutes. The messages still talk about paperwork and requirements, while the new applicant wants to know how much they will pay per month and when they will receive the money. Nothing in the product changed, but the buyer did, and campaigns aimed at the previous profile become more expensive every quarter.

Four signs that it is time to update

ICX Consulting's experience with marketing and sales teams indicates that there are four signs that justify opening the review, and it helps to recognize them in the order in which they usually appear.

The first is that the profiles are no longer enough. When the buyer persona was created, the team may have decided to focus on one or two types of buyer before starting the whole process. Those two profiles can fall short if the business plans to expand this year. A basic recommendation is to check whether the existing buyer personas work for the new objectives or whether they need an update to adapt to them. An insurer that moves from selling life insurance to individuals to selling group plans to companies, for example, needs profiles that did not exist when it designed its first campaign.

The second sign is that the business has changed. It is normal for the industry to evolve, like everything that has happened in the last year, and so the marketing strategy and the buyer persona should not be the same as twelve months ago, especially considering that technology is advancing by leaps and bounds. A bank that launched a mobile app, a retailer that opened its ecommerce store or a distributor that added orders via WhatsApp have changed their buyer's channel and expectations, even if they still sell the same product.

The third sign is that leads are no longer being generated. One of the main symptoms of an outdated buyer persona is that campaigns stop delivering the usual performance and ROI responses and metrics in general decline. At first it is noticeable that email marketing messages are no longer opened, then bottom-of-funnel offers, the BOFU calls, may go unclaimed, and finally an impact on sales is observed, as a consequence of the buyer persona having changed interests or even channels.

The fourth sign is that there are new goals and new challenges, which amounts to a need to update the profiles. The year's SMART objectives may have changed, the team may be exploring new markets or wanting to test new strategies and experiences. In that case, the strongest recommendation is not to use the previously created buyer personas without adjusting them, and to adapt them to the new objectives in order to win new customers.

How do you refresh a buyer persona step by step?

If after going through these signs the team identifies with any of them, and notices that the performance of inbound campaigns has declined considerably in ROI, it very likely needs to update its buyer personas. The process can be understood as a path of four moves: align the profiles with the objectives, look at the buyer's real behavior, dig into the data with all areas and compare the result with the starting point.

Align the profile with the new business objectives

The first thing done when building the buyer persona was to define the SMART objectives, and now it is worth revisiting them. Anyone who needs to review how to formulate them can go back to the article on what SMART objectives are and how to apply them in an Inbound Marketing strategy. It is worth reviewing the steps carefully to make sure the strategy is aligned with what the business pursues now, and not with what it pursued when the first profile was written. A profile that is not connected to a measurable goal is a portrait, not a management tool.

Follow the buyer journey of current customers

First review how current customers are behaving in their buyer's journey. Interesting data about what may be happening with the buyer personas is usually found there. The team itself needs to replicate the experience it is offering its customers and question each of the lifecycle stages designed. Complementary tools can help, such as email bounce reports, open rates and coupon redemption, and all the information gathered from campaigns. It is also very important to evaluate what is paid for ads, from the amount to the interests, because they may have delivered results with a very broad audience. If so, they must be reviewed and the ad targeting properly filtered. Anyone who wants to go deeper into the buyer's journey can rely on the article on the Buyer's Journey in inbound marketing strategies.

Dig deep with all teams

It is always good to evaluate the data with each of the teams that make up the organization, from the people in charge of strategy to customer service. Service and sales hear what the buyer asks, objects to and appreciates, and that information almost never appears on marketing dashboards. It is also worth using A/B test data to understand which criteria determined that one campaign was more successful than another, until you find the small variations that can define a buyer persona. An experienced consultant knows that the most valuable findings usually come from asking a front-line salesperson what has changed in conversations over the last six months.

Compare the starting point with the result

The last thing to do is compare what the starting point was and what the final result is. If no difference is noticeable, it is necessary to go back to the second move, because it may be that what makes the buyer persona different has not yet been determined. All the data is important, and that is why it is worth recovering as much information as possible with HubSpot reports, which make it possible to compare data that may not have been so clear. To structure the comparison, it is useful to go back to the guide on what a buyer persona is and review which elements of the original profile were met and which were not.

What it means for senior management

For general management, refreshing the buyer persona is a capital allocation decision. If the profiles no longer describe the buyers, every dollar invested in campaigns, media and tools is split between an audience that existed and one that exists, and the difference is paid for in acquisition cost. Asking marketing and sales for an annual review of profiles, with evidence, is one of the cheapest ways to protect the commercial budget.

For the sales director and the marketing director, the benefit is precision. A current profile improves segmentation, makes the forecast more credible and reduces friction between the areas over who is to blame for low-quality leads. For whoever leads service and customer experience, it is a retention opportunity: the reasons for dissatisfaction that the service team detects first are often the best sign that the buyer's profile is changing. For the chief financial officer, it is a way to recalibrate ROI reports, which silently deteriorate when segmentation goes out of date.

How to start on Monday morning

An experienced consultant would suggest not starting with a big project but with a conversation. On Monday, convene for one hour one person from sales, one from service and one from marketing, and ask them to describe the last customer they won and the last one they lost. Compare those descriptions with the current buyer persona and note each difference, however small it may seem.

During the week, pull from the CRM the evolution of three indicators over the last twelve months, the open rate, the conversion of bottom-of-funnel offers and the cost per opportunity, and look at them by segment. If one of those curves deteriorates in one segment and not in others, you already have a concrete hypothesis about which profile to review first. By Friday, decide whether a minor update is enough or whether new research is needed, with interviews of recent customers. To document the updated version of each profile in an orderly way, the ICX Persona Playbook Toolkit offers a ready-to-complete structure, and you can download it and use it with your team.

Finally, remember that this is a process that must be repeated from time to time. Failing to review buyer personas periodically can have important repercussions on investments, and the cost of not doing so grows each quarter that the market moves and the profile stays still.

How ICX helps

ICX Consulting supports executive teams in the review and use of buyer personas within the commercial strategy. Through our B2B marketing consulting practice, we audit current profiles against campaign and CRM data, and define the adjustments that recover precision in segmentation and ROI. Through our B2B commercial and sales consulting practice, we translate those profiles into the way the team prospects and negotiates, and with the ICX Compass methodology we organize the work into phases with clear indicators. Anyone who wants to build profiles for the business environment can start with the guide to properly building your B2B buyer persona.

Frequently asked questions

How often should a buyer persona be updated?

There is no universal schedule. A reasonable practice is to review it at the start of each year and also whenever the offering, the market or campaign performance changes. If the profile has gone more than two years without review, it is worth auditing its validity with recent data.

What data indicates that my buyer persona is no longer valid?

The earliest are the drop in email opens, the low response to bottom-of-funnel offers, the increase in cost per lead and comments from sales and service about new questions or objections. If several signs coincide in the same segment, the probable cause is the profile and not the creativity of the campaign.

Does the buyer persona have to be redone from scratch or is adjusting it enough?

In most cases a partial review that updates objectives, channels and objections is enough. Redoing it is only justified when the business changes market, model or audience, because a total rebuild forces the adoption of the profile to restart in every team.

Who should take part in the review?

Marketing leads, but sales and service must take part, because they are the ones who talk with the buyer every day. Finance can contribute the acquisition cost by segment, and general management must validate that the profiles reflect the year's objectives.

If your team starts the year with the same profiles as twelve months ago and results that no longer match them, perhaps the best investment is to look again at whom you are selling to. Talk to an ICX consultant and turn the review of your buyer personas into a more precise commercial plan for the year.