How to Conduct a Brand Audit for Better Strategy

Understanding Brand Audits

Absolutely every brand has a story, but you must, of course, ask how well you tell it? For me, a brand audit is a great idea to stand back and look at the brand as it is seen by the outside world.

What is a Brand Audit?

To be specific, a brand audit is the assessment of the brand’s status in the market today relative to the competitors’ status. This refers to a range of processes covering your visual image to the feedback received from customers, and the process can reveal a lot about your brand that is worth knowing.

Why Conduct a Brand Audit?

The reasons why it is possible to conduct a brand audit are as follows: It can to find out whether there are deficiencies in your strategy, whether people understand your brand and where further changes are possible. Moreover, it creates a good basis for future plans, so you don’t just go with ideas and assumptions, but with data that shows what works.

Before Your Print Audit

Well, then, how do you prepare for a brand audit? They are concerned with gathering information and not merely putting in place the groundwork process for an appraisal.

Setting Clear Objectives

In addition to the general goal, state what specific goal or outcome you expect to accomplish with your audit. Do you want to better engage your audience? Increase brand awareness? If you set objectives you can be specific where you are aiming for and how far you are getting on with it.

Gathering Data

Next up is data collection. Even if you are not a fan of this strategy, it will be impossible to obtain all the necessary information if you do not use external sources together with internal ones.

Internal Data Sources

First of all, it is imperative to go through the previously used marketing documents; sales statistics; and customer feedback. What type of messages are you sending out? How are sales trending? This internal data forms a strong base for your audit.

External Data Sources

Outside of bubbles, remember that there is a world outside of it and do something about it. Check out the market research reports and anything related to competitors and even social media stats. It also later make sense how your brand fits in the niche market big picture to give you clues that localized numbers may not.

Analyzing Your Brand

And that brings us to the question – now that you have all this data, what do you do with it? This is where a lot of the voodoo goes down!

Assessing Brand Identity

From the list of issues to address, one of them is your brand image. Do you have strong branding on your social media platforms or do they differ from each other? Do your messages meet the requirements of the target audience?

Visual Identity

All your logos, the colors you choose, or even the general layouts should be easy to remember. If you have seen that there are certain dissimilarities in your system, then it may be the right time to update the visuals.

Brand Messaging

Not only what you are saying but how you are saying it? There should be consistency in your brand messaging with the company’s values and the reason why it was formed. If there is any disparity it can mislead your target group of people in a given society.

Customer Perception Analysis

Knowing how your customers see your brand is one of the most important things that you can know. Is my customer having the love of his/her life while using it or are there areas that can be changed?

Customer Surveys and Feedback

When asking your listeners specific questions such as questionnaires, they offer direct opinions about your brand. What do they love? What can be improved?

Social Media Listening

Social networks are full of opportunities and tons of information. Read through the message boards, chat rooms and other people’s posts and forums to see what they are saying about your brand. Are there recurring themes? This can assist amount of information concerning people’s attitudes in real time.

Reviewing Brand Performance

Since you have gone through the analysis of the perception of customers’ brand attributes and determining your brand’s identity, the next step is the assessment of its general performance.

Sales and Market Trend Study

Get a closer look at the sales volume and market share of your products. Of course, every business person would like to answer the question – Am I growing or rather stagnating or on the contrary – losing ground? You first have to understand your market position in order to set future goals better.

Competitor Comparison

Selfishness is not good in SWOT; analyze competitors as well. Where do they stand? Which practices appear to be effective with them? As a matter of fact a competitor analysis might point out some niche that you could have never seen before.

A more comprehensive way of defining what kind of strengths and weaknesses have been identified by the organization or involved department is as follow: Finally, after all the readily models and theories analysis we deserve to give ourselves time to reflect on the things that we have discovered.

SWOT Analysis

A very common method of synthesis involves compiling a SWOT analysis table (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats). This will be a form of visualization that will help you understand where you stand with your brand and what needs to be taken care of.

Developing a Plan of Action Out of the Work Conducted

Using all this information you can begin to fashion a strategy that deals with the results of your audit.

Setting New Goals

Having developed goals in the previous section, you now should set tangible goals based on the results of your tasks’ audit. It should also consist mission and objectives of the brand.

Adjusting Your Brand Strategy

You may need to adjust your current approach to integration to be closer your brand image and what customers expect to see from your company. Whether it’s with your messaging or designing your brand assets, change might be needed for growth.

Managing change in structures: change, action and results and monitoring and evaluation

After that you define the new strategy, you tackle the changes and make sure you track your progress.

Creating an Action Plan

Develop a clear matrix that contain the following components what should be different, who will be the agent of change and the time frame. It will help you keep organized and relieve you of all the unnecessary distractions that can get in the way of your goals.

In line with developing important goals for the company, Key Performance Indicators or KPIs should be set as the critical measures that will indicate achievement of the established goals.

Lastly, establish the objectives of how each new strategy will be evaluated using Key Performance Indicators KPIs. These degrees will enable you to measure results and make corrections in due course.

Conclusion

Brand audit is a great way of improving your brand strategy. The three components of brand audit can help you in making the right decisions for increasing the brand value: A comprehensive examination of the Brand identity, B. Customer perception, and C. Performance benchmarking. Therefore, take your data with your goals, and begin your brand auditing process now!

FAQs

How frequently should I do the brand audit?
Brand audit should be done at least once a year or perhaps any time you realize there are major changes that have occurred in the business or in the market.

Can I do a brand audit independently?
Absolutely! Although there are advantages of hiring an external consultant, internal audits are common in many companies provided the correct tools and methods.

Concerning data collection what tools am I allowed to use?
For website data, there are tools like Google Analytics; to have an ear on the street when it comes to social media, one may opt for Hootsuite; while for conducting surveys, there is SurveryMonkey.

What can I do with the results of my brand audit?
It can be used to analyse various marketing concepts for distilling marketing strategies, to change brand communications, and to make changes to products or services.

Is the brand audit only for a large organization?
Not at all! Brand audits are helpful for every type of organization since they reveal the strengths, weaknesses, concerns and opportunities of a brand.