A brand audit is a detailed analysis that shows how your brand is currently performing compared to its stated goals and then look at the wider landscape to check how that performance positions you in the market. The methodology will therefore differ depending on industries and individual companies. Regardless of the exact criteria, you choose to measure, an audit should allow you to:
- Establish the performance of your brand
- Discover your strengths and weaknesses
- Align your strategy more closely with the expectations of your customers
- Understand your place in the market compared to the competition
One option is to employ a branding agency to conduct a comprehensive audit. They may examine internal branding: your positioning, voice, brand values, culture, USP, and product.
External branding can also be considered; logo and other brand elements, website, advertising, SEO, social media, sponsorships, event displays, news and PR, and content marketing. They can also look at company infrastructures, such as customer service, HR policies, and sales processes.
Why is brand audit important?
A brand audit is a holistic way of looking at a business. The brand audit examines all the areas in which your business interacts with the world. Before your business can prepare any effective marketing strategy or campaign, it must first understand where your brand is currently positioned and how that position is perceived by your employees, customers, and market.
Brand audits are designed to gain a true understanding of customer perceptions and loyalties, company culture, company identity, consistency of message and voice, as well as where you stand among your competitors. So why is a brand audit important? Every business reviews and analyzes their company financial reports, employee performance, and company technology — why wouldn’t you do the same for your company brand — the biggest and most important asset your company possesses?
Maintaining and analyzing your company brand is important because a consistent brand means you will have a
better chance of building actual brand equity among your target market. Building brand equity can help your
business:
- Spend less money attracting new customers
- Retain current customers
- Reposition the sale of your offerings from transactional to transformational with your customers
- Receive more word-of-mouth referrals
You can extensively read about Brand Equity here – Customer-Based Brand Equity Model (CBBE)
Taking an outside-in view of your company will drive initiatives that create greater market share and build customer loyalty. The companies who manage their brand correctly by treating it like an asset become the companies that customers grow to love and trust. These “big brand companies” have huge folders devoted to their brand guidelines, with detailed instructions about how and where logos can be used, the color palette allowed and what their promise to customers is.
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