How to conduct an insightful brand audit
A brand audit should assess the effectiveness of your brand’s performance. The reflective
audit process will measure your brand against stated goals in terms of supporting business development, position in your market and your customer's perception of you.
A brand audit allows you to:
Discover strengths and weaknesses
Establish your performance
Create a detailed brand strategy
Understand market positioning
Introduction
A thorough audit will cover 3 main areas: internal, external and the customer...
Internal factors - your values, philosophy and mission. Your business culture and how you see and feel about yourself.
External influences - is the marketing material and what others see about you. Your print and digital media profiles, platforms, accounts and content.
Customer perception - from your customer support and care to policies and procedures for activity such as sales and service provision
You will use the information you gather, to critically analyze the effectiveness of
your brand, including its ability to support your marketing and achieve your
business goals. Take some time to gather information to analyze during the
brand audit process.
Preparation is key!
A few things you need to gather to effectively audit your brand...
Business information:
Vision, mission statement and values.
Financial performance and trends.
Customer services or goods development records.
Intellectual property and trademarks (for example and if applicable).
Customer and staff information & feedback:
Customer demographics and market segment information.
Customer and staff feedback such as but not limited to questionnaires, surveys, quotes, referrals, reviews.
Marketing information:
Advertising collateral, merchandise and analytics from all media.
Digital media reports and or analysis, such as Google Analytics,
Facebook tracking or platform specific analytics such as Mailchimp data for Email marketing subscription feedback.
You may not have some of these items - don't panic! The audit process is about
finding out where you are, where you want to be and establishing a clear set
of tasks to achieve your business goals. This could mean discovering and overcoming weaknesses s in the brand and business assets and processes.
The last step in conducting an effective audit is to create an actions table where you will record the actions, edits and updates you need to make to your brand, to ensure you are keeping track of the brand development process.
Need help?
That's ok - I got you!
Download my brand audit template and guide following the link below...