In today’s highly competitive marketplace, a strong and consistent brand is more important than ever. One way to ensure your brand is in top shape is by conducting regular brand audits. A brand audit is a thorough assessment of your brand’s strengths and weaknesses, identifying areas for improvement and uncovering hidden opportunities. As a marketing agency with expertise in brand audits, we’re here to guide you through the process, from initial development to delivering valuable insights that can help you elevate your brand.
A brand audit is a comprehensive review and analysis of a company, brand, or product’s attributes, performance, and position in the marketplace. It is an important tool for businesses of any size and in any industry, as it helps to identify areas of improvement and opportunities for growth. It also helps to ensure that a company’s branding efforts are in line with their overall business strategy and objectives.
This guide will be discussing why and how to conduct a brand audit. It will include information about the different steps involved in the process and the various tools used to analyse a company’s performance and positioning.
Here’s a handy list of what you’ll find in this guide, help navigate through the sections.
A brand audit is a health check that looks at your brand’s position in the marketplace, and how to strengthen it.
Conducting a brand audit is essential for businesses of any size and in any industry. The process provides an effective way to gain a better understanding of the company’s current performance and positioning in the marketplace. It helps to identify any areas of improvement and opportunities for growth. It also helps to ensure that the company’s branding efforts are in line with the overall business strategy and objectives.
Conducting a brand audit is beneficial for both large and small businesses. For larger businesses, a thorough brand audit can identify areas where the company can improve their competitive edge and increase their market share. For smaller businesses, a brand audit can help to provide a clear understanding of the company’s current position and identify potential opportunities for growth.
Many things might trigger a strategic brand audit, and there could be a combination of reasons.
Often it starts with uncertainty.
The team is unsure about the current situation. They’ve perhaps been making decisions based on gut feel, or limited access to data.
There is a drive to gain more certaining about the true picture today, and get clarity and agree on where to go next.
This drive for certainty might come from the brand or marketing team. Or it could be driven by finance or at Board level.
Here are some common situations where it makes sense to conduct a brand audit.
There are many more situations where a brand audit can help a company achieve its goals, this is a small selection.
But, it’s not always the answer. For instance, if the brand is relatively new, there would be very little to audit, even if it was facing one or more of the challenges above.
An effective brand is one that makes it easier, quicker or more cost-effective to reach the organisation’s vision and goals. Make sure measurement and evaluation is on your brand audit checklist before you get started, so you know what your end goal is likely to be.
You’d be amazed at how many people start a brand audit with no clear end vision. This is, to an extent, an exploratory process. But knowing what success looks like is so important.
Sallie Bale, Strategist, Lane
You might want to think about how your brand could make it easier to achieve your objectives, and find ways to measure whether it’s greasing the wheels, or being a greasy pole.
We recommend all brands that are serious about developing a strong, effective brand commission a quarterly brand health tracker.
This could include metrics such as:
There are many variables in calculating the cost and time involved in delivering a brand audit. Talking through your requirements and desired outcomes with an agency or consultant can help you better understand what is required. Feel free to reach out to our Brand Strategist Sallie Bale for a chat about what it is you’re looking to achieve.
Things you’ll need to consider when putting together your brand audit budget include:
Before diving into the audit, it’s crucial to establish a clear scope, outlining what areas you will focus on and what specific goals you want to achieve. Consider the following areas:
Essentially, factors that impact a brand audit budget are:
Interested in finding out how The Lane Agency can support your business growth? Drop your details here and we'll help you scope out as brand audit project.
Conducting a brand audit involves several steps that should be followed in order to ensure the most accurate and comprehensive results. The following are the five main steps to consider when conducting a brand audit:
The first step in the process is to establish the goals and objectives of the brand audit.
When defining the goals and objectives of a brand audit, it is important to focus on measurable objectives. For example, the goal of the audit could be to identify areas where the brand is performing well, and areas where it needs to be improved. Additionally, the audit should be designed to identify opportunities to strengthen the brand’s position in the marketplace.
You might also want to make a hypothesis to test at this point as well. If you’re undertaking a brand audit, you probably have a good reason for investing in it. What’s your hunch?
To establish the current lay of the land, gather all current brand assets and management information, and review together.
This should include a wide range of visual assets that demonstrate how the visual elements of the brand are being used across different channels for different audiences. As this includes an audit of the brand identity, having a design or brand expert review these collateral can give insight into their effectiveness, whether they’re providing a clear and consistent brand message, or muddying the waters.
Review recent data about the organisation, for example you might have access to market research, customer survey reports, staff satisfaction surveys, sales data and retailer feedback, online reviews, NPS.
Social media is a great place to understand how the brand is both being used and being received.
Generally speaking, a brand audit assesses three categories:
Want to you want to look for in this data is:
Depending on the data you have access to, there will be gaps that need to be filled, either because that information has never been collected, or because it’s done infrequently and is out of date.
A few different types of research we’ve conducted for clients that can enhance the brand audit outputs and outcomes are:
A brand audit analysis tends to generate a vast amount of data, so give yourself enough time to think and digest. You may want to take a few days, or even weeks, to percolate the information you’ve collected and what that means for your organisation.
Discuss it with colleagues. Talk it over. Challenge your assumptions and put on your different hats.
After collecting data, analyse it to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement. Look for inconsistencies in messaging, gaps in market positioning, and opportunities to enhance your digital presence. Use your findings to develop actionable recommendations for improvement.
Here are some questions to consider:
Once you have your key recommendations, we find it helps to ‘soft launch’ them. Identify a smaller group of decision makers to workshop them with, before you present back your final recommendations in your brand audit report.
A successful brand audit culminates in a comprehensive report that highlights key findings and provides clear recommendations for improvement. Present your findings in a visually engaging, easy-to-understand format, and consider sharing the results with your team in a workshop or presentation to ensure buy-in and alignment.
Some common outcomes of a brand audit are include:
Once everyone is on the same page about your suggestions for improving the health of the brand and the performance of the organisation, you’ll need a plan of action.
This will include key information like a list of projects or workstreams with clearly identified budgets, resource and timelines.
It should also show how you plan to measure the success, turning these outputs into positive outcomes.
There are several tools and resources available for conducting a brand audit. These tools can help to ensure that the process is comprehensive and accurate. Some of the most common tools and resources include:
Surveys: Surveys are a great tool to gain insight into the public’s opinion of your brand, as well as measure the impact of your marketing initiatives. Examples of survey tools available in the UK are SurveyMonkey, Typeform, and QuestionPro.
Focus Groups: Focus groups allow you to gain in-depth insights from a targeted group of individuals. Tools such as Zoom, Skype, and Google Hangouts are widely used for conducting online focus groups.
Social Media Analytics: Social media analytics tools such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social provide marketers with powerful insights into the performance of their social media campaigns, as well as their followers’ preferences and behaviours.
Competitive Analysis: Competitive analysis tools such as SpyFu and SEMRush can provide detailed insights into your competitors’ online marketing efforts and strategies, allowing you to adjust your own accordingly.
Brand Tracking: Brand tracking tools such as Brandwatch and YouGov can help you measure how your brand is perceived by consumers, how it’s being discussed online, and how it’s performing in comparison to your competitors.
Conducting a brand audit is an important tool for businesses of any size and in any industry. It provides a comprehensive review and analysis of a company, brand, or product’s attributes, performance, and position in the marketplace. It helps to identify areas of improvement and opportunities for growth, as well as ensure that a company’s branding efforts are in line with their overall business strategy and objectives.
This guide discussed why and how to conduct a brand audit. It included information about the different steps involved in the process and the various tools used to analyse a company’s performance and positioning. By following the steps and using the tools outlined in this guide, businesses of any size and in any industry can successfully conduct a brand audit and use the results to improve their competitive edge and identify potential opportunities for growth. If you’d like to hire a brand audit agency, or find out more about our brand audit service, do get in touch.