By Lucille Stone
A brand audit, also known as a brand analysis, provides insights into its current position in the market and the health of its relationships with many different audiences. Audits help companies of all sizes enhance their competitive advantage with more informed business decisions, greater consistency in how they present themselves, and increased customer engagement, among other significant benefits.
A company’s brand lives in all the factors that ultimately determine who it attracts and how it is perceived. People experience your brand in the advertising, marketing, and sales of your product, as well as in customer service. Does the product or service live up to its promises? Can customers get help quickly? How easy is it to make returns? Internal stakeholders, just as influential an audience as customers, both experience and deliver the company’s brand. How this group experiences the brand is critical to the organization’s success. Do they actively support the company’s goals? Are they ambassadors for the brand?
 Periodic brand audits are a comprehensive tool that gives leaders and marketing teams a check on the strengths and weaknesses of the company’s operations, especially in the areas of brand messaging, brand positioning (relationship to competitors), usability, customer utility, and more.Â
An audit can encompass an organization’s digital assets or be broad enough to include every mode of company communication.Â
The main elements often covered by a brand audit are:
- Brand Story: IdentityÂ
- Visual Branding
- External Branding
- Internal Branding
This post will explain the different focal points for each of these possible components of a brand audit.
Visual Branding​
An organization’s visual brand is an important factor in its health. When people think about a brand, they usually form a picture in their mind. To be memorable, the visual elements of your brand should be consistent across all platforms. It should also be relevant to your brand’s identity and should express your brand’s values. Color choice is important. Colors affect people in more ways than we realize. For example, a spa company is probably going to use light, calm colors and designs for its logo instead of a harsh or aggressive design to align with its audience’s goal of relieving stress.
External Branding​
This addresses customers and other stakeholders: shareholders, funders, news media, potential team members, local communities – counties, cities, states
A company’s external brand is defined by how it is perceived by customers and other external stakeholders, such as future investors, partners and suppliers, board members, or talent. Companies want as much information as they can gather about these important stakeholder groups. If you are auditing how customers perceive your brand, you want to understand how many people are aware of you and other details such as:
- Where they first heard about youÂ
- How satisfied customers are throughout all the stages of purchaseÂ
- How customers perceive your product’s quality and reliabilityÂ
- How likely customers are to make repeat purchases or to recommend your brand
- How customers, both current and potential, compare you to your close competitorsÂ
Targeting questions to different groups of stakeholders will help you honestly assess your brand’s reputation and whether you are perceived as a positive or negative influence. You may also want to audit how your brand is portrayed in the media, if that applies to you.
Understanding how potential employees – people who may one day work for you – perceive your brand is a top-level concern for most companies. One important reason many companies monitor their brand presence closely is to ensure they can attract outstanding candidates for employment, collaboration, investment, or joint venture. Are you industry players with opportunities for growth? Does your company’s culture and values align with theirs? Are your benefits appealing? Is the application process easy to navigate?
Surveys, interviews, online reviews, and customer service interactions are a few tools that help organizations understand how their brand is perceived by customers, potential employees, and other stakeholders.
Internal Branding​
Successful internal branding creates a unified and strong workforce for your company. To audit how your employees experience your brand, you want to understand intangibles:
- Do they understand the brand mission?Â
- How aligned do they feel with the brand values?Â
- Are they motivated to see the brand succeed?Â
- Do they feel equipped to perform to the best of their abilities? Â
- Does the company culture reflect the brand’s stated values?Â
Surveys, focus groups, interviews, employee feedback, and performance and engagement metrics are common tools for gathering this information.
Brand Story and Stories of Impact
The brand story is a narrative that represents a brand’s purpose, mission, values, uniqueness, and value proposition for customers. A good brand story will connect to its buyer persona and foster loyalty between the customer and the company.
A compelling brand story can cement a brand identity in the public mind. It is usually about what makes your brand unique and different. It could be your origin story, like Levi’s jeans – and if it taps into the part of the imagination where humans connect with stories and tales, all the better. That alone can be a first step in customer engagement.Â
It is highly beneficial for companies to communicate information that’s not strictly about selling, to humanize their brand, and to connect with people. Your company story may, in fact, be the biggest factor that determines who your customers are and why they buy from you. It could also save you from spending time and money advertising to the wrong demographic.
How to Conduct a Brand Audit: Tools and Tactics
Some companies conduct their own brand audits, while some hire consultants or branding agencies for their audits.Â
A deep-dive review of a brand’s assets is the first step in conducting a brand audit. Working with an outside firm might bring some helpful objectivity to the process. The initial meeting is where the team aligns on goals and focal points for the audit.Two crucial steps are: determining a persona for each distinct stakeholder group and conceiving a compelling brand story.Â
The “buyer” persona represents the ideal customer for the company’s products, based on characteristics like demographics, values, behavioral traits, needs and pain points, and motivations for a purchase decision. But the customer is not the only stakeholder. A comprehensive brand audit will have a separate persona for each important stakeholder group.
This process provides reassurance that the brand will resonate with the right audience and tell the right story. Once the client’s goals are clearly understood and the buyer personas are complete, the team researches what is needed to develop the brand story. For example, what messaging should you use to best reach your audience?Â
A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) framework for analysis may help to identify the company’s position and future options. SEO (search engine optimization) research will provide data about the persona and the competition, allowing for keyword refinement and better positioning in Google search results.Â
Finally, an audit should intentionally study customer satisfaction and retention rates as key elements of the brand’s overall performance. A gap analysis will identify discrepancies between the brand’s current position and its goals for the future.
Measurement Strategies for Brand Audits
Brand metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are measures used to evaluate the effectiveness of a plan based on the results of a brand audit. Using KPIs, it is possible to measure brand awareness, customer engagement, and customer satisfaction, in addition to tracking hard data like sales performance and customer retention rates.Â
Implementing changes after a brand audit requires ongoing attention and monitoring, and adjustments to strategies may be needed. By establishing clear brand metrics and KPIs while ensuring consistent implementation support, you can really learn a lot about the potential for success of your brand.
Digital Brand Audits: Interview with an Expert
Amy Suzanne Maeder, who conducts brand audits for websites at Design Formare, stresses the importance of brand audits in maintaining consistency in look, feel, and tone of voice throughout a brand’s various assets.Â
She notes that if a company’s “website is speaking to 30 and 40-year-olds, but their social media speaks to 20-year-olds, depending on where the audience lands first, there can be confusion. Then they will abandon the brand and not buy anything.” She also points out that you may not always know who your actual competitors are, so brand audits can be highly beneficial when you can identify “what’s working for the competitor and adjust your tactics or messaging.”
Maeder claims that the most significant thing brand audits are helpful for is identifying your audience because “if you’re speaking to the wrong buyer persona, then it’s very hard to have any success selling a product or service.” She notices that many brands include their own preferences on their websites versus the preferences of their intended audience, which additionally can be distracting and confusing.
Get the Support of Experts
If you think your brand needs an audit, jump in! It’s a useful tool for many teams within the company: sales, marketing, human resources, and more. It does not have to be complex to start. Any effort to understand one’s market will pay dividends.
Need more guidance? We’re here to help! Call us at The Allyson Group and we’ll put you on track to conduct a comprehensive brand audit with the potential to transform the effectiveness of your marketing and customer engagement.
