Everything you need to know about conducting a brand audit

When conducting an audit, it’s important to start by referring back to your organisation’s strategy so you can determine what it is you’re measuring. Take a look at your vision and mission statements, as well as your value proposition. Who is your target audience? What does your brand promise to deliver them? This stage is all about determining what you think your brand means.

Take a look at your offline brand assets like your business cards, letterheads and print adverts and compare then to your online content like website, email and social channels. Is your brand consistent across the board in terms of visual style and tone of voice? Is who you are and what you do clear to your audience? Or are there any inconsistencies or areas where your audience could be left feeling confused or misled?

Analytics programmes are very good at giving you an overview of how things are currently performing. Website analytics are particularly useful at giving you an insight into where your traffic is coming from and whether that traffic is relevant – i.e. the target demographic. And stats like bounce rate and average session duration can help you to determine how engaged your audience currently is with your online presence.

Social media analytics can also help you to glean what sort of people are engaging with your brand online. Do they align with the demographic of your target audience? Do they engage with what you have to say? You can also use social listening to track what people have to say about you and whether that aligns with your vision and mission statements.

Asking your target audience what they think about your brand is the most important and valuable step in the brand audit exercise. You can use a combination of audience workshops, phone calls and email surveys to find out what your audience thinks about your brand first-hand. It’s a good idea to draft a list of specific questions that will help you gain the insight that you need. You may even want to go one step further and segment your audience workshops into two groups – existing customers and prospects or leads. From the former, you can find out more information in direct relation to customer service and brand loyalty, whereas the latter group will be able to help shed some insight on how effective your brand awareness activity is.

Don’t forget that your employees also make up a key part of your audience, so it’s important to include them in your brand audit. After all, they’re responsible for creating the customer experience that’s essential to your brand, so if they don’t fully understand what your brand means or stands for then they won’t be able to convey that effectively to your audience. Using team surveys, which can even be made anonymous, you should ask them questions regarding what your brand means internally and whether they feel that your organisation is delivering on your brand’s promises.

Now you’ve completed all of the above steps, it’s time to gather your results so you can create a picture of which things are going well and which need some work. A SWOT analysis is a helpful matrix for bringing your findings all together in one neat table, helping you to summarise internal strengths and weaknesses against external opportunities and threats. This high-level view will enable you to draw up a game plan for bringing your brand in line with your organisation’s mission and vision.

As you begin carrying out your brand update, it’s important to monitor as you go along. Check results on analytics platforms to make sure your activity is having the desired effect and ask your audience for their feedback along the way too.

 

As your organisation naturally evolves over time, your brand will also need reviewing in line with any changes or developments. We recommend carrying out a brand audit every few years so that you can keep your brand message as fresh and impactful as possible.

By conducting a brand audit, you’ll discover which roadblocks you need to overcome in order to grow. If you’re looking for support with finding out how effectively your brand is performing, we can help. Get in touch and we’ll be happy to help you get started.