Branding topics

Brand Audits and Assessments

You can think of brand audits and assessments much like a brand health inspection. By taking a thorough look at all the ways your brand is designed, expressed, and perceived, an audit identifies:

Your brand’s strengths and best qualities
Ways in which your brand may be weak
Key opportunities for improvement and addressing market/customer needs
Your brand’s standing in the current market, relative to competitors

Conducting a brand audit is typically the first order of business if your company is considering rebranding, or aims to revamp their marketing strategy. It gives the clarity needed to understand where your brand needs to go, and how to accomplish that.

How Brand Audits can Strengthen Company Performance

Your brand can be the make-or-break factor in its success. That’s because it has a tremendous influence over how consumers view your business.

From your logo’s design to your choice of words in sales copy, there are a multitude of branding aspects that impact the opinion people have of your products and/or services. All of these factors are a part of your branding ecosystem, and they can determine whether or not customers find your company trustworthy, of quality, and able to meet their needs.

A brand audit inspects these branding elements by separating them into two categories for evaluation: internal and external branding.

Internal branding consists of your brand’s concept and what qualities it embodies. This includes your brand’s values, promise, voice, and even the office culture.

External branding encompasses how your brand is presented to consumers. Product packaging design, website, advertisements, social media activity, testimonials, and other media are all included in this group.

Taking a hard look at internal and external branding can reveal patterns, correlations, and inconsistencies within and across the two categories.

For example, it’s possible for your brand’s external expression to clash with its internal qualities. Its logo and voice could be out of sync with the brand concept, or the advertisements could be failing to communicate your brand’s promise and unique selling point.

These disconnects can provide explanations for your most troubling questions, such as:

Why are customers choosing Brand X over mine?
Why have my sales gone down?
Why doesn’t my brand have the same prestige it did 10 years ago?
How can I adapt my brand to appeal to new generations?

Using Data for Brand Audits

Good brand audits also examine hard observational data. This is typically gathered through a few essential means:

Website Analytics

Evaluating where your website’s traffic comes from, how visitors behave on your website, conversion rates, and SEO.

Customer and Target Customer Interviews

Directly asking current customers and desired customers questions about their impression of your brand, their expectations, their experiences with it, why they came to your brand, and why they would (or wouldn’t) pick a competitor instead.

Competitor Assessment

Analyzing competitor sales numbers and market share, as well as their search engine rankings, customer reviews, visual design, and marketing activity. This also entails comparing their product and service offerings: looking for what they offer that your brand doesn’t, and vice versa.

Stakeholder Interviews

Direct interviews with internal teams about where the brand has been, where it needs to go, and what has to change about it to allow it to get there.

By assessing your brand’s qualities and investigating key areas like those listed above, brand audits can provide solutions to your toughest challenges. They’ll give your company a chance to map out an effective strategy for improving your brand, all based on data and informed conclusions.

When your company’s brand is logical and cohesive, it can stand strong against competitors and win the loyalty of more customers than ever.

We’ll help you identify your brand’s potential

Our team has perfected the art of conducting insightful and effective brand audits. With our branding program, we take a thorough approach in order to shed light on the most critical details of your brand’s qualities and performance, digging into the numbers, as well as conducting in-depth interviews with your personnel and your customers.

From architecture and law firms to medical groups and restaurants, we’ve uplifted brands across a diverse range of industries. Every brand audit is concluded with expert evaluations. You’ll get a clear plan for building upon your brand’s assets, seizing opportunities, and winning over consumers with a perfected presentation.