Edward Boatman • May 9th
Effective branding has been a cornerstone of some of the biggest names across every industry, from Google and Nike to Disney and Apple. These brands didn’t grow by accident — they grew over time as a result of a calculated branding effort.
Brand audits are a key part of understanding your brand and the position you occupy within your industry. Getting a clear picture of your brand’s history, vision, target audience, products, and services can help you optimize your branding strategy.
If you haven’t conducted a brand audit recently, here’s what you need to know to get started.
A brand audit is an evaluation of your brand and everything you do that’s related to branding. Companies perform brand audits to get a better understanding of how well their brand is performing and what they might be able to do to improve performance.
For example, a brand audit might give you deeper insight into how your customers feel about your brand and its products or services. By understanding what customers value in your brand and how your brand makes them feel, you can tweak your branding strategy to better align with what’s important to customers.
Brand audits can also be as simple as looking at metrics like website traffic. The idea here isn’t just to figure out how much traffic your website is getting, but also where that traffic is coming from, and how it gets there.
For example, if people are finding your website through the use of branded search terms (e.g. your brand name), you may have a higher brand awareness among your users. But, if your audience is finding you by way of category keywords (e.g. ‘Digital Asset Management’), your audience is likely not brand aware, but they are solution aware.
While a brand audit is made up of many facets throughout the organization, we’re going to focus specifically on the brand's visual identity. Three core areas to examine include:
Your internal branding includes the aspects of your branding strategy that inform everything you do as a brand, including your values, culture, and mission as a brand. These decisions also tend to show up in your visual identity.
For example, TOMS Shoes’ mission statement is “to use business to improve lives” and this carries into the visual identity of the brand packaging. For every pair of shoes purchased, the TOMS brand will give a pair of shoes to a child in need. It’s clearly displayed on their packaging, and the mission carries through in their tagline “Wear Good.”
External branding is all the stuff your customers see as part of your brand. External branding elements include things like your logo, advertising and marketing materials, website, and social media accounts.
As important as your actual brand assets are, the customer experience plays a key role in defining your brand. The customer experience includes customer support and service as well as the sales funnel, and it can also be reflected in the user experience of your website or purchasing experience. A good customer experience reflects positively on your brand.
Conducting a brand audit gives you a closer look at all the individual elements of your brand and how they affect your overall brand performance. Just because you’ve got a fancy logo and cutting-edge website doesn’t mean you’re doing everything you can to maximize your brand. Creating the best brand experience means focusing on every aspect of branding, including the customer experience and your values as a brand.
Generally speaking, Jason Vana, Founder and CEO of SHFT Agency recommends conducting a brand audit at least once a year or after any major pivot point. This gives you a clearer picture of the health of your brand and how your branding strategy impacts those metrics.
While it’s smart to conduct brand audits at least once a year, there are also certain events that may signal it’s time for a brand audit. Let’s look at some examples of times when a company might consider conducting a brand audit.
Rebranding can be a great way to transform your brand and stand out from the competition. When you’re in the planning stages of a rebrand, conducting a brand audit can give you a better understanding of what your brand does well and where you can improve. Customer surveys play a particularly important role in planning an effective rebrand, especially if you’re targeting the same customer base.
If you’re already in the middle of a rebrand, it’s not too late to conduct a brand audit to determine where to go next. Conducting a brand audit is one of the first steps you should take when you’re rebranding because it helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses and get a clear idea of what you’re looking to achieve with your rebrand.
Entering a new market can be intimidating, especially if you’re talking about a highly competitive market. If you’re preparing to expand into a new market, conduct a brand audit first to figure out how your brand is positioned compared to some of the top brands in that industry. This type of brand audit gives you a better understanding of what you need to do to compete in a new industry or vertical.
This is also a critical step to ensure that local linguistics and cultural norms are respected in your branding. For example, veteran Los Angeles advertising executive, Anita Santiago, saved the California Milk Processors Board from inevitable failure in 1994. The popular ‘Got Milk’ campaign was to be targeted at the fast-growing latino population in California, but the Spanish-speaking Santiago advised this would translate into “Are you lactating?” This would have been seen as worrisome to a family-friendly community that might give the perception of being deprived of milk.
Credit: Lilla Fowle
The campaign was adjusted to read “Y Usted Les Dio Suficiente Leche Hoy?” or “Have you Given Them Enough Milk Today?”
Mergers and acquisitions are common for growing businesses — and they’re the perfect opportunity to stop for a moment and assess your brand. If you’re merging with or acquiring another brand, you can conduct a brand audit to figure out how the two brands fit together and how they can benefit each other.
Conducting a brand audit is particularly important if you’re merging or acquiring a brand because it helps you maximize the value of all brands that are involved.
Your customer base can change quite a bit as the years pass and new generations start to take over the market. When your customer base starts to shift from one generation to another, you should conduct a brand audit to make sure you’re doing everything you can to reach these new audiences and shift your branding strategy as demographics shift.
Conducting a brand audit might seem like a complicated process, but it’s easier when you break it down into individual steps. If you’re new to brand audits or haven’t conducted a brand audit in a while, here’s a quick breakdown of the steps you need to follow.
Before you conduct a brand audit, it’s a good idea to think about your brand and what you’re trying to measure. What makes your brand unique? What value do you provide to your customers? The results of your brand audit might not match up with how you view your brand, but it’s good to have an understanding of both metrics.
Next, look at external marketing materials like business cards, brochures, and print ads. Compare these physical marketing materials to your digital presence to measure your consistency as a brand. Are you using the same logos and colors everywhere? Is your brand voice consistent across various channels?
The next step is looking at your website and social media metrics to see how your brand performs. Look at your website traffic, including where that traffic comes from and where you’re struggling to drive traffic from. You should also look at your bounce rate and conversion rate to measure the effectiveness of your website.
You can use social media metrics and analytics tools to get a better understanding of how many people you’re connecting with through social media and what types of customers connect with you through these channels.
Source: Social Insider
Depending on the tools you are using, you may be able to measure your brand engagement directly in the toolset. If not, capture industry benchmarks and measure those against your own benchmarks. Identify deltas and differences and start with improvement plans from there.
Looking at traffic and similar metrics is only part of the equation. Ideally, you want to focus on creating a brand that connects and resonates with your customers and target audience. The best way to do that is to get feedback from the people who matter most.
Reach out to your customers and ask them to answer a few simple questions. You can ask how they feel about your brand, what your brand does well, and what you can do to improve. You can decide how you want to ask these questions — whether that’s an online survey or a customer focus group.
Don’t forget to survey people who aren’t customers but are part of your target audience. You can ask these people general questions about your brand, like whether they’ve heard of it and what they know about it.
Surveying employees also helps you get a better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses as a brand. Ask questions about the brand’s vision, what the brand accomplishes for customers and what employees would do to improve your brand.
Don’t forget to evaluate competing brands to see how you stack up against the competition. While brand audits are a key part of understanding your brand, it’s even better to understand your brand as it relates to the brands you’re competing with.
Now that you have a better understanding of your brand, you can start implementing changes and tracking your progress. Make sure you’re addressing any weaknesses you discovered in your brand audit and amplifying your strengths. Conducting a brand audit and updating your brand every year or two helps you keep things fresh.
Brand audits are an essential part of understanding how you stack up to the competition and what you can do to boost your brand. A successful brand audit can help you simplify the rebranding process, successfully merge with or acquire other brands, and more.
With Lingo, elevating your brand has never been easier. You can quickly update assets within your brand library and share them with internal and external teams. Book a demo to see how Lingo can help you transform your brand strategy and attract new customers.