A brand is a living, breathing thing that needs attention to stay relevant. Fortunately, there’s a tool that can help your brand remain strong. It’s called the brand audit.
For over a decade, I’ve been conducting brand audits for businesses ranging from startups to corporations, and the businesses that perform brand audits regularly tend to achieve the most growth.
At my marketing studio, Tote + Pears, we perform a comprehensive brand audit every year to ensure our brand continues to meet our business goals. We have our clients on an annual brand audit schedule as well. If you’ve been in business for a year or longer, you’re likely due for a brand audit. You can conduct this yourself or hire a marketing agency or consultant.
What Is a Brand Audit?
Three main components go into a brand, and a brand audit will examine each one to ensure it's working effectively.
The first brand component is internal. Internal elements define your business’s purpose – your mission, vision, values, and company culture. They outline why the brand is here, what it stands for, and how it conducts itself.
The second brand component is the external (or public) parts of your brand, like your marketing materials, taglines, logos, fonts and colors, social media pages, and website.
The third component of a brand is the experiential elements. These are the processes you have in place that influence the experience people (such as customers, employees, vendors, partners, etc.) have when interacting with your brand in person and online. This can include their experience entering your store or navigating through your return process.
Gathering information on these three components can help you determine how your brand is being perceived by its audience.
How Do You Conduct a Brand Audit?
1. Gather brand data.
You begin the brand audit by gathering data. First, try to review your business goals and marketing targets so you know what the brand is there to accomplish. Next, consider taking a close look at your target audience and how they view your brand. You can learn how your brand is perceived by existing and potential customers by analyzing online reviews and sending out customer surveys. You can gather data on the way employees and partners feel about the brand through interviews, 1:1s, and culture surveys. Once you've gathered feedback from your audience, you have a starting point.
If all of your brand elements are connecting with your audience, that’s great – leave your brand as is until you’re ready to conduct another audit next year.
For example, during a Tote + Pears brand audit a couple years ago, we learned the photography in our marketing materials was communicating that our Women+ agency only worked with women founders or women-centric brands, instead of showcasing our specialty in representing families and other overlooked audiences. As a result, we were missing out on new business opportunities.
2. Perform a SWOT analysis.
Once you have your data points, you can evaluate the brand to see if it needs improvements. At Tote + Pears, we do this by performing a SWOT analysis.
A SWOT analysis is used to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats by comparing your brand’s standing to other market factors. How does your brand differ from your competitors? Are there parts of the brand that are weaker than others? Are you able to act on unique opportunities to connect with your customers? Have changes in policies or public perception become a threat?
It was while performing a SWOT analysis at Tote + Pears that we learned our key differentiator is our team makeup and specialty in audience insights. We can bring various creative and lived experiences to our work to help our clients understand and connect more authentically with their audiences.
3. Adapt and adjust.
With your brand audit complete, you can determine what’s next. If all of your brand elements (internal, external, and experiential) are connecting with your audience, that’s great – leave your brand as is until you’re ready to conduct another audit next year.
If you need to make minor updates to pieces of the brand (like changing your photography or messaging), you can go through a brand refresh. More significant updates may mean it’s time for a rebrand, which can include updating some core components, like the name, logo, and positioning.
“It's good to push the boundaries of what your brand looks like and what it communicates,” Kes Camara, creative director at Tote + Pears, says. “This is a time to have fun, bring in new collaborators, share work in progress with others you trust, and test new styles.”
That’s exactly what Camara and the team did with the Tote + Pears brand after we conducted our audit. Using the concept of diversity as our north star, Kes experimented with ways to highlight Tote + Pears’ unique perspective by showcasing authentic and complex moments in women’s lives – including their work, daily routines, cultural habits, and downtime.
The Takeaway
With yearly brand audits, you can help ensure your business is speaking clearly to its audience and catching potential customers' attention.
Photo: Getty Images
