A guide to understand the brand audit. Tips and tricks on how to understand and identify the brand problems and further solve it with a comprehensive action-plan

1. How to Conduct a Brand Audit?
Learn through Process and
Examples
https://www.litmusbranding.com

2. How to Conduct a Brand Audit?
Branding does not end with creating your brand. In fact it never ends.
Brand is like a living thing that keeps growing and evolving. It has a unique
personalities and its own set of characteristics. All that you need to do is nurture and
guide it so that it fits into the environment perfectly. This is why you need to do a brand
audit.
So then what is brand audit?
Speaking generally, brand audit is a process of analyzing your brand. You find out
which characteristics and qualities are effective and which are not. You will have to
look into many things such as:
The Changing demographics of your consumers
Your company’s mission as well as strategic objectives
The strategies you have adopted to achieve these goals
Your brand image and voice
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3. How to Conduct a Brand Audit?
Brand audit helps you check
if your brand is in alignment
with your goals. It enables
you to find out how your
stakeholders (including your
customers, employees,
suppliers, shareholders and
the community that you
serve) see your brand. Based
on the results you can then
take the necessary steps to
make adjustments.
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4. How to Conduct a Brand Audit?
Brands tend to get less and less relevant over time. This can make it hard to figure out
when exactly you have to update your brand.
Nevertheless, here are a few tell-tale signs that let you understand when it is time for a
brand audit:
You notice a dip in your revenues and profitability
You start losing your customers to your competitors
You are no longer visible on the search engines
Your website is not getting the right kind of traffic
You have come up with a change of services
Your priorities in business have changed
You have recently undergone a merger
A brand audit becomes absolutely necessary once every year, no matter how big or
small your business is.
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5. Benefits of doing a brand audit
▧ Evaluating the strengths of your business and your brand
resources
▧ Clarifying your brand value
▧ Identifying the level of awareness of your brand
▧ Figuring out the deficiencies of your brand when compared to
your competitors
▧ Keeping track of any external threats that might affect your
business
▧ Checking the effectiveness of your brand management efforts
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6. 6
Steps involved in the Brand Audit
Process
A brand audit is best done by involving a team of individuals, both from
inside and outside of your business. Here are a few steps that will help you
understand how to do a brand audit :
 Talking to your audience
 Talking to your Employees
 Reviewing your position
 Researching the Competition
 Evaluating Your Strategies
 Analyzing your strengths and weaknesses
 Compiling and analyzing what you have
 Making an Action Plan

7. 1.
Talking to your
audience
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8. 1. Talking to your audience
▧ The first step involved in
the brand audit
process is to start talking
to your audience. After
all they are the reason
behind the existence of
your brand.
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9. 1. Talking to your audience
You can start calling your customers randomly, connect with them through social
media, or use your website to get in touch with them. However, before you do so, it is
important to set a few standard questions which will give you a clear idea about what
your brand means to them.
 Have you ever heard about this brand? If yes how?
 What does this brand mean to you? What problem of yours does it solve?
 Are you satisfied with the way this brand solves your problem? If no, what are those
things that we can include to improve your level of satisfaction?
 Would you recommend this brand to your family members and friends?
Apart from giving you the answers that you need, this exercise will help you connect
with your audience at a deeper level and understand their expectations. Your audience
here would include not just your customers but also your channel partners, distributors
and any external sources that may be making it possible for you to run your business
smoothly.
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10. 2.
Talking to your
Employees
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11. 2. Talking to your Employees
Your employees are an integral part of your brand. It is your duty to understand any
issues they may be facing and see what best you can do to work over these issues.
Ask for suggestions on how to make your brand better. Having a set of questions ready
will help take things in the right direction:
What, according to them, is the vision of your brand?
What words would they use to describe your brand to outsiders?
What problems of customers do they think, your brand successfully solves?
What are the things you can do to deliver on your brand’s promise?
If there is one thing they would like to improve about your brand, what would it be?
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12. 3.
Reviewing your
position
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13. 3. Reviewing your position
One of the basic brand audit steps is to find out where you stand as a brand, as
against your competitors. The brand audit process can also help answer they question
why you stand where you stand. You can then take the necessary steps to strengthen
your brand name.
You may have to look at every aspect including your physical store, your website, and
your social media analytics, without getting sidetracked by the numbers. This way you
will know what is working and what is not.
You also have to take another look at the purpose, mission, and values of your brand
and see if you still align with them.
Recommended: 5 Reasons Why Companies Rebrand their Business
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14. 4.
Researching the
Competition
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15. 4. Researching the Competition
Your brand is not the only one that exists in the market. Your customers and prospects
have a lot of options to choose from in the marketplace. You have to find out what your
competitors are up to and what you need to do, to catch up with them.
If your consumers are choosing your competitors over you, you will have to find out the
reason that makes them do so. See if they aware of your unique selling proposition
that sets you aside from your competitors.
You can do your research online, get some inside information, or even visit your
competitors to find out what’s happening.
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16. 5.
Evaluating Your
Strategies
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17. 5. Evaluating Your Strategies
Once you have figured out where exactly you stand in the market, it is time to take a
look at your existing marketing strategies and analyze your performance. Here are a
few things you need to consider while evaluating your strategies:
 Details about the traffic on your website – how many visitors you receive on a daily
basis and what leads them to your website
 Statistics that help you compare your performance across different marketing
channels such as traditional advertising channels and the social media platforms.
 Data about the ROI you are generating from your marketing campaigns
 The level of brand awareness you have managed to create in your target
demographics.
All this data will help you understand where you are and where you have to go, if you
want to achieve your goals.
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18. 6.
Analyzing your
strengths and
weaknesses
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19. 6. Analyzing your strengths and
weaknesses
▧ Brand audit is not all about
focusing on your weaknesses or
loop holes of your brand. It helps
you assess the positive as well as
the negative aspects of your
brand.
▧ While it helps you figure out
issues with your product, it also
helps you understand your
position in the market.
▧ Positive points tell you how
successful you have been in your
efforts to reach the hearts of
your consumers. Negative
feedback tells you where you
need to work on, in order to
improve your brand experience
across channels.
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20. 7.
Compiling and
analyzing what you
have
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21. 7. Compiling and analyzing what you
have
▧ This step in the brand audit process is all about gathering your
marketing materials and taking a look at them. Look into every
printed material such as business cards, letterheads, and
brochures and also into your blog, website, and analytics.
▧ See if you have maintained consistency across these elements.
▧ Find out if they are creating any kind of confusion about your
brand in the minds of your target audience
▧ Are they representing your business the way they are supposed
to?
▧ Are they any different from that of your competitors? If yes, do
they showcase your uniqueness?
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22. 8.
Making an Action
Plan
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23. 8. Making an Action Plan
Once you have gathered all the information you need, it is time to decide what to do
about it. And this usually is the toughest part of the brand audit process. There are
three things you can do here:
 Keep things the way they are
 Change your identity completely
 Refresh your identity to align with your goals in a better way
Many brands go for the option three since it helps them adapt to the changing
environment, while maintaining the brand for their loyal customers.
Once you have made your decision, it is time to come up with a complete action plan
that rolls out all the changes. You will have to delegate the responsibilities clearly and
include an extended timeline to execute your plan.
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24. 8. Making an Action Plan
▧ Whether you decide on complete
rebranding or making a few
adjustments, it is crucial that you
follow a well-thought out plan
over a couple of months.
▧ You also have to measure the
result of such efforts to find out if
the rebranding has been
successful or if there is a need to
make a few more adjustments.
▧ To give you a brand audit
example, this is what a brand
audit looks like
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25. 8. Making an Action Plan
As a process, branding is a recursive one that regularly responds to the environment.
To make sure this response is as expected, it is important to understand how to
conduct a brand audit and perform one, every now and then, so that you can measure
your performance against your brand objectives.
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26. Thanks!
Any questions?
You can find us at:
https://www.litmusbranding.com
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