You need to have a brand that is different. In today’s aggressive business world, your brand needs to stand out and for that you need to regularly do a brand audit. So what does a brand audit entail? It’s a process that involves a number of things which I will explain in this article. You may be losing customers, or your business may be sliding downwards or maybe your revenue has taken a fall. Even if your business is doing well, you have to do an audit. To find out why you are winning or losing, it is imperative that you regularly conduct an audit of your brand.
Benefits of a Brand Audit
- Helps you to find out your business’s weaknesses and strengths.
- Helps you to live up to your customers’ expectations.
- Enables you to know where your business stands so that you can take remedial strategies.
- Helps you to hasten your company’s perceptions, be they negative or positive.
How to Conduct Your Brand Audit
What will be the structure of your audit? This is the primary step of the audit process. You will need to create a list of what you will examine and how you will do the job. Here are some of the elements that must be taken into account: 1. Your chief competitors 2. Your target audience 3. The purpose of your website 4. Product weaknesses and strengths 5. Your position in the market in relation to your competitors 6. Industry trends, both current and future 7. What makes you different in terms of kind of service, pricing etc. 
What’s Your Traffic? This is a clear first step in your brand audit. Analyzing and knowing your traffic will tell you if your brand is gaining – or losing – popularity. Particularly check from where your target audience is coming and verify the type of increase in traffic that is going up. Only then will you be able to recognize what exactly is doing well for your business. If needed, you need to reset your online marketing strategies to increase traffic and lead generation.
Brand Value: Describe your brand in a clear-cut way. Make an outline of your brand and business on a single page. State what your business stands for. This draft will be your value proposition.This statement will help you pinpoint your company’s strengths/weaknesses. Also, don’t forget to trademark your brand logo. Social media sites are sprouting daily and you wouldn’t want someone to ‘steal’ your logo.
Logo Image: A company logo is an extremely valuable asset. So check where your logo is displayed on the web. Ensure that another brand has not copied it. Make sure you are not breaking any trademark laws with regard to your brand.
Talk to Your Employees/Vendors: Get feedback from your employees – it’s they who build your brand. Ask your staff how they perceive your company, its image and values. Also ask third parties and vendors for their feedback, for the manner in which you deal with them will directly affect your brand.
Your Bounce Rate: For e-commerce sites the bounce rate (number of visitors who leave your site soon after they visit it) is a vital indicator of how your business is faring. If the rate is high it shows that everything is not well with your site; you need to examine just what this is and correct it. At the same time, conversion rates are crucial to know how your company is doing. In fact, conversion rates will tell you if you have achieved your business goal – or not.
Do a Survey: To get a good idea of your brand, conduct a sample survey of your customers. You can hire a research company to conduct the physical aspect of the survey or you can use an online tool to do it yourself. You’ll get extensive feedback about your brand if you do this and you can analyze the results further and then take necessary action.
Question Your Consumers: Question your consumers to get an idea about what they talk about your brand and how they look at it. You can have an online poll which is both convenient and exhaustive. Your customers after all are the people who buy from you and who are the reason why your business exists.
Make an Action Plan to Highlight Issues
Eventually you’ll need to make an actionable plan for the issues that have been highlighted by your brand audit. If you don’t do it, then your brand audit will be useless. After all, the objective of an audit is to find problems — and solve them. Here’s what you’ll have to do.
- Make a list all of the issues that you discovered in the brand audit. Make a note of how you will solve every issue and the time that will be required to resolve these issues.
- It’s vital that you set a timeline for each issue because for every problem you’ll need a different solution – and set right the problem in time. After you have executed your action plans, check your progress by doing the brand audit again.
A brand audit is an ongoing process; conduct it regularly. An audit every quarter is recommended to make sure that your website stays in healthy shape.
Summing Up
Apart from getting to know your brand better, an audit helps to keep it secure. When you trademark your logo your brand and company profile will stay safe. A brand audit helps to keep on improving both your business and your profile. It helps you to earn respect in your business niche as your employees, your rivals and third parties with whom you deal with on a regular basis will look up to you as a thoroughly professionally businessperson. A brand audit helps you to know your standing in the market and how you can better that position. It helps you to know the internal working of your company better. It earns you bigger profits. Though a brand audit may cost you time and money –it’s worth every cent!
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