How is your brand doing? How to do a brand audit.

A brand is more than a logo or a color palette - a brand is the sum of how people perceive your company, what you stand for and how you differentiate yourself from the competition. But how do you know if your brand is actually living up to its promises and staying relevant in the market? This is where brand audit comes in. Doing a brand audit is like doing a health check on your brand: you get insights into how it's doing, how it's performing and what can be improved.

Why should you do a brand audit?

A strong brand not only provides competitive advantage - it also builds loyalty, increases customers' willingness to choose you and contributes to long-term growth. However, without regular analysis, the brand risks becoming outdated, unclear or irrelevant.

By performing a brand audit you can:

• Ensure consistency: Is your brand consistent across all channels and throughout the buyer journey, both visually and communicatively?
• Understanding the market: How does your target audience view your brand compared to competitors? Have new players entered the market that affect your brand?
• Identify strengths and weaknesses: which parts of the brand are performing well and which need to be developed?

The process behind a brand audit

Before setting long-term goals with your brand, you need to understand its current status. How is the brand performing? What is working well, and what are the challenges? To get a clear picture, you need to examine both internal and external perspectives. The aim is to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, which become the basis for the steps of the analysis.

Although the details vary depending on the company/brand, a typical brand audit often follows these steps:

1. Collect data
   For a comprehensive analysis, you should examine both internal and external perspectives. Internal: How does your organization view the brand? Are your values clear and consistent? External: Analyze customer behaviour, competitors and how the brand is perceived by your target audience. Tools such as focus groups, surveys and social listening can provide valuable insights into what is being said about your brand both analog and online.
2. Evaluate the visual and communicative
   Review your brand's visual and verbal identity: logo, color palette, fonts, language and tone of voice. Are these appealing and representative of what your company stands for, and does the target audience feel targeted by the communication? Do you follow a clear framework that integrates communication across channels and touchpoints?
3. Analyze your market presence
   Examine how your brand is performing digitally: are you visible where your target audience is? How is social media engagement, and how is your website performing in terms of traffic and user experience?
4. Compare with competitors
   Understand your position in relation to your competitors. What are they doing well, what is their tone, what position are they trying to capture and how can you further differentiate yourself?

What should you consider when carrying out a brand audit?

A brand audit is a strategic exercise where analysis is a key element. It's not just about collecting data - the real insight lies in interpreting the information and developing actionable recommendations. Be rigorous, objective and open-minded to discover both opportunities and challenges.

Tools and insights - without going into details

Today, there are a range of methods and techniques to analyze your brand. Social listening is one example where you can see how and in what context your brand is mentioned online. These insights can help you understand trends and sentiment around your brand. But the tools are only part of the process - again, it's the analysis that makes the difference.

Why we can make a difference as an external partner

While some elements of a brand audit can be done in-house, an external partner can help you identify blind spots and get an objective view of brand health. As experts in both strategic, creative communication and business consulting, we combine a business perspective with in-depth knowledge of branding - ensuring that the analysis leads to concrete improvements.

Investing in your future success

A brand is a living asset that requires care and attention. Conducting a regular brand audit is not only a way to understand how your brand is doing - it's also an investment in your future success.

If you would like to know more about how we can help you analyze and strengthen your brand, don't hesitate to get in touch. We look forward to discussing how together we can build your brand stronger than ever.