What is a Brand Audit & Assessment?
Have you ever renovated your home? It’s nerve-wracking and gut-wrenching and a bunch of other uncomfortable adjectives. The bright light at the end is that you have a brand-new home (or kitchen or bathroom) that looks and feels more like you. It works better for you and your family and you’re proud to show it off to your extended family and friends who come to visit and admire the new cabinets and countertops.
Refreshing your brand is very similar.
When I work with founders, owners and entrepreneurs on a Brand Audit & Assessment, my work is similar to an interior designer – I begin with an appraisal of their existing floorplan to see how things flow through the home. I work with the client to understand where they are today and where they want to be tomorrow. That means making assessments and recommendations about what they need to do to make their brand more accommodating, more spacious, and a better fit for clients.
Why would you do this? Lots of reasons. Just like a home, you may have outgrown certain aspects of your brand, or like your family, you may have changed certain aspects – added employees, taken on partners, expanded to a new location – and now you need to change the “layout” of your brand.
The first thing I do is ask a series of questions to understand the current condition of the brand so I can assess what’s present, what’s missing – and sometimes, what is present that really should go missing.
One of my tools is a customized radar-style chart where I assess where the brand sits on a five-point scale in seven different areas of brand success. I have used some form of this brand measurement tool for years as my “Seven Steps for Brand Storytelling Success.” When you see your brand displayed along these seven factors, you get a better idea about where your brand strengths and weaknesses lie.
For example, your current brand may not be as relevant or desirable to your target audience. Or, if you’ve been using weak, undifferentiated copy in your website and collateral, your brand story may be less memorable, less repeatable and – ultimately – less rewarding.
At the end of the Brand Audit & Assessment, you receive a five-page document (and a cool Notion dashboard) outlining where you stand on these Brand Success Factors, the strengths and weaknesses in your Branded Collateral, Story Ideas and Lead Magnet recommendations, plus Next 5 Steps you need to take for corrective action.
Among those next steps might be a Brand Storybook rewrite, a Visual Brand Identity refresh or a Website update.