We hate to be a buzzkill but, the reality of today’s business world is that competition is cutthroat, but there is a way to ensure that your hive can survive and stand out from competitors. You’ll need to differentiate yourself. And the best way to differentiate yourself from others is through your brand! But honey, how?
Well, to determine the success of your brand in the market, you’ll want to start by performing a brand audit. Don’t worry, we won’t leave you to figure it all out on your own. As always, the Honey team is here to guide your hive to its highest potential. Just follow our five steps for how to do a brand audit. We’ll help you learn how to evaluate your brand’s position in the market, its strengths, weaknesses, and more, so you can amplify your impact!
How to Do a Brand Audit:
1. Start with the Honeycomb: Develop a Framework
Every brand audit project starts with identifying your nonprofit or company’s mission, vision, objectives and using the information you gathered to create the auditing architecture you’ll use to evaluate your brand.
What do you think your brand is? To figure this out, begin by reviewing the brand platform, purpose, value proposition, promise, and essence. Then, as you work your way through the audit, these factors will help you determine if your marketing communications align with your brand strategy and vision.
2. Focus on hive management: Identify Goals and Priorities
By reviewing your brand against your business and marketing objectives, you’ll be able to figure out what’s not working. Once you’ve recognized what you want to achieve, it will be easier to determine which should focus on your brand audit.
You may discover some problems during this stage. For example, your goals could be based on various issues such as decreased web traffic or inconsistent branding. After identifying the problems, you should then know which ones to deal with first.
3. Forage for honey: Question Your Customers
When analyzing data, web and social numbers alone aren’t enough to decide if you need to conduct a nonprofit rebranding or improve your strategies. Numbers do offer insight into various matters and allow you to determine which areas need improvement. Still, they can’t provide you with an opportunity to learn about the mindset of your key brand stakeholders.
No metric can help you figure out why someone chose your brand over others or answer every question you have. Instead, to determine your brand perception, you have to collect anecdotal stories from your customers.
If you want to view the complete picture, you also have to invest your efforts in qualitative feedback. By understanding the customer experience, you could humanize the audit and determine how people view your brand.
To identify any discrepancies between your current and desired brand perception, a branding agency can help you conduct surveys by phone, email, or on your website.
4. Track Your Buzz: Review Your Website
To see how your content is performing and how your audience reacts to your website, you have to use website analytics. With various website monitoring tools, you can figure out whether you’re on the right track or if there are problems you have to address.
When evaluating your website performance, make sure to consider the following:
- Traffic analysis
- Bounce rate
- Conversion rate
- Pageviews
5. Scope Out Your Neighboring Hive: Compare Your Brand to Your Competitors
No matter what industry you belong to, you will have competitors. As such, it’s crucial to look at how your brand fairs against other similar businesses by conducting an in-depth study of your industry and its members.
With a competitor analysis, you’ll be able to understand your place in the market further and identify opportunities to improve your marketing campaigns, leads, and revenue.
Ready to Conduct a Brand Audit?
No business or nonprofit organization can reach success without assessing its brand periodically. So make sure to follow our guide on how to do a brand audit and work with a reputable branding agency to help you develop a strong brand, get ahead of your competitors, and eventually become number one in the industry!
Do you want to improve your brand but don’t know how? Then, leave it to our team at Honey Creative to help your small business make an impact! Our branding agency aims to help nonprofits and mission-minded small businesses handle their needs with a friendly smile and approachable collaboration. Connect with us today to learn more!
