Performing a brand audit might seem daunting – but breaking it down into small chunks makes it easy. A brand audit provides an objective, big-picture “health check” for your brand. It lets you step back and see how well your brand is performing and where you need to adapt your strategy. Even the most established brands can’t rest on their laurels. It takes continuous effort to stay on top – especially in a world where every new competitor is eager to capture your customers. And that’s why a successful brand audit is great – it can future-proof your company and guide everything from your business strategy to your marketing campaigns.
Brand audits uncover valuable insights to keep your business competitive. This guide explains what a brand audit is and outlines a concise seven-step brand audit process.
By the end, you’ll see how regular brand audits help protect and strengthen your brand – and how tools like Brandwatch Consumer Research can make the job easier.
What is a brand audit?
A brand audit outlines how your brand is performing in the market and in the eyes of consumers. It examines all aspects of your brand – from your identity and messaging to internal branding, customer perceptions, and competitive positioning – to evaluate whether your brand is meeting business goals and customer expectations. Typically, a brand audit will measure performance by comparing existing data to your goals and KPIs.
The results help you identify strengths and weaknesses, giving you an idea of what you’re doing well and where your branding could be stronger. By the end of the process, you’ll know whether your brand strategy matches what your customers want and expect from you. You’ll also be able to benchmark and understand your place in the market relative to the competition.
The goal is to spot inconsistencies or gaps in your brand strategy and make informed decisions to sharpen your brand’s impact.
7 steps to conduct a successful brand audit
Every brand audit will be slightly different, but the following seven-step process provides a reliable framework. These steps will guide you through evaluating both your internal and external branding. If you think of it as a checklist to work through, the process should feel a little less overwhelming.
Step 1: Define your brand audit framework
First of all, you need to reconnect with your brand strategy. Start by clarifying your brand’s mission, vision, and core values. Think about what “success” looks like for your brand in the short and long term. This strategic foundation will guide your brand audit.
Think about what questions you want the audit to answer. For example, are you focusing on brand awareness, customer perception, competitive positioning, or all of the above? You could even pinpoint something quite niche, like company culture. Setting specific objectives will keep the brand audit efficient and relevant.
Once you’ve done that groundwork, you can gather your team and resources. At this stage, it’s important to give everyone clear roles – for instance, one person analyzes web data, and another handles customer surveys. Ensure everyone has access to the data and tools they’ll need – including analytics platforms and social listening software.
Step 2: Gather customer insights
To truly understand your brand’s strengths and weaknesses, you’ll need to go straight to the source eg. your customers. At this point, you might use surveys, interviews, focus groups, or feedback forms to learn how your target customers perceive your brand. A social listening tool like Brandwatch Consumer Research is your friend here, as it will tap into conversations from real customers across a wide range of different social media platforms.
For a well-rounded view, try to gather quantitative data (cold, hard numbers) and qualitative insights (comments and opinions) from multiple channels. Find out what customers like and dislike about your brand, why they chose you (or why they choose competitors), and how their actual experience lives up to your brand promise.
Don’t worry, you can pull all this brand audit data into one Brandwatch dashboard.
Now it’s time to look for patterns in the feedback. Are there common complaints about product quality or customer service? Do customers see your brand the way you intend? If you uncover gaps between your desired brand image and the actual customer experience, you’ll get an idea of where you need to improve.
Step 3: Review your website and SEO analytics
The next step is to audit your web performance since your website is a core reflection of your brand.
The best place to start is by diving into your web analytics (for example, Google Analytics) to evaluate traffic, engagement, and conversion metrics. Have a look at how much traffic you’re getting and from which sources. Ideally, you want to see a healthy mix of traffic sources so you’re not overly reliant on one channel (which can be risky in a world of unpredictable algorithms).
Next, examine user behavior. Specifically, look at time on site, bounce rates, and top content pages. Pay attention to which pages or content pieces attract the most engagement. This can tell you what aspects of your brand messaging are cutting through the noise.
On the flip side, high bounce rates or short visit durations on key pages might indicate your content isn’t aligning with visitor needs.
Then, check your SEO and search presence. Have a look at how your site performs in search results for branded terms and relevant industry keywords. A strong SEO presence means your brand is easily discoverable.
Don’t forget to review your website’s search engine rankings versus competitors for important terms (for instance, if you’re a coffee brand, you could check if you rank when people search “best coffee beans”). You may need to bolster your content strategy or SEO efforts if your organic visibility is low.
Ultimately, the aim is to evaluate whether website visitors are taking actions that align with your brand goals – such as signing up for a demo, making a purchase, or subscribing to your content. If conversion rates are below expectations, that could signal misalignment in messaging or audience targeting on the site.
Step 4: Analyze social media and sentiment
Next up, it’s time to assess your social presence. To get started, look at your key metrics across all your social media profiles. You can access your social media analytics through the platforms themselves or use a tool like Brandwatch Social Media Management to provide a much deeper analysis.
Look at follower growth, post reach, engagement rates, and referral traffic from social platforms to your website. These indicate how well your brand is connecting with audiences on social channels.
To complement that, it’s good to do some social listening. This involves going beyond your own posts and listening to what people are saying about your brand across social and online communities.
A digital consumer intelligence tool like Brandwatch Consumer Research monitors brand mentions, hashtags, and relevant keywords across news sites, blogs, and social media. This will help you gather unfiltered sentiment and spot themes in public perception of your brand.
For example, you can run some sentiment analysis to track whether mentions of your brand skew positive or negative, find out what topics or attributes are most associated with your brand, and learn who your brand ambassadors or vocal critics are. Social data can also reveal demographic and psychographic insights about your audience that traditional web analytics might miss. That’s why it’s important to check the audience insights available on each platform (or use a third-party tool like Brandwatch Audience) to see the makeup of your followers.
You might discover a segment that engages heavily with your content that you weren’t intentionally targeting.
Step 5: Evaluate brand performance metrics
Now it’s time to look at your financial data. A brand audit should include hard performance metrics like sales figures, revenue growth, market share, and customer acquisition cost.
Review your sales data in conjunction with marketing data. Are sales trending upward, flat, or downward in your target markets? If you recently ran campaigns or brand initiatives, did they translate into revenue boosts? Analyzing sales alongside brand efforts can highlight what’s working.
Next, have a look at your brand equity measures. Examine metrics that reflect brand equity and loyalty – for example, repeat purchase rate, customer lifetime value, and brand loyalty scores. Strong brands tend to retain customers and encourage repeat business. If those metrics are weak, it may point to issues in customer satisfaction or brand differentiation.
Then, benchmark KPIs against targets. Compare your current performance metrics to the goals set in your brand strategy. If your goal was to reach X% market share or improve NPS by Y points, did you hit the mark? If not, which areas fell short?
This exercise shows where the brand is underperforming and helps prioritize corrective actions.
Step 6: Benchmark your brand against competitors
No brand exists in a vacuum, so the next step is to look at others in your industry. Identify your main competitors (both direct rivals and emerging players in your space) and compare their branding to yours.
Look at competitors’ product offerings, pricing, messaging, visual branding, and customer engagement. Are they positioning themselves differently or targeting a segment you haven’t addressed? This analysis will reveal where you stand in the competitive landscape.
Once you’ve done that, compare your marketing channels and share of voice. Look at how your competitors are using marketing channels versus your own efforts. Check to see how their SEO rankings compare to yours, what keywords they rank highly for, and their social media presence. You can automate much of this data gathering by using competitive intelligence tools.
Measuring your share of voice means figuring out what percentage of the online conversation around relevant keywords or topics your brand holds relative to competitors. This metric is a great indicator of brand visibility online. A social listening tool like Brandwatch Consumer Research will make fast work of this task.
You could do a brief SWOT analysis for your brand in the context of the competition. This means listing your brand’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats relative to others. Strengths and weaknesses are internal (what you do better or worse than competitors), while opportunities and threats are external (market trends or competitor moves that could help or hurt you).
For example, a strength might be a highly engaged customer community, a weakness might be a smaller product range, an opportunity could be a competitor withdrawing from a market, and a threat could be a new entrant with a disruptive business model.
About the so Famous SWOT Matrix: Definition, Benefits and Uses
Step 7: Take action and monitor results
Now that the bulk of the work is done, you can compile your findings into an action plan. This is about making a clear list of recommendations and next steps. For example, if you discover inconsistent messaging, one action might be to update your brand guidelines and run training for all marketing staff.
Set a specific goal or KPI and a timeline for each action item. Maybe you aim to increase brand awareness by a certain percentage in the next quarter, improve average customer review ratings from 3.5 to 4.0, or boost your website conversion rate by a certain amount. Having concrete targets will allow you to measure the success of your improvements.
Don’t forget to monitor the outcomes closely once you’ve implemented your changes. Use your analytics and brand tracking tools to see if key metrics begin to improve.
Unfortunately, a brand audit isn’t a one-and-done task – it’s part of a continuous improvement cycle. Regular brand audits (for example, annually or bi-annually) will help you keep up with evolving market conditions and consumer expectations.
What is a Brand? Branding Process
Brand Audit Checklist
Before we wrap up, we’ll leave you with a quick brand audit checklist summarizing key areas and questions. This is so you can be sure you’ve covered all the bases during your brand audit.
1. Brand strategy & identity
Are your mission, vision, and values clearly defined and reflected in all branding? Is your visual identity (logos, colors, design) consistent across all channels? Look closely at different brand elements to compare.
2. Brand messaging & voice
Is your tone of voice and messaging consistent across all platforms? Does it align with your brand’s values and resonate with your target audience? Check all of your marketing materials to be sure.
3. Online presence & content
How effectively is your website engaging and converting visitors (traffic stats, SEO rankings, conversion rates)? Are your content marketing and social media efforts on-brand and delivering value to your audience?
4. Customer perception
What do customers really think of your brand? Are you gathering reviews, ratings, and customer feedback? Do customer sentiments and experiences match the promises your brand makes?
5. Competitive positioning
What is your market position relative to competitors? Where do competitors outperform you (product, price, service, awareness) and vice versa? Are you differentiating your brand effectively?
6. Internal alignment
Are your team and stakeholders aligned with the brand? Do they understand and follow your brand guidelines and values? Is there internal enthusiasm for the brand’s direction?
7. Tools
Do you have the right tools to conduct a brand audit and make recommended changes? If not, consider an organizational tool like Brandwatch to guide you from start to finish.
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Regular brand audits are a great way to keep your brand healthy, consistent, and primed for growth. By following the steps above – from defining your framework and gathering customer input to analyzing data and benchmarking against competitors – you’ll gain a 360-degree view of your brand’s performance. More importantly, you’ll be equipped to take action on those insights, tightening up any weak spots in your branding and doubling down on what’s working.
A brand audit can feel like a bit of a mammoth task, but using the right tools definitely makes the process easier. For instance, Brandwatch Consumer Research automatically collects and analyzes consumer conversations about your brand, giving you real-time insights into brand sentiment, trending topics, and competitor mentions that would be practically impossible to gather manually.
This consumer intelligence accelerates the brand audit process and adds depth to your findings. If you approach the task with good tools and some thorough planning, a brand audit is a great way to keep your brand a step ahead of the competition.
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