How to conduct a brand audit
A brand audit is an evaluation of a brand's awareness and perception. It involves setting out strategic objectives and conducting a quantitative survey with a brand's target audience. The findings can reveal critical insights into a brand's strengths and weaknesses in the market. In this article, we explore how to conduct a brand audit, including examples of brand audit questions and what a brand audit report can tell you.
The brand audit format
Set the strategic objectives
The brand audit process starts with setting out the strategic objectives that align with key business goals. Are you looking to benchmark how your brand is performing in the competitive landscape? Or are you tracking the impact of a particular strategic initiative to increase brand awareness or change how it is perceived by potential buyers?
The strategic objectives will inform questions for a customized quantitative survey. Companies are often looking to measure the strength of a brand and how customers make decisions. For example, what customers look for in a brand and where they go for information. Focusing the survey on the strategic objectives reveals insights that are unique to a distinctive brand.
It’s important to have buy-in from senior leadership and cross-functional teams at this initial stage. That includes an agreement from stakeholders about the business objectives associated with brand research. This will create an easier path to informing strategy and driving change once the findings of the research are delivered.
Conduct a quantitative survey
The strategic objectives inform the questions for a quantitative survey of a brand's potential and existing customers. Brand audit questions are often multiple choice and randomized. It’s important that the survey questions and response options are clearly defined and not too long. Extensive lists of brand attributes can distort the data if respondents are overwhelmed and stop paying attention.
To get accurate answers, the survey needs to be completed by decision-makers who are existing or potential customers. That can be challenging in B2B markets as sometimes the target audiences are highly specialized or represent a small population. In some instances, it may not be realistic to reach a quantitative sample size of target decision-makers, say, CMOs at Fortune 500 companies, to have a robust degree of statistical confidence in the data.
In those instances, interviews with a smaller number of highly qualified participants can be just as valuable and give an indication of a brand’s position and perception in the market. However, it will not be possible to capture quantitative metrics, such as a measure of the level of brand awareness.
Examples of brand audit questions
Here are two examples of brand audit questions that could be included in a B2B brand awareness survey:
1. An IT hardware and technology company could ask its customers: Where are you looking for information when deciding which brand of IT hardware and technology to buy?
Trade shows / events
Supplier / reseller websites
Industry expert reviews
Publications
The answers help to steer the IT hardware and technology company's marketing strategy in terms of digital advertising and paid media spend.
2. A questionnaire could also ask what a brand's customers care about when it comes to making purchasing decisions. For example, a tool manufacturer could ask: When choosing a power drill, what are the top three factors that are most influential to your decision?
Weight
Durability
Power / Voltage
Warranty
Size / Compactness
Power source (battery vs. plug-in)
Asking this question helps to refine the tool manufacturer's brand messaging and more effectively engage its audiences in PR campaigns.
What a brand audit report can tell you
Once the data is in, the B2B market research company uses analytical frameworks to understand key drivers of customer behavior.
Linear regressions help to determine why customers will consider a brand.
Correspondence analysis, otherwise known as brand maps, visually demonstrates the extent to which brands are seen to be associated with certain attributes.
Sometimes, a brand audit report can yield surprising results. An established marquee name in the market may believe that it is trusted by customers, but if the product quality has eroded and at the same time competitors have invested in innovation, then they may no longer be considered the go-to brand.
Core recommendations from the a B2B market research agency may be to invest more in product development research or refocus brand messaging to highlight the brand’s long heritage and value-for-money.
Ultimately, a brand audit report can help to unearth and diagnose a wide range of opportunities to improve brand performance. Even so, one of the biggest challenges companies face once they know their brand awareness and reputation in the market is putting in place a strategy to improve it.
Here are three solutions for how that can be achieved:
Focus groups with customers further diagnoses problems or understand the “why” behind the quantitative metrics.
A B2B market segmentation study helps to better understand the market and steer a sales strategy targeted toward specific customer groups and their distinct brand requirements.
Brand tracking research measures the impact of strategic initiatives on brand awareness at important points, or over a period of time.
Summary: How to conduct a brand audit
A brand audit is a key tool for evaluating a brand's performance and perception in the market. This is difficult for internal stakeholders to analyze independently, as they can be biased. The brand audit process involves setting strategic objectives, conducting a quantitative survey, and analyzing the data. The findings can reveal critical insights into customer behavior and brand positioning.
Brand audit checklist
In order to get the most value from a quantitative study, here is a brand audit checklist:
Ask the right questions based on strategic objectives that you solidify with leadership teams.
Focus on data quality by selecting the right people and accounting for human behaviors.
Capitalize on results (which may surprise you) through definitive strategies such as focus groups or segmentation.
A brand audit ultimately guides a company in areas of improvement, including refining its marketing strategy, product research and development, and enhancing the customer experience. Companies can continue to track brand performance using brand health tracking on a 12 to 18-month basis, or after completing a major strategic initiative. This will determine the effectiveness of any strategic initiatives over the long term.