How can you conduct a brand audit that improves your company's survey results?

1 Define your objectives

The first step of a brand audit is to define your objectives and scope. What are you trying to achieve with your brand audit? What are the key questions you want to answer? What are the specific aspects of your brand that you want to evaluate? For example, you may want to assess your brand awareness, reputation, differentiation, positioning, personality, values, voice, tone, visual identity, communication, customer experience, or employee engagement. You may also want to benchmark your brand against your competitors or industry standards. Depending on your objectives, you may need to conduct different types of research, such as internal audits, external audits, or both.

2 Collect and analyze data

The second step of a brand audit is to collect and analyze data from various sources and methods. You can use both quantitative and qualitative data, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation, online reviews, social media, web analytics, or sales reports. The data should cover both your own brand and your competitors' brands, and reflect the opinions and behaviors of your target audience, existing customers, potential customers, and stakeholders. You should also review your existing brand strategy, vision, mission, values, goals, and guidelines, and compare them with your current brand performance and perception. The analysis should reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your brand, as well as the opportunities and threats in your market.

3 Identify and prioritize issues

The third step of a brand audit is to identify and prioritize the issues that affect your brand's performance and perception. You should look for the gaps between your brand promise and your brand reality, and how they impact your customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention, and advocacy. You should also look for the areas where your brand excels or falls behind your competitors, and how they affect your market share, differentiation, and positioning. You should rank the issues according to their urgency, severity, and feasibility, and determine which ones need immediate attention, which ones need long-term planning, and which ones can be ignored or postponed.

4 Implement and monitor actions

The fourth step of a brand audit is to implement and monitor the actions that address the issues identified in the previous step. You should create a detailed action plan that specifies the goals, strategies, tactics, resources, timelines, and responsibilities for each issue. You should also define the metrics and indicators that will measure the effectiveness and impact of your actions. You should communicate your action plan to your team and stakeholders, and ensure that everyone is on board and aligned with your brand vision and values. You should also monitor and evaluate your actions regularly, and adjust them as needed based on the feedback and results.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?