The bitter reality of today’s business world is that competition is cut-throat. The only way you can survive and stand out from your competitors is through “differentiation.” And what is it that differentiates your business from others? Brand!

Why You Should Audit Your Brand as part of your Annual Business Review:-

The purpose of a brand audit is to ascertain how your business is performing in the eyes of your customers. It offers you the following benefits:

• Helps you to determine the positioning of your business and to plan progressive (possibly corrective) strategies
• Empowers you to discover the strengths and weaknesses of your business
• Guides you to align your offering more accurately with the expectations of customers
• Enables you to get up to speed with the perceptions (positive or negative) about your business

So, Let’s get into how you can conduct your own brand audit…

Brand audits take many forms – there is no single magic format. Regardless of the form your audit takes, the perspective is always that of the company and how the brand supports its overall objectives. To complete a brand audit, you will need to first identify all the possible sources of information at your disposal.

There are four key categories for your brand audit:

1. Customer
2. Market
3. Brand Image
4. Company

Each of the four categories have a number of sub categories to work through (the good news is that you have already undertaken your customer and company categories).

      1. Customer

• Target market
• Audience size and segmentation
• Target expectations relative to the category

       2. Market

• Third party research about your industry
• Company research studies

      3. Brand Image

• What is the brand known for?
• What brand elements are associated with the brand, e.g., trademarks, sub-brands, logos, taglines
• Brand attributes / customer associations
• Points of parity / points of differentiation vs. Competition
• Visual components of the brand - online, instore, marketing, social media

      4. Company

• Company mission, vision and values statements
• Financial performance and trends 

What is important for retail businesses is that you are comparing both the financial and visual aspects of your brand and that is why including the brand audit into your annual business review is so important.

We love feedback so please let us know feedback from your brand audit and any comments you have.

If you would like to receive a free business review please connect with us and tune in again next week for operating performance and productivity