Great brands tell great stories. Whether it’s about a product, mission, culture,
or solution, good brand stories make emotional and rational connections. Those connections lead to lasting customer relationships.
Stand-out brands also have up-to-date branding. Your brand is one of your organization’s biggest assets and should not be ignored. As you would with maintaining your health, car, or HVAC system, your brand needs a regular checkup. Known as a brand audit, it is essential for ensuring an effective and stellar brand.
Brand Audit Components
An audit evaluates your brand’s positioning, perception, strengths, and weaknesses. It also determines how to make your brand stronger.
The following are three key areas covered by a brand audit:
Internal Branding:
This is how you educate employees about your brand values, mission, and company culture.
External Branding:
This is how you convey your story to your customers, stakeholders, and the general public. Examples include your business logo, website, email communication, social media, content marketing, and print and digital marketing materials.
Customer Experience:
This is how customers experience your brand. It includes your customer service policies and sales process.
Brand Audit Benefits
Whether your company has grown or changed direction, wants to reach a new audience, or has plans to rebrand, there are several reasons your brand might need an audit. Conducting a regular brand audit is part of the commitment to providing an out-of-this-world brand experience that makes people want to come back to your product, service, or organization again and again.
The benefits from an audit include:
- Building a strong brand foundation;
- Understanding how your brand is viewed within your industry and among your customers;
- Assessing your brand’s strengths and weaknesses, gaining insights into your competitors;
- Determining your brand’s future direction and growth.
The Moonlight Brand Audit Way
We first work to uncover your brand strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities that we can build upon to strengthen your organization’s brand experience. We’ll look at your brand guidelines, print materials (including brochures, invitations, mailers, annual reports, etc.), social media, website, emails, and content calendar. Our team will evaluate your overall brand messaging, voice, and visuals to see how these elements align to tell a unified story. We’ll present our findings and recommendations in a summary document.
Brand Audit Example
The following is an example of a brand audit Moonlight conducted for Centralina Regional Council (Centralina) before they rebranded.
- We started with numerous stakeholder workshops to clarify the brand’s market positioning, audience needs, and essential services.
- Based on our findings, we developed a brand strategy and the tagline, “Our Communities. Our Region. Our Future.”
- We created a vibrant and consistent visual identity to help Centralina emerge from the background.
Your brand is important for many reasons, and it’s also important to keep it up-to-date to help your business grow and thrive. Does your brand need an update?
Want to continue the conversation and discuss a brand audit for your brand? Give us a shout!
