Building a Brand? You need to Conduct a Brand Audit. Here's How.
Written by Cecilia Jayo • Edited by Daniel Ramirez
If you understand your competitors' strengths & weaknesses, you can define opportunity areas for your brand stand out. That’s why a brand audit should always be the first step you take when creating a new brand.
Here’s the easy & effective method we use whenever we’re developing a brand.
STEP1: Research & find 3 or more competitors or “industry players” that your customers might choose instead of your brand.
STEP 2: Observe the choices your competitors have made regarding colors, fonts, logo style, wording, website layout and usability, social media presence, etc.
STEP 3: After a closer look, you ma have noticed some similarities. Maybe they all use shades of blue or green, or maybe they all have minimal typographic logos, maybe they all have Instagram, but don’t have a presence on Pinterest or Twitter. As you analyze these findings, you should start to see some areas where your brand could stand out from the crowd. Moving forward with this example, you might choose to use warm tones for your brand, like an orange or yellow, allowing your brand to feel fresh & different against the rest of the market. Or you might choose to focus marketing efforts on Pinterest instead of Instagram.
STEP 4: Before making decisions, always make sure you analyze the reasoning your audience might have behind their choices. For example: maybe your product is water related, and thus blue makes sense to use. Or maybe your audience demographic isn’t spending time on Pinterest, and that’s why they chose to skip that platform.
Taking all these things into consideration, you can start to imagine your customer’s journey, and help them choose YOUR brand, over your competition.