A brand audit is a great way to evaluate how your brand is performing. That said, your brand isn’t just your logo, colour choices, or tone of voice; it’s how people perceive your business as a whole—including the promises you make, the stories you tell, and the experiences you create.
Given this complexity, it can be tricky to fully grasp your brand and the impact it has on people.
What’s more, your brand is constantly in flux. The market evolves, your audience changes, your competitors shift—and your business adapts. That’s why it’s important to evaluate whether your brand is still aligned regularly.
Many small business owners presume brand audits are only for larger corporations with extensive marketing budgets. That’s a myth! A brand audit can provide valuable insights for businesses of all sizes.
You might not have a huge budget, but it doesn’t mean a brand audit is out of reach. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach; how you tackle it and how deep you dive is entirely up to you.
If you’re feeling a bit confused now—don’t worry. This guide runs you through a step-by-step process for conducting a brand audit as a small business.
A quick note before we start: My focus is more on branding rather than marketing. This means we will look less at gathering performance data and more at your brand’s identity and perception.
What Is a Brand Audit?
Think of a brand audit as a health check for your business’s reputation. It helps uncover what’s working, identify areas for improvement, and determine the next steps you can take to strengthen people’s perception of your brand.
A thorough brand audit looks at internal and external factors alike, such as:
- If your brand identity (still) aligns with your business goals, mission, and values
- If you target the right audience and foster a genuine connection with them
- If and how well your brand stands out from the competition
- If your brand assets are distinctive and memorable
- If potential customers have enough information and reassurance to make a confident buying decision
Why Conduct a Brand Audit?
Regularly checking in on your brand helps keep it relevant, consistent, and competitive.
Conducting a brand audit can offer several benefits:
- Audience alignment: Pinpoint areas where your brand may not fully resonate with your audience.
- Consistency: Ensure your messaging, tone, and visuals are consistent across every brand touchpoint—from your website to print ads.
- Positioning: (Re)gain clarity on your brand’s strengths and weaknesses compared to your competitors and uncover opportunities to stand out.
- Relevance: Stay up to date about industry trends while remaining true to your core values and beliefs.
In 8 Steps to a Brand Audit
A brand audit doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. Think of it as a chance to take a closer look at what’s working for your brand and what might need some attention.
Let’s break the process down into eight manageable steps so you can analyse each area systematically.
As you go through your brand assessment, keep these questions in mind:
- What’s there? Take stock of the brand assets and practices you currently have.
- What works? Identify already successful elements and think about how to refine or repeat them.
- What needs fixing? Identify gaps or inconsistencies that require refinement and—as often—simplification.
Step 1: Define the Goals of the Brand Audit
Before starting your brand audit, consider what you want to achieve with it. Clear goals can help you decide which areas to prioritise and evaluate.
Here are some examples of goals you might set:
- Express your company’s personality and values more effectively in your brand identity
- Create a consistent look and feel across all touchpoints with your brand
- Align the brand better towards your ideal audience
- Differentiate the brand from the competition
- Adapt the branding to future business growth
Step 2: Revisit Your Brand Foundations
Your mission, vision and values should inform your brand-building efforts. If they don’t align with your goals, positioning or target audience, it’s time for an overhaul.
Evaluate whether all your actions —such as product development, customer service or team culture—consistently reflect your values and beliefs.
Questions to Ask:
- Do your long-term goals align with your brand values?
- Are your mission and values reflected in all your actions and decisions?
- Do your values resonate with your audience and team?
- Has your mission evolved, and if so—does your brand reflect this change?
How to Evaluate:
- Review your mission and value statements to ensure they’re still relevant and inspiring.
- Identify misalignments between your values and actions. For example, claiming sustainability while using non-eco-friendly supply chains signals a clear disconnect.
- Involve your team. Run surveys or discussions to determine whether your employees understand and align with your brand’s direction. An unaligned team can hurt your brand’s authenticity.
Step 3: Assess Audience Alignment
The whole point of having a brand is to serve your audience. When your brand truly aligns with your audience’s needs, everything—from your messaging to your product line—will resonate deeply and feel relevant to them.
Over time, however, the people interacting with your brand may stray away from your ideal target audience. At that point, you face a choice: double down on this new audience or find ways to reconnect with your core audience.
A brand audit will help uncover potential shifts and decide the best next steps.
Questions to Ask:
- Who engages with or buys from your brand? Do these people fit your ideal target audience?
- Are there gaps between what your brand delivers (products, messaging, personality, pricing, etc.) and what your audience needs and expects?
- Have your audience’s behaviours, preferences, and challenges changed over time—and has your brand adapted?
How to Evaluate:
- You can use platforms like Google Analytics or SEMrush to gather demographics and behaviour data about your audience.
- Survey tools like Google Forms, Typeform, or SurveyMonkey can help you collect direct feedback about your audience’s needs and preferences.
- You can track your audience’s sentiments and understand how they perceive your brand by reviewing your company’s social media comments, testimonials, and online reviews.
You might also like my article on why knowing your audience in branding and business.
Step 4: Analyse Your Competitors
Once you’ve established how well your brand aligns with your audience, the next step is understanding your direct and indirect competitors.
The goal here isn’t to copy them; it’s to gain insights into your competitive landscape and use that information to differentiate and improve your brand.
Examine aspects such as their brand identity, positioning, pricing strategies, and customer experiences. Identify areas where they do well and where they fall short.
Questions to Ask:
- What distinguishes your brand from its competitors?
In which areas do your competitors outperform you, and what can you learn from them? - What trends or technologies are your competitors adopting that could benefit your organisation?
- How can you better position your brand relative to the competition?
How to Evaluate:
- Compare your strengths and weaknesses with those of your competitors using a SWOT analysis.
- Benchmark your competitors’ offers, marketing tactics, brand values, pricing strategies, etc.
- Explore how customers perceive competing businesses by studying their reviews, testimonials, and social media comments.
- You might also want to analyse your competitors’ digital performance (keywords, traffic sources) using tools like SEMrush.
Step 5: Evaluate Your Brand Identity
Your brand identity is the visual and verbal representation of your company. It includes elements such as your logo, brand colours or tagline. These elements ensure recognisability and are the basis for establishing an emotional connection with your audience.
A strong brand identity should:
- Reflect the values of your organisation,
- respond to the target group,
- stand out from the competition
- and be instantly recognisable.
To audit your brand identity, list all brand elements—logo, brand fonts, photography, illustrations, brand voice, etc.
What works? Which elements are well-designed, easily recognisable and consistent across all platforms? These are your strongest brand assets—and you should build on them.
Questions to Ask
- Do your brand assets align with your overall brand personality?
- Do they evoke the right emotions?
- Are they distinctive and instantly identify your business?
- Do your assets fit within your industry and stand out from the competition?
- Are they used consistently across all platforms?
- Do they work effectively in both digital and print formats?
- Are your brand fonts legible and suitable for all applications and sizes?
- Are there gaps in your “brand toolbox,” such as too few colours or a lack of visuals?
- Is your tagline clear, memorable, and aligned with your brand message?
How to Evaluate
- Review how your brand assets are used across platforms: website, social media, emails, packaging, business cards …
- Identify missing or weak elements that affect your brand experience.
- Add missing assets and optimise existing ones. Ensure you have enough assets to be flexible and engaging but not so many that consistency and distinctiveness suffer.
- Update your brand guidelines to ensure consistent use across all touchpoints.
You may find my article on distinctive brand assets interesting in this context.
Step 6: Assess Your Brand Messaging
Your messaging—what you say and how you say it—is another crucial part of your brand puzzle. It communicates the value and uniqueness of your organisation.
Your messaging comes through in elements like website copy, social media captions, and even the text on your packaging—all of which work together to tell your brand story.
Your brand messages should address your customers’ most pressing pain points and present your products or services as the solution. They should also build trust and instil confidence in your company.
Conducting a brand audit can help ensure your messaging is convincing and sharp.
Questions to Ask:
- Are your key messages clear, persuasive, and aligned with your value proposition?
- Do your messages resonate with your target audience’s emotional and functional needs?
- Are there any confusing, irrelevant or off-putting messages you communicate?
- How can you refine your messaging?
How to Evaluate:
- Review all brand communications, including website copy, marketing materials, testimonials, and other customer-facing content.
- Identify gaps in your messaging or areas where your brand voice feels inconsistent.
- Highlight messages that clearly and effectively convey your brand’s values and uniqueness.
- Survey or interview existing customers to understand how they perceive your brand messaging.
- Compare your messaging with competitors. Does it stand out and communicate your distinct value?
- Look for unclear, overly complex, or generic messages.
- Simplify and refine them to improve clarity and impact.
Step 7: Inspect Your Brand Touchpoints Throughout the Customer Journey
Every brand touchpoint, whether online or offline, is an opportunity to:
- Connect with your audience
- Educate them about your products, services, and business
- Address common objections
- Deliver an exceptional experience
Making your customer journey as smooth and engaging as possible ensures that your customers will have a great experience with your brand.
A brand audit is an excellent way to uncover inconsistencies or friction points across your brand touchpoints.
By mapping out the entire customer journey—from the moment they first hear about your brand to after they’ve made a purchase—you can ensure you meet their needs at every stage.
Questions to Ask:
- Are you engaging with customers at every stage of their journey?
- Awareness: How do customers first learn about your brand?
- Consideration: Are your touchpoints helping customers understand your offerings?
- Decision: Are you addressing their objections, providing reassurance and guiding them to make a purchase decision?
- Purchase: Are you making the buying process and transactions easy?
- Post-Purchase: Are you encouraging repeat business through effective follow-up and support?
How to Evaluate:
- Identify all touchpoints where customers interact with your brand: website, email, social media, in-store visits, customer support, etc.
- Highlight touchpoints where the experience is strong, and customers feel valued—these moments drive satisfaction, repeat business, and referrals.
- Pinpoint touchpoints—or the lack thereof—where customers encounter friction, confusion, or frustration, and assess how these can be improved.
Step 8: Develop an Action Plan
Once you’ve completed your brand audit, it’s time to put the insights into action.
Identify the most pressing areas for improvement based on your audit findings. What are the steps you can take to address these issues?
Decide how you will measure the success of these changes. Depending on the initial goals you set, these could be metrics like customer feedback, sales growth, or website traffic.
Key Takeaways
You see, a brand audit is a great way to understand what your brand is already doing well and where there is room for improvement.
It helps ensure you align with your customers’ needs, keep up with the latest trends, and stay competitive and distinctive. In fact, your brand extends far beyond just your communications. When done well, it influences every aspect of your business, from marketing and customer interactions to production and supply chains.
Let’s recap the steps outlined in this article:
- Set clear goals for your brand audit.
- Review your brand foundations to ensure your mission, vision, and values are relevant, authentic, and aligned with your goals.
- Assess audience alignment and evaluate whether your brand aligns with your audience’s evolving needs and expectations.
- Evaluate your competitors to identify gaps and find ways to differentiate and improve your brand.
- Examine your brand identity. Review your visual and verbal elements, ensuring they align with your brand’s essence and stand out.
- Assess your brand messaging to ensure your brand message is clear, compelling, and resonates with your audience.
- Inspect your brand touchpoints to ensure a positive and consistent experience throughout the customer journey.
- Develop an action plan to improve the areas you’ve identified.
Auditing your brand alone can feel overwhelming. As Marty Neumeier said, “It’s hard to read the label from inside the bottle.” So, if you need help with your brand audit,—I’m here to guide you through the process.
Title image by Mikhail Nilov
