The truth is, your brand is a living, breathing thing that needs to be evaluated *at least* once a year.
This doesn’t mean your brand will change year to year. In fact, businesses that frequently check in with their audience, employees, and business goals and tactics see more brand stability (i.e. less changes) than businesses who put their brand on the back-burner and then implement sweeping rebranding efforts later.
Think of an audit like a State of the Union address. The purpose is to check in with where your business stands currently: Are goals being met? Where are you having problems? What’s working? Have there been any organizational or process changes that affected businesses either positively or negatively? Where should you be looking to go and how are we going to move forward?
You need to do a brand audit if you:
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Want more people to know you exist
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Feel like you’re falling behind the market
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Are starting to sound like everyone else
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Are experiencing less customer loyalty
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See less social media engagement and funnel drop-offs
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Aren’t getting the results you used to after running a marketing campaign
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Are starting to get a lot of pushback on your pricing
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Aren’t sure where you need to be marketing yourself anymore
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Have lost touch with where to find your target customer (online or in the wild)
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Feel like you’re ready to shift who your target audience is
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Aren’t sure how to market the purpose-driven part of your business (Does anyone care? How do we stay authentic?)
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Want your messaging to be more compelling
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Feel the urge to change your website design every five minutes
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Are unsure how to market a new product or service
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Have non-existent brand standards (Which logo do we use again? Who has that file?)
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Have an inconsistent voice on social media or in sales and marketing materials (Or are outsourcing this to an intern or contractor and have no usage guidelines.)
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Don’t know how to clearly say who you are and what you do
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Stumble over your words when trying to explain your value to your audience
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Aren’t exactly sure who your audience is anymore
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Aren’t seeing any employee enthusiasm for your brand (Hey, I’m just here to get a paycheck…)
If you get to the end of this list and think to yourself, “yeahhhhh, I have some work to do to reflect the direction I want to go,” outsourcing a third-party expert can help you figure out the bigger picture and steps for implementation, like bringing in a brand designer, launch strategist, content marketer or just getting refreshing some of your website messaging with targeted copywriting.