Branding is a brilliant tool to get you noticed, strengthen trust and create memorability. However if you have mixed messages or unclear branding it is probably doing more harm than good. Checking in periodically on your branding is an important part of keeping your brand healthy and strong.

How to audit your brand?

  • Understand your target audience. Get to know the people you serve down to their finer characteristics. Do this by talking to them, asking questions, recognising and understanding patterns in behaviour, and, of course, questionnaires.  After researching your clientele and understanding them, create personas so it’s easy for you and your team to compare your marketing material up against your personas.

  • You may now ask, “Does this article resonate with “Sophie from Carolina?” etc. Do this for every single piece of brand material you have down to your colours, tone, aesthetics and, obviously, your content. If you have segments in your audience it will help you further to divide your material between the segments tweaking it slightly for each persona.

  • Survey your employers. Do they understand the brand message, and personality? Do they understand the personas that they should be resonating with, every time they interact as your brand?

  • Look out for any inconsistent areas. Ask yourself why is it inconsistent? Maybe it’s an error or could this be a new segment in your audience? Maybe it’s time related, don’t feel you have to do everything yourself. Is it time you should consider delegating this area? Consistency is the potency to your brand.

  • Repeat periodically for the best results. How often you repeat will depend on the size of your business and how often you are publishing material.