Watch This Episode to help answer the question Do you really need a brand Audit?
How do you know if you really need a brand audit?
Well, the short answer is probably going to be YES to this, but it’s a little bit more detailed than that. Let’s figure out where you’re at today on this episode of Mwah TV.
Today I want to help you work out if you need a brand audit. If you recognise that you actually don’t need to worry about this right now, I’ve got some recommendations that you can put into place yourself so that when you are in the best place to revisit this, you have all of the right things in place.
When You Don't Need An Audit
You don’t need a brand audit if you just did a rebrand or invested in a new brand from scratch.
Have You Re-Branded or Built A New Brand?
If you just invested in re-branding your business or you just invested in getting a brand made from scratch, then it’s not a good idea to spend on auditing things just yet because you haven’t given enough time to test the water. Before you hit exit on this episode though, let me leave you with some easy tips to follow if you know you are in this position. There are things you can be doing right now to begin capturing the right kind of data you’ll want to look back on in 6 months' time.
Are You Doing Monthly reporting yet?
If you’re not running monthly reports on your marketing get started on this. Quantitative measurements on how your website is performing for you like hits, bounce rate, exit pages, and duration of the visit are a great way to start watching how the brand experience of visiting your website is going.
If you’re working on driving more traffic to your website using social media and content, make sure you are measuring the right stats on a monthly basis to prove your strategy. Avoid getting blinded by vanity metrics like how many followers you have, by all means, track this, but instead try to dive a little bit deeper by observing which posts generate the most engagement, and if the demographic that interacts with you on social media is the same as the type of person you want to sell to.
Is it Time For A Quick Qualitative Read on Things?
You might want to run a more qualitative experiment at this stage of your brand too. Ask a small sample of real-life clients to answer a set of open questions about your rebrand things like:
- How does the new brand feel to you?
- Do you feel like this brand is directly speaking to you?
- What do you like least about the new brand?
- How would you describe this brand to someone you know who needed PRODUCT/SERVICE?
Actively capturing this data is going to put you in a great place in 6 months’ time. Taking a monthly gauge of how things are really going for you by checking how your brand is really performing is also really helpful in helping you decide what to focus on. And… as I said before, stay tuned to Mwah TV as I’ll be going to be moving on to how THEY can work out if they need a brand audit.
The 7 Signs You Really Need A Brand Audit
Let’s switch this around then and look at some easy indicators to help you identify if considering a brand audit needs to be on your radar. I’m keeping these quick on purpose because we will be looking at this in a lot more detail in the future.
Team Issues
You keep on having issues with your team.
By this, I mean that you have lots of little niggles, niggles about how your customers or client are being treated by them, and the way they are handling enquiries.
The most insidious indicator of this could be sales dropping or a reduction in loyalty purchases or member churn. When your team do not live and breathe your brand guess what!? It damages your brand. But it’s your responsibility to rectify this and that is a brand problem. Knowing where the weaknesses take a proper investigation.
Time Wasters
Feeling bombarded with enquiries from timewasters is a problem.
I know when you’re struggling to get ANY enquiries this feels like a champagne problem, but it isn’t.
It takes up a lot of valuable time that you could be using to make more money and improve your business. Timewasters and how you let them enter into your business is a brand problem. You’re putting something out there to attract these people. Working out how to remedy this takes the right kind of investigation work.
If You Already See You Really Need A Brand Audit
I have a dedicated service for this. Let me work my magic and thoroughly assess all 101 parts of your brand for you. This gives you a quick traffic light score on how your current brand is performing for you:
RED - This area is costing you money and needs attention ASAP.
AMBER - This area could perform better, or has some glitches. It will need addressing but this is not urgent.
GREEN - This area of the brand is tickety boo.
Real Competition
We often think that people are our competition when they do the same or a similar thing to what we do.
THAT’S NOT TRUE!
You might do something similar but it’s actually quite unlikely that these people offer exactly what you do at the exact same price and to the same people as you.
So, by REAL I mean DIRECT competition.
You can see more on this in this episode where I compare the photography market to a fish market.
If you know for sure that you have some hot competition on your heels then you have a brand problem on your hands. This can be such an emotional experience for any business owner, getting an impartial read on how the ground really lies with emotions set to the side can be carried out with a brand audit.
Getting Your Mind Around Pricing (With Fish and Photography)
Here is that link again to the episode I just mentioned. When you have this concept locked into your brain you will be able to quickly assess the real value of any market as well as get more strategic about how you use pricing in your business.
Complaints
Any complaints are a huge red flag regardless of how minor they might seem to you. We live in a time where the customer experience is crucial to keeping a business a successful business. Again, the way you handle and process complaints can be very emotional as a business owner. There is a strong chance you have a brand problem, specifically an under the line brand problem. The right investigation into how you process and inform your brand experience needs to take place so you can rule complaints out entirely from your business.
£££££ Plateau
When you’ve hit a turnover plateau it is so easy to write it off as not your problem. We blame the government, we blame the weather or the season. It’s easier to point the finger than take responsibility.
YES, I’M LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU!
To help you take full ownership of this, an impartial brand audit is probably a good idea. You can put your pointers back in your pocket to then get your finger out and do the right work on your brand.
Time
As business owners, we are in a state of perpetual juggling. Keeping the sales coming in, keeping the finances in order, creating content, networking, email, managing your team, and working on your key
projects. Then there is all the life stuff, running a home, groceries, laundry, family time, self-care, exercise, and sleep.
PHEWF!
That’s a lot!
When you just don’t have time to go off and do all of the right brand investigations work by yourself it is easy to let this procrastination pattern begin. The longer you leave things to the bottom of the list or on your back burner, the bigger problems with your brand can become. Delegate it and then you can focus your time on leading the solutions to any problems found.
Accuracy
Any audit of any kind is steeped in the quality of it being detailed, accurate and 100% impartial. Beginning some investigations is not really serious enough if you need solid data to inform a well thought out strategy. When you know you need stats to back up your intuition it’s a good idea to think about a brand audit.
Timestamps for this Episode of #MwahTV
00:00 - Episode Start
00:51 - Things to do EVEN IF you do not need a Brand Audit right now
04:55 - If you have Team Issues
05:50 - If you have Time Wasters
06:40 - If you have REAL Competition
07:44 - If you have Complaints
08:35 - If you have an Income Plateau
09:05 - If you have Time problems
10:16 - Introduction of the Discography Call
11:02 - If you know Accuracy may be an issue
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