1. In Fast-Changing Markets, a Brand Audit Reveals Opportunities to Grow Revenue as Well as Threats

Change doesn’t come evenly distributed. That’s one reason it often seems like a threat. But in fact, it can also be an opportunity. The thing is, it is sometimes only after something happens that one can look back and appreciate it for the opportunity it was.

Humans naturally go into a mode of self-protection when sudden changes occur. Consequently, that basic instinct of self-preservation comes to the fore with the focus more on threats than on opportunities. 

Equally, when something seems like a positive change, it can be easy to underestimate the possible difficulties it could also bring. That is why using a structured analytical framework is important.

It filters out more emotive biases and enables you, as a business leader and brand owner or manager to take an open-minded but also a realistic overview of what a change could mean for your brand, both good and bad. 

© Persona Design

As a brand owner or manager, it’s ultimately up to you to decide how to respond to change. What makes sense? What do you want to do? Sometimes, when there is widespread social change, spending more time thinking about work can be a welcome escape – but equally, it can be one more concern when it’s least needed. 

A brand audit isn’t about taking or making your brand decisions for you – you are the right person to do that as the brand manager, business leader, owner, or entrepreneur. Instead, it is about being able to have a clear-eyed, objective view of the situation even when things are changing rapidly.

Image via © The Guardian

A case study is the world’s oldest English language newspaper – Glasgow’s Herald. Faced with the broad trend of rapidly declining newspaper sales, it also had increasing challenges serving the needs of a balkanising Scottish political landscape. 

Part of its publisher’s solution was to launch The National, a multimedia platform that pooled some news resources but presented them in a manner and for a target audience increasingly distinct from that of the main brand.

Related: 5 Red Flags That It’s Time For A Brand Audit Health Check

2. How a Brand Audit Helps You Leverage Change to Work With Your Brand to Achieve Commercial Growth

As a person, it would be entirely normal to receive a rundown on your strengths and weaknesses. Whether a health checkup, a roadworthiness test for your car, or feedback from a manager at work, getting fairly objective data points is part of most people’s life experience. The same should be true for brands. Just as a health checkup informs you about how to get the most from your body and mind without damaging it, a brand audit enables you to identify how you can grow your brand and revenues in the right way.

By understanding what brand assets you have and what their potential value is, a brand audit enables you to step out of the constraints of what has worked for you until now.

Instead, you can consider whether that will be the best way for your brand to keep moving forward as times change. Sometimes it will, but often in a time of increased disruption and change, there will be adaptations or new initiatives you can implement which will improve your brand performance.

Image via Branding Mag

As a case study, consider Fujifilm and the brand’s pivot into skincare. Fujifilm was well known as a maker of camera film. But as photography went digital, mass demand for camera film slipped into terminal decline. Fujifilm assessed that some of its brand assets included a trusted brand name, expertise in collagen-based film coatings, and also an understanding of the interplay between light and skin. Put that way, it’s easier to see the logic in its move into skincare and cosmetic products.

Related: Top 5 Ways to Build Profitable Brand Relevant Consumer Tech in a Storm of Massive Change

3. Brands Need to Evolve to Thrive and a Brand Audit Pinpoints the Optimal Form of Evolution, so You Can Leverage Change Profitably

Sometimes when circumstances change, it is obvious a brand also needs to change. But knowing that something must be done is not the same thing as knowing the right thing to do. Pinpointing exactly how a brand needs to change can be challenging. From the speed of change to the scale, this can be loaded with risk. The wrong change can be more damaging than no change at all.

Even familiar tools such as user personas can be challenging in this scenario. Often they focus on the current understanding of users, not those users’ future needs. That means they can struggle to reflect change.

Related: Using Buyer Personas to Increase Your Business Profitability

Crafting user personas in the right way can help ameliorate change and future needs. But a brand audit is also an essential business tool. Just as if you are unsure where you are, you would look at a map and try to triangulate to known landmarks, a brand audit enables you to be clear about key issues such as your brand’s purpose, vision, brand mission, and brand values and value proposition. 

Understanding what is fixed, what is flexible, and where you want to get to, ultimately helps you evolve in a way that drives growth for your brand and business. A business and brand are much more likely to survive and grow by embracing change in a way that is relevant to its primary target audience, and the market, whilst staying consistent with its brand purpose, vision, and values, rather than undermining them.

Related: Brand Audits, 10 Things Successful Brand Owners and Managers Must Know

4. Brand Audits Reveal Your Brand Strengths, so You Can Leverage Change

Success can be its own worst enemy sometimes. If you met a Nobel Prize-winning author, you probably wouldn’t ask him to play the piano. But he might be better at that than writing, for all you know. It’s the same with brands – establishing a clear brand identity that succeeds with customers is great, but it can also serve to stunt growth even if they are potentially a good match for the brand.

A brand audit is a structured approach, a tool that allows you to understand what your brand strengths are. Sometimes they are what you would expect. But often a brand audit is revealing in a couple of ways. First, there may be strengths you are not currently exploiting fully to grow revenue. Secondly, sometimes your success is partly about luck, so it doesn’t exactly mirror your brand strength. 

Identifying and validating your true brand strengths and being more disciplined about questions such as what markets to target and what the right tone of voice is for your brand are more likely to lead to long-lasting, sustainable brand and commercial success.

Image via Huffington Post © Virgin

A case study to consider on this point is Virgin. The well-known brand has tried to work in all sorts of businesses, jurisdictions, and verticals with wildly different results. While it works as an airline or mobile brand, for example, its fun-loving, convention-breaking brand identity didn’t work in areas such as bridal dresses or cola. 

The Virgin brand is about cheeky fun, independence, and iconoclasm, as typified by founder Sir Richard Branson donning a wedding dress. Such brand attributes are not an obvious fit for a wedding dress business. 

A simple brand audit could help flag such a mismatch before it ever reaches the market. Similarly, the cola market has two deeply entrenched competitors with well-known cola brands, both highly motivated to maintain their strong position. It is hard to imagine that a brand audit of the Virgin brand wouldn’t have flagged up in advance that it had less relevance to the mass carbonated beverage market than Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

Related: Brand Audit, When the USA Took the Branding Bull by the Horns

5. Identifying New Revenue Opportunities for Your Brand Using a Brand Audit to Leverage Change

Sometimes the way your target audience feels about your brand, or how they perceive it, can differ from you. The misalignment between the internal and external perspective is a common vulnerability strongly evidenced from our experience through conducting brand audits for many organisations and brands in different verticals and jurisdictions, product and service, B2B and B2C. While you might be too close to be objective, a brand audit typically identifies opportunities you may have missed.

A brand audit can help you understand which areas you have the right permission to expand into. This could be about extending your portfolio of products or services. But it could also be about growing revenue by expanding your share of usage occasions with existing users, for example, or improving profit margins by moving your pricing in line with your brand positioning.

Image via © Essentra Components

A case study is Essentra, a B2B supplier of items like rivets to industrial manufacturers. By making its brand focus on small components which nonetheless are essential to their customer’s businesses, they have carved out an ownable niche that allows them to use their brand positioning to break into new markets.

Related: Brand Audits – How to Use One to Grow Your Profits 

Final Thoughts

Change is inevitable – but the way you engage your brand to respond to it is not.

Before deciding how best to respond to change, it is important to get as clear-eyed a view as possible on what your brand stands for, its strengths and weaknesses, and how your brand assets could be best used. 

A brand audit is a structured tool that enables you to do this with objectivity no matter how close you may be to the picture — your brand.

By revealing your brand strengths and weaknesses, a brand audit shows you the lay of the land. That in turn enables you to decide on the optimal way for your business and brand to respond to changes, and help it embrace change and increase revenue.

Questions to Consider

1. When was the last time you conducted a brand audit, so you could re-establish your baseline, leverage change, and identify opportunities to achieve higher revenue?
2. How clear are you on what brand assets you have and what their role is in driving customers to your brand?
3. How do you currently assess how well your marketing and commercial activities align to your brand purpose, vision, and values to leverage change and achieve higher revenue?
4. Does your brand have untapped strengths? What might they be?
5. Do you have a structured way to assess new revenue and profit opportunities for your business and brand?