What Is a Brand Analysis?
September 26, 2023
Find out how to use a brand analysis to improve your company's competitive position and create an actionable plan to grow market share.
Introduction
Branding a business can be tricky. A brand isn’t just a logo or slogan. It’s a combination of components that come together to give customers an impression and to make them feel something. The goal of branding is to attract and develop an affinity with more potential customers. This isn’t easy to do.
Sometimes, it’s difficult to figure out how to make your brand more effective. But even the slightest adjustments can work wonders—higher conversion rates, customer loyalty, and rapid growth. These can come because of stronger brand positioning.
Fortunately, there’s a process we can use that helps us identify brand gaps that are holding our company back.
The process is called brand analysis. A business can use a brand analysis to identify its strengths and weaknesses while looking for new opportunities in the market. An analysis also helps companies to re-strategize and position themselves in a way that attracts customers better suited to the brand.
In this post, we’ll explore brand analysis and how you can use it to establish a competitive advantage and increase profitability.
What Is a Brand Analysis?
A brand audit and a brand analysis are two concepts that are often used interchangeably, but they’re not the same. Each method has a specific use. So, before we go any further, I’d like to clarify the difference.
A brand audit is an in-depth process that examines all aspects of a company and its brand. It includes an evaluation of the brand’s target market, competitive positioning, pricing, and marketing strategy.
Companies get a brand audit when they want to expand into new markets, optimize marketing campaigns, or are considering a rebrand.
A brand analysis is a more focused approach that centers on a particular aspect of a company’s brand. For example, you might perform an analysis to evaluate your brand’s reputation. Maybe you want to know how customer opinion impacts recent marketing campaigns or want to analyze the effectiveness of a new product launch. Brand analysis usually relies on market research techniques like surveys and focus groups to gain insight and uncover key findings.
Both methods are valuable. The key is to choose the one that applies to your current situation.
What Is a Brand Audit?
A brand audit helps organizations uncover strengths and weaknesses, improve target audience quality, become more competitive, and reduce marketing expenses.
Benefits of a Brand Analysis
Let’s look at some ways a company can benefit from a brand analysis.
Improves Sales and Marketing Efforts
A brand analysis can help companies develop a better customer journey experience. As a result, you’ll also be able to improve sales and marketing.
Customer profiling, competitive analysis, and market research reveal a lot about customers’ behavior and the competitive landscape in which you operate. You can also use this information to identify and close the gaps in the customer journey.
One of the best ways to optimize the customer journey is to identify key touchpoints. Touchpoints refer to any interactions a customer has with the brand. Social media engagement, customer service calls, or in-store experiences are examples. By analyzing each touchpoint, companies can uncover opportunities to enhance customer satisfaction, streamline the purchase process, and improve customer service.
Once you’ve developed the customer journey, it becomes easier to refine sales and marketing strategies that are more effective.
Get a review of your growth strategy, competitors, and target audience.
Determine how your company's internal and external branding impacts its competitive position and marketing efforts.
Help Companies Set Strategic Goals
As you perform an analysis, you’ll assess your current brand performance and the competitive landscape. This will show you how the target audience perceives your brand versus competitors. You’ll also find out where competitors hold an advantage over your brand and how to adjust.
This also equips you with the information you need to set specific goals that align with your business strategy. For instance, you may find that your brand messaging is weak. So, you can set a goal to improve it by renovating website content, advertising copy, and communication with customers. In contrast, a company with strong brand recognition may set a goal to expand through new channels, products, or markets.
Helps a Company Decide If Rebranding Is Needed
Is a rebrand the answer to stagnant growth? Sometimes, it’s hard to know.
A brand analysis can help you decide whether it’s possible to improve the brand or if a complete change is necessary. Market research reveals trends in consumer behavior and how well the brand and its products fit within a target market. All of this is essential information needed when deciding to rebrand.
How to Conduct a Formal Brand Analysis
In the sections that follow, we’ll explore the primary steps in the brand analysis process.
Analyze Your Existing Brand
Analyzing a brand involves examining the various elements that make up a brand identity and how it’s perceived by the audience. It’s evaluating the personality, reputation, and positioning of the brand in the market.
The first step is to identify the brand’s core values and attributes. Review the brand’s mission statement, its history, and products or services. Knowing the brand’s purpose is vital to assessing its market position.
Next, analyze the brand’s target market and audience. You’ll need to look at demographics, behavior patterns, and characteristics of the brand’s ideal consumer.
Another critical component of brand analysis is to evaluate its competition and their positioning. As a result, you’ll be able to create differentiation with a unique value proposition.
The brand’s communication and messaging strategy is also part of a brand analysis. This includes evaluating the tone and voice of the brand’s messaging. You should also examine the channels through which the brand communicates and assess marketing campaigns. A thorough review of the brand’s communication strategy can help you find opportunities to increase engagement with customers.
Assess Your Existing External and Internal Branding
To assess your visual brand, consider the appeal and layout of existing branding materials. Look for design features that could cause confusion or distract the audience from the intended message. Also determine how cohesive these items feel—do they all clearly reinforce the brand promise? If not, consider streamlining visuals and adjusting marketing campaigns using a consistent color palette, typeface, and logo across various materials.
The second step includes looking into your current values and mission statement. Do these still reflect what you want to present about your company? Are there any areas for improvement or better ways of conveying them? For example, let’s assume you want to show consumers your commitment to green business practices. You should use visuals and words to communicate your brand’s commitment to sustainability.
Finally, review how people respond to the brand’s image once they engage with it. Are they able to discern what services your brand offers? Do they feel compelled by the brand messaging to take action?
Keep track of customer responses over time—whether good or bad. Doing so will reveal changes you should make for upcoming campaigns or projects.
Talk With Brand Team Members
Gathering data for a brand analysis can come from various sources, including your team members. To get useful information from them, you need to have an effective collection process.
First, identify the key stakeholders in your business who may provide the most valuable feedback. These people could come from different departments or those with specific expertise, such as marketing or product management. You should also make sure everyone involved is aware of how important their feedback is to the success of your business.
Next, create a standard questionnaire or document template where all relevant information can be collected easily from each respondent. The questionnaire should include questions on topics such as customer satisfaction, the brand’s value proposition, brand loyalty, and competitor landscape. Make sure these questions are concise and clear. Don’t forget to explain how their answers will be used in the report.
Establish clear expectations and deadlines before taking their responses. Also, ask for constructive feedback along with their answers if needed. Always ensure confidentiality throughout the process by using secure communication tools such as encryption so no one can access sensitive information.
Gather Customer Feedback
Gathering customer feedback from surveys and questionnaires is used to improve the brand strategy or adjust product marketing. This data provides company leadership with insight into how a product or service is being received. From this process, brands can develop ideal audiences, add-on features or services, and perhaps even new products.
Analyzing feedback helps marketers figure out what customers want from the brand’s content, products, and services. It also enables them to create more effective and engaging content and advertising campaigns.
You can use customer feedback data to shape your brand’s visual identity and how you market the business. Data makes it easier to refine the customer experience. This might include improving the website user interface or responding more quickly to complaints. All these activities become more relevant when the company intends to measure how each one affects return on investment.
Besides surveying existing customers and leads through forms or emails, companies can use social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Competitor Analysis
To analyze competitors, study their products, pricing strategies, and customer reviews to gauge their position in the market. As you do this, you can give your brand a competitive edge.
Research their products and services, as well as promotions or discounts available. Look over customer reviews and complaints or feedback from past buyers. Knowing what people are saying about your rivals can show you how to approach marketing your own brand.
Next, analyze competitors’ pricing strategies. Find out how they compare to yours and how they might adjust their prices based on seasonal or industry trends. Check any offers or deals they offer on larger orders or bulk. You may be able to counter their creative pricing strategy with one of your own.
Research the advertising channels competitors use, such as social media, paid search ad campaigns, display ads, and so on. Note which platforms they leverage most. This can help you figure out how to use your marketing materials and platforms. Even if they aren’t currently producing results, there could be potential opportunities that you have not yet uncovered.
Your analysis should also consider aspects like competitors’:
Website design
User experience
Usability metrics (such as loading times and navigation)
Overall presence in brick-and-mortar stores
Physical catalogues
After you have reviewed all competitor data, take time to run through hypothetical scenarios under different conditions and circumstances. This may reveal even more ideas to help your brand become more competitive.
A Brand Analysis from The Brand Auditors
Take charge of your brand’s future with an analysis crafted specifically for your organization. The Brand Auditors’ consultants bring an unbeatable combination of real-world experience and top-level industry knowledge to a unique service process.
Our powerful insights and recommendations will help you identify how to improve your current brand strategy and the best possible solutions to help your company navigate the competitive landscape. As a result, you will reach success faster, better, with higher profit and fewer risks.
To learn more, click on the button below to schedule a free call with a brand strategist.
Are you ready to find out how a brand audit can transform your business?
Our brand audit process is a comprehensive analysis designed to help companies increase ROI and reduce marketing expenses.
- Increase ROI on lead generation and sales conversions.
- Reduce marketing expenses.
- Strengthen brand positioning to become more competitive.
We guarantee satisfaction or get your money back! Schedule a discovery call with a brand auditor to find out more.
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