Creating a strong, recognizable brand that’s aligned with your business’s values and goals is essential to your business’s success. To measure the effectiveness of your business’s branding efforts, though, you must conduct an audit. Known as a brand audit, it will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your business’s brand — and you can use this information to further improve your brand. While you can always conduct your own brand audit internally, an alternative option is to outsource this task to a professional agency.

What Is a Brand Audit?

Whether performed internally or externally, the purpose of a brand audit is to provide insight into the performance of your business’s brand. It involves the analysis of your business’s brand, comparing it to that of your business’s goals and objective.

Most business owners have a general understanding of their brand, but they don’t know the true “health” of their brand. During an audit, you’ll gain insight into specific metrics regarding your brand’s performance, such as ratio of positive to negative customer reviews, brand awareness, market challenges, demographic of target audience, market positioning and much more. With this information in hand, you can then optimize your business’s marketing and branding strategy to achieve greater success.

Why You Should Outsource Your Business’s Brand Audit

Instead of conducting your business’s brand audit internally, consider outsourcing it to a professional agency. Unless your business specializes in marketing, it probably lacks the tools and expertise needed to conduct an effective, thorough brand audit. The good news is that there are marketing agencies that can help. They’ll take this burden off your shoulders by conducting a complete audit of your business’s brand, allowing you to focus on other aspects of running your business.

Because they have the necessary tools and expertise, marketing agencies can reveal deep insight into your business’s brand from an audit. They use software, surveys, social media and other tools to gain insight into your business’s brand that’s difficult to achieve with an internal audit. And since they aren’t a part of your business, marketing agencies offer an unbiased perspective that’s more accurate and telling of your brand’s health than an internal audit.

A brand audit isn’t something that you should do just once. Your business’s brand will change and evolve over time, which can affect the results from an audit. Depending on the size of your business and the industry in which it operates, you may need to conduct a brand audit once every one to three years. By conducting a brand audit on a regular basis, however, you’ll have a better understanding of how customers perceive your brand.