Marketing & Branding with Stefan Maritz 🎯

Hi, and welcome to the May issue of the newsletter.
I hope everyone is doing well.

I want to start by saying thank you to those who have been with me from the start - not a single unsubscribe on the previous mail makes this feel like it’s worth it.

As for the new ones joining, I welcome you with open arms and hope I can add value, provide you with a fresh perspective or challenge you to think a little differently. But, enough chit-chat, let’s get into the juicy stuff.

This time around, I decided to run a poll on LinkedIn to help me pick a topic, and the tribe has spoken - In this issue we are diving into how to conduct a brand audit.

Let’s start with the WHY

The rest of this mail will be fairly “technical”, so I’ll start with the part I’m passionate about and I know is relevant to everyone here. Why would you conduct a brand audit? Why is it important, and what value do you, your brand or the business you work for get out of it?

I quickly want to revisit the model I discussed in depth in the previous mail (you can find it here if you missed it) to help guide this conversation.

The Triarchy of Brand Development outlines the three pillars of brand development - awareness, perception and experience.

What people know about you, what people think about you and what they say about you after an interaction with you.

A full-blown brand audit will investigate these same three pillars. You want to know if the right people are aware of your existence and what you sell, whether they think that your offering is a good option to solve their problem and what exactly they see, hear, feel, taste and smell when they interact with different touchpoints of your brand.

Awareness is simple - if someone doesn’t know about you, they will never buy from you. As for perception - the actual purpose of branding is to actively shape the perception held in the mind of your target audience and curate the experience that awaits anyone who interacts with it. Will the experience help build the correct, planned and strategised perception, or will it break it down and work against what you are trying to achieve?

A brand audit helps you keep track of these things, to make sure that you are moving in the right direction and that your marketing efforts are having the desired outcomes.

Deep-diving into your touchpoints, messaging and asking your customers what they think and feel about your brand, company and product will give you invaluable insights to help build your brand. It will help you stay on course and help you make the necessary adjustments to your brand strategy to forge the right perception in the market and build a loyal following.

Now, what exactly is a brand audit?

A brand audit is a brand management practice that involves a comprehensive examination of the brand to (1) determine the level of brand awareness in the market, (2) evaluate and understand the perception of the brand among the audience and (3) make sure that all brand touchpoints are aligned and up to date, delivering the desired experience.

Who is responsible for conducting a brand audit

The simple answer here is the brand manager or brand team, and this will be the case in larger organisations and corporates - along with some help from external agencies and researchers.

But, the sad reality is that in most smaller companies and startups, there are no dedicated resources for brand management. It falls with someone on the marketing team, but more often than not slips through the cracks.

It’s a common misconception that branding is just something the marketing team does, like SEO or social media, but unless specified, many companies run without someone actually managing the brand.

Understanding the startup dynamic very well, I get this though, at least the part of not being able to justify a brand manager role when survival is what matters - the CFO just doesn’t entertain the idea of the role one little bit.

However, it doesn’t make it less important - I personally always take brand strategy under my wing, while I usually place brand management with my Head of Content as they are the closest to the fire and are responsible for making sure that all content, collateral and external communication is “on brand”. I train them if need be and actively make space for audits in the yearly planning.

When to do a brand audit

This ultimately comes down to the size of the company and where they find themselves in their lifecycle. Big famous brands actively monitor perception and conversation in the market and will conduct regular, yearly audits.

If you are thinking about a rebrand or refresh (these are two very different strategies by the way, but that’s a topic for a different day), a brand audit should ALWAYS lead the charge.

For smaller companies and startups, it’s not completely realistic to conduct full-blown audits with extensive audience research and focus groups once a year. However, it’s super important to regularly dive into your touchpoints, customer sentiment and buying journeys.

In startups, things tend to move at lightning speed and it often happens that there are emails or important customer-facing content that is outdated with regards to messaging, positioning or design. Aligning these will help you build a strong, cohesive brand.

Underneath the hood of a brand audit

The “how” around brand audits requires us to once again dive into the three pillars:

Awareness

To determine brand awareness in the market you need to conduct qualitative research. This can be done via analytics platforms and social listening tools to determine the uptake in brand searches and mentions online, market questionnaires and brand recall tests are also used, asking people if they know about your brand and whether they know what it sells.

Perception

To understand what your audience thinks about your brand is a little more intricate. Here you have to go the qualitative route and speak to customers, prospects and lost leads. Ask them how they feel about the journey they went through, about your service, and what they would change. Test the messaging on your website with people representing your target persona. Analyse user reviews on platforms like Google and Trustpilot to understand the sentiment in the market.

For bigger companies, much of the testing happens in focus groups, but you can get a long way without spending money here.

*Remember, your brand extends beyond commerce - it’s important to also talk to your employees and ask them how they feel about your company, its values and culture. Employees can make powerful advocates or dreadful enemies - never underestimate the perception they hold.

Experience

This one is simple, yet the most overlooked and neglected. Map out and collect all the touchpoints on your customer (and employee) journey. Every platform, every email, every conversation point with sales or service personnel. Read it, review it and question whether or not it is designed with the correct brand style, whether it uses the correct tone of voice, and whether or not it is shaping the right perception and delivering the desired experience. Get mystery shoppers to go through the process of purchasing from your company. Go through the journey yourself and let someone representing your target audience go through it and report back to you. After all, it’s the experience that will make or break the success of your company. Take good care of what you put into the world and revisit it regularly.

And, that’s a wrap

That’s it for this one - I hope you found value in this issue and that I inspire some of you to dive into those touchpoints and talk to some of your customers to better understand what brand you are building out there.

Remember: A brand is a perception held in the mind of an individual about a person, organisation or group, and you have the power to shape that perception!

Go kick some ass out there!