To know where your brand is going tomorrow, first you have to understand where your brand is right now. Following my previous blog on “what’s in a brand?” where we focused on why branding is important, here we look at how to evaluate your brand.

Analysing your company can be an incredibly difficult thing to do because it’s so personal. There is often a discrepancy between what you want things to be and what they actually are.

Below I have drafted a series of questions about your organisation. In answering them you will have the foundations for being able to start to build the brand you want and also a far better understanding of how your brand will help to develop your business.

Branding questions

Focus on your business when answering the following questions…

1. What is the mission of your business, what have you set out to achieve?
2. Is your business achieving what you want it to?
3. What do you want other people to know about your business?
4. What are your core-values, what do you want other people to say about you?
5. What are your passions, what drives you?
6. What are your talents? What do you do better than your competitors? What skills do your customers recognise in you?
7. How would you position your company? Are you the high-cost, high-quality option, or the low-cost, high value option? N.B. You can’t be all things to all people. Who you are should to some extent be based on what your target customers want and need you to be.
8. Do you know who your competitors are? What do they do better than you? What do you do better than them?
   
   Focus on your target audience when answering the following questions…
9. Who is your target market?
10. Currently who do your products and services attract?
11. What products/services do you offer? What are the qualities of these services?
12. What does your business specialise in?
13. If you could only market one product/service which would it be?
14. What qualities would you associate with your business? Think about the personality you want to convey e.g. is the personality of your company innovative, creative, energetic, or sophisticated?
15. What do your customers already think of your business?
16. What differentiates your business from its competitors?
17. What’s your company strap-line, what does it say about you? If you don’t have one, what should it be?

Now that you’ve answered these questions, you will be in a far better position to start to plot where your brand is going and to be able to ensure its heading in the right direction. Oxford Creative are experts and able to work with you to assist moving your brand in the direction you want it to go.

Phil Wright has been working in the Comms industry for over 15 years and is a director of Oxford Creative.