Three Things You Need To Ask Yourself Before Undertaking a Brand Audit

A brand audit is a powerful reset button: it gives you clarity, alignment, and fresh momentum, but only if you’re really ready to use what it reveals.

Before diving into the process, it’s worth pausing to reflect. These three questions will help you assess whether the time is right and ensure you get the most from the experience.

1. What’s Driving the Audit?

Every audit has a trigger. It could be a shift in strategy, a dip in performance, a change in leadership, or simply a gut feeling that the brand feels out of sync.

Ask yourself:

• What’s prompting this audit?
• Are you looking to solve a specific challenge, or sense-check the overall brand?
• Is there internal alignment from your stakeholders around why it’s needed?

Being clear on your ‘why’ helps shape the scope, tone and expectations of the audit. It ensures you’re solving the right problem, not just reacting to noise, and importantly, it’ll make decisions like whether to audit yourselves or bring in an internal team to audit you, much easier. 

2. Are You Ready to Hear What People Really Think?

A brand audit means inviting honest feedback from your team, your customers, your stakeholders, and the wider market. That can be revealing and sometimes can be an uncomfortable experience. That’s because it’s no good only speaking to brand advocates; it’s vital you invite a variety of participants to help you form an honest appraisal, and that means hearing things you might prefer not to. 

The question is, are you genuinely open to hearing it?

Ask yourself:

• Are you ready for answers that might challenge assumptions?
• Will you treat critical feedback as an opportunity, not a threat?
• Are key decision-makers open to listening?

If you want meaningful insight, you need to encourage a culture of curiosity, not defensiveness.

3. Who Needs to Be Involved?

Brand shouldn’t ever sit just with one person or one team. Brand managers and marketing leaders can set the tone and guide the way, but to get a 360-degree view, you need input from across the organisation  and buy-in from the top.

Ask yourself:

• Who owns the audit process?
• Who will provide insight, and who needs to approve the outcomes?
• Do we have the right people involved from the start?

Audits work best when they’re collaborative and well-supported. Identifying the right voices early on helps avoid internal friction and keeps the process moving forward with purpose.

…Ready to Get Started?

If you can confidently answer these three questions, you’re in a strong position to get real value from a brand audit. You’re not just doing it for the sake of it: you’re doing it with intent, clarity and openness.

And if you’re not quite ready? That’s okay too. Knowing what’s missing gives you the chance to put the right pieces in place before you begin.

Thinking about a brand audit?
Let’s talk about what’s driving it, what you’re hoping to learn, and how we can help you act on what really matters.
hello@3manfactory.co.uk