Having a strong brand identity is often vital to a business as it affects a company’s image and sales. The process to achieving one takes a lot of effort and time. Here are some elements that can help you to assess the quality of your brand.
Your employees’ perception of your brand
Your employees should fully understand your brand identity so as to pass it on properly to your customers. If their perception is different, the impact on sales can be negative. To ensure that your team has a clear understanding of your brand, you can ask them a few questions:
What are your core values?
Values can be explained in different ways. You just want to make sure your employees get as close to your vision as possible.
What is your target?
All your employees need to know your company’s primary target. If they are unaware of it, they can implement ineffective strategies.
How has the brand evolved in recent years?
While the two preceding questions may seem obvious, many people often overlook this one. However, your team needs to know about your company’s past. They should also be aware of the recent changes and the brand’s future in the years to come.
Your employees’ perception of your brand identity may differ from what you want to present to your customers. In that case, analyse the marketing tools that you use:
- Your website
- Your newsletters and other email campaigns
- Your advertisements
- Your brochures
- Content published on your blog
- Publications on your social network sites
- Your press releases, etc.
If necessary, do not hesitate to remind your employees about your brand identity so as to make things clear. They should be able to convey a clear image of your brand to your customers.
Customers’ perception of your brand
Have your customers understood the meaning behind your brand? Is your identity clear to your clients? To find out, you may wish to ask another set of questions:
What attracted your clients to your brand?
This question will allow you to collect comments about your brand. You will then be able to judge the quality of your brand by analysing your customers’ responses.
If they talk about:
- The quality of your customer service
- The quality of your products
- Your values
- Your mission, etc.
Then you are on the right track. Their perception of your brand is clearly positive.
Some of the things that you think are important to your brand identity may not come up though. In that case, you should rework the ideas that are not clear to your customers. Meet up with your team and review your strategy.
How do they rate their interactions with your employees?
This question can help you know if your employees are actually passing on your brand’s values. Ideally, your clients should emphasize qualities such as trust or being helpful.
Would they recommend your brand to those around them? Why?
If the answers to the previous questions seem positive to you, your customers should actually recommend your brand. The “why” part of the question will highlight your strengths and weaknesses.
Tools to assess your brand’s perception
Use the right tools to ask these questions to your employees and customers.
Tools for your employees
In order to obtain complete and, above all, honest answers, try to go for tools that respect anonymity. This way, employees will not be afraid to say what they think. You can collect this information via anonymous questionnaires that you can send by email.
Tools for your customers
To collect your clients’ answers, you can also use online questionnaires. You can email them after a purchase, or set up a social media publication. If you own a physical store, try to go with paper questionnaires.
You can now assess the quality of your brand identity. The answers that you get will let you know where to improve.
