Brand Analysis: Definition, Importance & How To Use It
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  • Writer's pictureAnpar Research
    • Feb 18, 2022
    • 5 min read

Brand Analysis: Definition, Importance & How To Use It

Updated: Feb 22


Brand analysis - person analysing chart data

Discover how brand analysis is essential for the success of any brand, big or small. In this article we will explain what it is, the importance of using brand analysis and how it can be used.


Table of contents:


What is brand analysis?


Brand analysis is used to highlight how well a brand helps with sales and marketing efforts of a business such as brand communications, profiling of customers, how the brand performs compared to its competitors or in meeting customer needs.


Brand analysis forms the overall basis of a brand’s strategy whether that’s a new strategy or updating an existing one. This is all used to add value to different areas of the business or to deal with any issues as well as gaining any competitive advantages. It basically gives you a market overview of where your brand stands in the market place such as awareness, consideration, sales, usage and recommendation.


It does not stop there, where it also looks at the brand’s image, trait associations and even how well ad campaigns support the brand at particular points in time.


5 reasons why brand analysis is important


Brand analysis is important for the following 5 reasons:


1. To monitor how your brand stands in the market place

In tracking your brand’s position in the market place includes the vital aspect of the brand’s identity in how the brand is perceived by not just your customers but the wider market as well. Therefore, it proves to be a great instrument in collecting and organising feedback that enables you to draw key insights from, otherwise you don’t know where to start and rely on your own pre-conceptions of where your brand stands.


2. In creating an effective brand strategy

This ties in with the above point to ensure you know not only how your brand is positioned but also the brand’s perceived personality such as quality, modern, caring, fun, exciting, innovative and many more. This helps to identify what parts of the brand strategy need strengthening or if a new brand strategy is required.


3. To enhance marketing communications

Brand analysis will also help to improve marketing campaigns in highlighting areas where you can better reach your target audience or to convey improved messaging to potential customers in having more positive perceptions of your brand.


4. Outside perspective of the brand

If you decide to use a third party to conduct the brand analysis, you will gain the benefit of an outside perspective of the brand that is removed from the bias you have towards your own brand and would likely to have a negative influence on the results without a fresh pair of eyes.


5. Helps to set measurable goals

You cannot see how your brand is doing without a set of benchmarks to compare against, which includes sales forecasts, market share and many other metrics. This is where brand analysis comes in by setting up these benchmarks then you can establish the impact that future marketing or a change in brand strategy is having on your brand.



What should a brand analysis include?


Despite there being a number of areas such as brand architecture, brand analysis is normally broken down into the 4 main aspects below.


Brand audit

By conducting a brand audit, you will be carrying out an extensive study to ascertain how well your brand is doing and how it is perceived in the marketplace not just by customers but internal stakeholders as well. These will include things like your brand voice or brand identity as well as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that are identified in a SWOT analysis.


Customer analysis

Customer analysis is used to define your target audience, their perceptions of your brand and ensuring your brand is meeting your customer’s needs. This will also include any emerging trends as well. The analysis from these results will allow you to explore key personas of your customers, see how you can change any negative perceptions of your brand and ensuring all touchpoints along the customer journey from the website or staff to marketing campaigns are effective.


Analysis of the competition

Looking at both your direct and indirect competitors, you can make a comparison in how your brand stands in the market. You can establish how well is your brand positioned and perceived personality traits as well as many of the same areas mentioned in the previous point but at a business level. In doing so, you are making yourself aware of what areas your brand is lagging behind the competition but also other areas to exploit your brand’s competitive advantage.


Market analysis

Market analysis maybe optional to do compared to the other 3 points above depending if your brand is already well established and there is no change in the product offering. Market analysis is more for starting a new company, extending your product range or entering into a new market. This provides valuable information in terms of who the audience is and their needs, number and type of competitors, start-up costs, forecasted sales revenue and many other aspects to take into consideration in order to make the right business decision both for the short and long term.



How do you carry out a brand analysis?


The following is an example of a really basic outline of steps to carry out a standard brand analysis:


Step 1 – Establish a framework in what you want to achieve.

Step 2 – Decide if you’re doing the brand analysis internally or using a third party

Step 3 – Use your internal sources of information such as sales data, analytics of your website and social monitoring of your brand on social media.

Step 4 – Collect customer feedback using the appropriate research methods.

Step 5 – Explore and analyse all the brand touchpoints along a customer’s journey

Step 6 – Gather all the data and information together to analyse and draw insights from to form a new or updated brand strategy to tackle issues raised and exploit opportunities.


Hope you enjoyed this article; you may also like to check out these interesting posts about 9 key questions to ask in brand research or NPS Calculation: learn all you need to know.


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