We are getting messages from people asking for a free brand audit, every day. These requests come with all sorts of reasonings, like this should be free, SEO audit and website review services are also available for free, and some even say that they will pay if the audit will make a positive difference to their business.
Why would anyone want to get a free brand audit? Here are the typical reasons:
- They don’t have any money
- They are not in business but have lots of time to waste
- They do not like to pay for things
- They think that their company is so reputable that they deserve it for free
Bad news, we do not issue free brand audits to most businesses – however, we do offer discounts for non-profits, charities, or organizations with social importance.
With prices starting from $500, our brand audits are affordable for everyone who would like to evaluate their brand and get a crowdsourced review of their brand and marketing communications. But not everyone has $500 – we get that. Here is what you can do for free.
Ask random people online to review your brand
Join Reddit, Quora, Facebook groups, and Linkedin groups – or anywhere else where you can invite some people to review your brand. Be prepared for rejections. Even if people take a moment to check out your brand, they will not care about going in-depth, but the biggest issue probably is the lack of control over targeting. This technique makes it difficult to find brand reviewers similar to your target customers.
A proper market research-based brand evaluation takes a minimum of 2,000 responses – you might be able to collect a few hundred responses this way. Unless you have a large audience already, it will take some time. With Brand Auditor, the process of collecting 2,000 responses will take 3-5 days or less.
One last tip for a free community-sourced brand review: do not ask the opinion of your friends, colleagues, and relatives. They will very likely provide biased feedback.
Compare your engagement with similar brands
Some brand consultants base their brand analysis on social media metrics, such as reach, engagement, comment sentiment, and audience growth. While these metrics are important to evaluate social media content quality, relying on these to conduct a brand audit is not recommended.
Regardless, this information is free, and you can use these insights to compare your performance with the same of other brands.
Successful brands have high engagement rates, lots of likes and comments, and shares. Another indication of good branding and marketing communications is high organic reach.
The following are tell-tale signs of poor branding and marketing
- Little to no organic reach
- Low engagement
- No organic growth
While these metrics are just indications, these basic insights are available free and can give you an idea if your branding setup is good or not.
Relying only on these metrics is not recommended, as basic social media analytics will not tell you why people like or dislike your content. High engagement on certain posts can be because of the colors, including words, it can be about timing – and a lot more factors that have little to do with your branding.
Talk to entry-level consultants who have time to evaluate your brand
Enthusiastic, new marketing consultants will be happy to offer a basic, free brand evaluation. Do not expect anything advanced, most of these free brand audits consist of a PDF template with various bullet points listed, reflecting the personal opinion of the auditor.
- Observations regarding brand guidelines
- Comments related to your social media
- SEO improvement suggestions
Also keep in mind, that taking advantage of a marketing consultant is wasting his time, and not a nice thing to do. Unless you plan to use their services, accepting their work for free is not a good practice.