Brand audit and marketplace analysis template

Collaborate, review and rapidly summarize your brand positioning with our template

How will this brand audit and marketplace analysis template help me?

For digital marketing communications to be effective, they need to clearly highlight the unique, differentiating benefits of the brand they are promoting, whether the brand is related to a company, product or service.

This template will help you develop branding for digital media in a variety of different situations. It will also help you when you need to summarize or review your brand values – either with an agency or when your teams are collaborating within a larger company.

The template is not specific to digital channels, it summarizes broader business and branding aims.

Typical use-cases are:

• Website design projects
• Creation of marketing and digital marketing strategies
• Creation of digital marketing campaign plans

We've created it to help marketing consultants, agencies and for internal reviews between a digital marketing specialist in a company and other marketers.

It was created as an efficient way of supporting the creation of briefs from small and medium business owners or marketers as part of projects for digital marketing strategy including website improvements.

Who is it for?

The brand audit and marketplace analysis template is aimed at:

• Owners and managers of small to medium sized businesses who are  directly involved with the day to day marketing processes.
• Marketing managers who are responsible for brand identity
• Marketing consultants or agency account managers involved with client discovery and completing audits.

What does the branding template review include?

This template comes in two formats - a pdf with editable boxes, and a Microsoft Word doc which you can edit for your business - which are both included in your download.

It has these sections:

• 1. Business context.
• 2. Customer and market analysis.
• 3. Brand including creation of different brand models.
• 4. Industry and market sectors.
• 5. Products.
• 6. Competitors.
• 7. One-page brand audit summary.
• 8. Our relationship.

“Brand” is often taken to just mean brand identity. But branding is much more than the identity as indicated by the logo, colours and typography.

Branding also requires you to review your key audiences and how they perceive your brand proposition compared to competitors.

The aim of this template is to support a brand or marketplace audit process where a company needs to summarise or review their brand values and marketplace position as part of creating a marketing or brand strategy. This review may also be performed by a consultant or agency or when teams are collaborating within a larger company.

Resource Details

• Authors: Dr. Dave Chaffey and Amelia Cooper
• Format: This template comes in two formats – a pdf with editable boxes, and a Microsoft Word doc which you can edit for your business – which are both included in your download.

About the authors

Dave is co-founder of Smart Insights and creator of the Smart Insights RACE Planning Framework. For his full profile, or to connect on LinkedIn or other social networks, see the About Dave Chaffey profile page on Smart Insights. Dave is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognized by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing.

Amelia Cooper

Amelia Cooper is Head of Content at Smart Insights. She is responsible for managing the paid member content library and e-learning resources, as well as strategic planning to ensure customers get the most from their memberships. She is a University of Southampton and the Chartered Institute of Marketing graduate with over 8 years’ experience in digital marketing, specializing in content marketing.