Introduction
A mid-year brand review is an important exercise that helps organisations to evaluate their performance, realign their strategies, and ensure they are on track to fulfil their annual objectives.
In Ghana, this process is embedded in larger corporate organisations, but less so in micro and small and medium scale enterprises. This process entails assessing marketing initiatives, customer engagement, financial performance, and competitive positioning.
A thorough mid-year evaluation allows brands to identify strengths, flaws, and areas for progress, ensuring they remain nimble and responsive to market changes.
The mid-year review serves as a checkpoint for assessing success, adjusting strategy, and allocating resources for the remaining months. Whether you are a start-up, a SME, or an established business, a structured review process may help you retain brand relevance, boost customer happiness, and drive long-term growth.
This article explains six practical methods for conducting an effective mid-year brand assessment, resulting in data-driven decision-making and strategic realignment to adapt to the socio-economic dynamics in Ghana’s business environment.
Reassess Your Brand Goals and Objectives
Enterprises in Ghana can review their brand performance by examining the brand goals set at the start of the year. These could include goals like raising brand visibility, enhancing client retention, or introducing new products. Considering current market conditions, are these goals still relevant? The current economic debate in Ghana centres on the performance of the cedi against the dollar. How has this impacted your brand, your customers and your business performance?
Evaluate: ask yourself “what progress has been made, and what metrics support it?” Adjust: If specific goals have become obsolete owing to economic changes or evolving client behaviours, adjust or reprioritize them.
For example, if one of your goals was to enter a new market by Q2, but this hasn’t happened due to unanticipated circumstances, consider altering your strategy to digital expansion instead. Find creative ways of ensuring your brand goals remain relevant in spite of economic and social dynamics.
Conduct a Brand Perception Audit
Ghanaian enterprises need to place more value on understanding how customers and other stakeholders feel about them. Understanding how your brand is regarded is critical to maintaining relevance.
This can be accomplished through:
Surveys and Feedback: Collaborate with customers, clients, and internal stakeholders to gain insights into brand perception. Social listening is tracking internet conversations and reviews about your company.
Analytic Review: Use website traffic, social media engagement, and email open rates to establish audience interest and behaviour. This data assists in identifying misalignments between how you want your brand to be viewed and how it is regarded. A mid-year perception audit is critical for optimizing messaging and communication initiatives.
Evaluate Your Brand Visuals and Messaging
Logos, colours, taglines, and tone of voice should all communicate your brand’s identity consistently.
Check Consistency: Are all visual assets used similarly across platforms? Review Relevance: Does your existing brand messaging still resonate with your target audience after six months?
Modernize: Consider renewing outdated designs or revising language to better align with changing audience preferences. This step is especially beneficial for brands experiencing transition or repositioning.
A new, consistent presentation can revitalize brand energy and improve recall. Another important factor Ghanaian brands need to consider mid-year is to check whether signage and visuals are still vibrant.
Due to the sun and harsh climate conditions, brand signage often fade and become worn-out. Ghanaian enterprises need to ensure that these outdoor visuals are in good shape and form.
Review Your Target Audience and Buyer Personas
Markets are always shifting. New competitors, rising trends, and changes in consumer behaviour may indicate that your target audience has evolved. Analyse trends. Use Google Trends, CRM data, and market studies to learn what your target audience is currently interested in.
Refine personas: Update your customer personas to reflect new demographics, psychographics, pain spots, and purchasing behaviour.
Segment Further: Consider providing more personalized information or product/service offerings to segments. This ensures that your brand communication and marketing activities are directed to the people who matter most, including the existing and potential customers.
In Ghana, it has become evident that companies need to find creative ways of reaching new target audiences especially Generation Z consumers who have a totally different personality, preference and consumer culture from the millennials and baby boomers.
Audit Your Brand’s Digital Footprint
The digital age presents both opportunities and threats for Ghanaian businesses. Knowing how to use digital media can be the difference to business success or failure. Ghanaian businesses must note that a brand’s identity and accessibility are reflected in its digital presence, which includes its website, social media platforms, content, and online marketing.
Website Audit: Examine usability, design coherence, SEO performance, and mobile adaptability. Social Media Audit: Assess content performance, engagement, and following growth.
Content Strategy Review: Determine whether your blogs, videos, newsletters, and other content are consistent with brand messaging and audience needs. This audit will reveal areas of strength as well as gaps that require improvement, especially if you’re planning campaigns for the second half of the year.
Revisit Competitor Benchmarking
One of the core messages propounded by the market orientation school of thought is the need to conduct competitor analysis to benchmark firm standards and strategy against what competing firms are doing in the industry. Understanding where your brand sits in comparison to its competition is critical.
A mid-year competitor study can help identify new trends, risks, and innovation gaps.
Identify changes: Have your significant competitors introduced new items or campaigns? Have they changed their branding or strategies?
Compare Offerings: How does your current value offer stand up against theirs?
Spot Opportunities: Are there untapped markets or positioning techniques that your competitors are not pursuing?
Conclusion
A mid-year brand assessment is not a retroactive activity, but rather a proactive approach for ensuring long-term growth and competitiveness. By carefully reviewing goals, customer feedback, marketing performance, financial health, and competitive positioning, brands may make educated decisions to maximize success in the next months.
Implementing these six principles can help Ghanaian organizations remain adaptable, optimize resources, and retain a strong market presence. The trick is to act on insights fast, making the second half of the year even more productive and in line with long-term brand goals.
The writer, Dr Juliana Akushika Andoh, is a lecturer at the UPSA (akusihika.acquaye@upsamail.edu.gh)
