Ad campaigns designed to drive foot traffic can be difficult for marketers to execute without the right tools. Because online behavior is much easier to measure, teams defer to those metrics when reporting on their impact. But foot traffic is a critical component to an efficient path to purchase journey for all customers, old and new.
To help illustrate how important foot traffic is for the path to purchase, and to help build better media plans around driving foot traffic, we’ve answered the most frequently asked questions and put them in one place. Here’s everything you need to know:
What Is the Path To Purchase?
The path to purchase, otherwise known as the customer journey, is the route a person takes to become a customer. It includes the marketing funnel, where people are introduced to a company and start to learn more. It also includes the sales funnel and the customer experience, where a one-time customer becomes a repeat customer.
Each step in the path to purchase requires multiple touchpoints, personalized for each target audience. Each touchpoint will have a different goal, but all should push the audience closer to the next step towards making a purchase.
How Foot Traffic Impacts the Stages Of the Path To Purchase Journey
Some companies exclusively focus on foot traffic at the end of the path to purchase journey, but that’s a mistake. Foot traffic can influence real business results along the entire path to purchase journey.
In the marketing funnel, foot traffic helps provide social proof of the value of a product or service. When a business looks popular, we are more likely to want to try it for ourselves. We also rely on reviews and testimonials from people who’ve been there before in order to make our purchase decision. Foot traffic makes both of these easier and more effective.
In the sales funnel, it’s more obvious how foot traffic impacts the path to purchase. People make 83% of their retail purchases in-store. Once you drive people through your doors, getting them to buy is much easier.
Foot traffic can also help focus and refine your other ad campaigns. Foot traffic can influence messaging, provide survey data for more nuanced targeting, and help create the customer experience post-sale. In other words, foot traffic impacts all aspects of the path to purchase journey.
Ways To Increase Foot Traffic Along the Path To Purchase Journey
There are multiple ways to increase foot traffic along the path to purchase. Some are strategic, while others are more technical. First, we’ll talk strategic.
Ensure that your audience segmentation is based on real-world behavior. Whenever possible, prioritize actions your audience takes in the real world over their online browsing behavior. The effort it takes to browse for fancy guitars online, for example, is much lower than it takes to visit a local music store. One shows much higher intent than the other and therefore should be targeted differently.
Another strategic way to increase foot traffic along the path to purchase is with omnichannel campaigns. Certain channels, like mobile ads, have a reputation for converting foot traffic more than connected TV, for example. However, the reality is that each channel, including CTV and direct mail, drive foot traffic, especially when they are part of a larger, omnichannel campaign. Use all channels available to you (and used by your audiences) to increase foot traffic along the path to purchase.
On the technical side, the best way to drive foot traffic is by picking a media platform built for it. That brings us to our last point.
How GroundTruth Helps Connect To Customers Along the Path To Purchase
GroundTruth is a media platform that uses real-world behavior to power marketing that drives real business results, like foot traffic. Our platform makes direct connections between people who view an ad across any marketing channel and subsequently visit a location. With help from GroundTruth, companies like Yachak, a PepsiCo company, have driven 241,000 visits to stores with their ad campaigns.
Learn more about how GroundTruth helps turn ad dollars into in-store visits by watching our newest webinar Are Your Ad Dollars Driving Foot Traffic?
