Across industries, products, and services, most companies share a single truth: in-store visits are more valuable than online browsing. Sure, marketers should build strategies for both. But, when it comes to the bottom line, the real business results companies seek, in-store visits are critical.
To help you get the most out of your ad spend, we’ve compiled a list of the best strategies for increasing foot traffic and earning real business results from your media plan. But first, let’s start with the basics.
What Is an In-Store Visit?
An in-store visit is any instance that a shopper enters a location after seeing an ad from that brand. Not all visits are created equally, though. The media platform a company uses can make a huge difference in how precise the reporting is.
GroundTruth customers use our Blueprinting technology to get verified visits. That means, they know who saw an ad before they visited a location. Foot traffic that hasn’t been exposed to an ad before their visit doesn’t get counted.
4 Strategies for Driving Store Visits
In reality, all ad campaigns should aim to drive store visits. But if you’re looking to set up campaigns specifically to drive store visits, here are the best ways to start.
- Time-Sensitive Messaging: Give customers an incentive to visit your store immediately with time-sensitive offers in your ads. GroundTruth’s Blueprinting technology is especially helpful here because it allows companies to reach customers near their locations. Nothing converts like convenience and what’s more convenient than reaching customers who are already in the neighborhood?
- Hyper-Local Audience Targeting: The more relevant your ads are for your target audience, the more likely they are to convert. To get more in store visits, build a campaign with hyper-local messaging and imagery. The more specific you are for the members of that community, the more likely they are to check out your store.
- Retargeting Ad Campaigns: In terms of efficient ad spend, nothing works like a retargeting campaign. Build an audience segment around customers who have visited your locations in the past 6 months to a year, and encourage them to come back. It’s much easier to re-engage a previous customer than earn a new one, which makes retargeting campaigns the right investment for campaigns aimed at driving store visits.
- Exclusives for Engaged Customers: Similarly, rewarding engaged customers with exclusive promotions can increase foot traffic to your locations. Set up a customer reward program to identify which audiences are most motivated, and then build campaigns to offer them rewards in your stores.
How to Measure and Optimize Foot Traffic Campaigns
A variety of factors will contribute to the number of store visits your campaigns drive. You can’t avoid that. But making a plan for measuring and optimizing each campaign will help increase store visits.
Get Reliable Data
First, make sure that you partner with a media platform that can accurately measure in-store visits. GroundTruth is the only platform with Blueprints, which provides data from impressions to in-store visits. Without that, marketers can’t accurately tie revenue to their efforts.
Segment Your Audience
Next, consider your audience segments. Use a mix of targets, including existing customers, potential customers, and people who don’t know anything about your brand. Each segment requires a different level of investment, but all of them can teach you about what messaging and media channels drive the most foot traffic.
Engage Customers
Finally, use the customers who visit your location to refine your audience targeting. They can provide the nuance and details about your target customers you won’t get anywhere else. Give them customer surveys, ask them questions, and engage them in any way you can to make your targeting more precise for the future.
Learn How GroundTruth Uses Blueprint Technology to Drive Store Visits
To learn more about GroundTruth’s Blueprinting technology, contact us today. We can show you how it works for millions of locations, and the results that companies from all industries have used it to get real business results.
