Retail is shifting alongside digital technology, but many buyers still prefer to purchase in person. With the world more connected than ever, small businesses are strategically using online campaigns to drive in-store visits. It has become essential to today’s marketing initiatives, helping sellers maximize their return on investment (ROI).
This is where footfall attribution has come in handy. Linking digital touchpoints to physical store visits enables businesses to finally close the loop between online engagement and offline outcomes. With the right strategies, you, too, can better understand what is working and create seamless customer journeys that lead to real results.
What Is Footfall Attribution?
Footfall attribution or store-visit attribution connects digital marketing efforts to visits at your physical location. It creates a link between online engagement and offline behavior, giving you answers to:
- Which recent promotion is driving customers through the door.
- Which campaign generated the most in-store traffic.
- How to allocate budget to campaigns that produce tangible footfall results.
In short, it helps small businesses measure and understand how digital touchpoints influence customer visits, enabling them to make better marketing decisions.
Why Is It Important?
Even though about 40% of shoppers have increased their use of retail e-commerce sites, 51% of U.S. consumers still prefer in-store shopping. This means you’re missing out on capturing a large part of information on your customers and converting them. With footfall attribution, you can better understand the most important ways to move forward.
How Digital Initiatives Drive In-Store Visits
In-store purchases often start online. Before setting foot in a physical location, many customers already interact with brands through digital channels. These online touchpoints shape perceptions and influence purchasing decisions before they drive to where they can buy an item.
As a tangible example, consider the travel industry. Research shows that 75% of people worldwide use social media for travel inspiration and ideas. They might see stunning photos of a destination on Instagram or read glowing reviews on a travel blog — but while the inspiration starts online, the journey often leads to real-world actions, such as visiting a travel agency to book a trip or going to a department store to look around at luggage sets and outfits. Footfall attribution helps businesses connect these digital touchpoints with the resulting in-store visits, allowing them to understand how their online marketing efforts are driving tangible offline results.
For these online campaigns to work effectively, marketers time their targeted advertising at the right moments. Whether through social media, search engines, email or online ads, various digital touchpoints reach the right audience, inspiring them to try a product or experience a service in person. That is why it is so important to maintain a strong online presence and ensure digital initiatives support in-person conversions.
How to Measure Footfall Attribution
Footfall attribution lets you understand which digital efforts are driving in-store visits. While the process may seem complicated, implementing it only takes a few steps.
1. Set Clear Campaign Goals
What do you want to accomplish for your business? For instance, do you intend to increase store visits during a specific promotional period? Maybe you need to drive foot traffic to a new location. These objectives will guide your strategy and help you determine what data matters most.
2. Target Your Audience
To measure footfall, you must know the difference between the people who see your online ads and those who do not. This involves making exposed groups, users who have seen your ads or engaged with your digital content. You must also generate control groups — users not exposed to your campaign. This comparison forms the foundation for determining uplift, which reveals how many visits your campaigns drove.
3. Implement Location-Based Tracking
Using technologies — such as geofencing or mobile location data — businesses can track when devices belonging to users from both groups enter a physical store location. This step is crucial for tying online engagement to offline action.
Many advertising platforms offer footfall-tracking capabilities so you can integrate them with your digital campaigns.
4. Calculate Visit Uplift
Once you have collected visit data, compare the store visits between the exposed and control groups. The difference between these groups is known as uplift, which shows how many additional visits you can attribute directly to your digital campaign.
5. Analyze and Optimize
The final step is to use the data to refine your marketing strategy. Look at which campaigns, channels, creatives and audience segments generated the highest uplift or visit rates. These insights will help you learn how to improve your online engagement and your in-store results over time.
Best Practices for Connecting Digital and Physical Data
Enhance footfall attribution by implementing the following best practices:
- Set up tracking with UTM codes: UTM codes allow for tracking how users interact with your online campaigns. It helps you identify which campaigns drive clicks and visits by adding UTM parameters to URLs and tracing the customer journey.
- Use integrated marketing and analytics tools: Unify online and offline data using marketing platforms or customer relationship management (CRM) systems that connect with your footfall attribution tools.
- Maintain consistent messaging across channels: Many customers engage with brands across multiple touchpoints before visiting in person. Ensure consistency in your messaging, visuals and offers across your advertising to reinforce brand trust.
Creating a Connection Between Online and Offline Success
Footfall attribution is a simple way to connect the dots and show how your online campaigns influence in-person visits. Using the right strategy, you can attract more customers and gain the information needed to grow your business.