Tales of retail’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Despite ecommerce’s growth, more than 85 percent of purchases still happen in stores, according to Internet Retailer. This means that driving foot traffic is as important as it ever was. To best compete, multi-locations brands in retail, QSR and beyond must embrace strategies that depend on location data.
At the same time, consumers are turning to their mobile devices as part of their shopping journey. Google data shows that 78 percent of holiday shoppers who visited a store in 2017 turned to an online search before going into a store. On top of that, mobile searches for “near me” have grown by more than 150 percent. Brands are using this data to design campaigns that drive foot traffic, improve measurement and optimization capabilities.
The result: Advertisers are creating sophisticated new strategies that couple location data with emerging channels, such as digital out-of-home (DOOH) and connected TV (CTV).
Get shoppers off sidewalks and into stores
Brands can use high-quality location data to target users based on their real-time physical locations or trends in real-world movements and serve ads designed to prompt in-person traffic. For example, a car dealer could serve an ad to someone who visited a competitor’s lot, or a QSR could engage someone within a 1-mile radius of its restaurant right before lunchtime. Alternatively, a clothing store could connect with someone who has interacted with its brand online to alert them of a sale at a nearby location.
Of course, getting someone into the store is useless unless they actually buy something. To test if location-based ads were actually driving sales, Factual commissioned a study with Forrester Consulting that found profits are uplifted by $2.5 million over three years with Factual-activated campaigns that used location data to improve scale accuracy and reach of ads.
Measuring impact
As important as the role location data plays in driving traffic is its role in measuring it. With location-based measurement solutions, brands can accurately measure marketing’s impact on incremental foot traffic.
Take, for example, a global oil and gas company that needed to defend market share at retail gas stations in a competitive region. It created a promotional campaign targeting “brand switchers” using five different data providers. Obviously, measurement was critical–it needed to measure the campaign’s effectiveness in driving real-world results, as well as the efficiency of each data provider. Using Google’s Campaign Manager and Factual Measurement Data, the campaign accurately attributed online views to offline visits. In the end, the campaign drove more than 7.8K visits and a 21 percent increase in transaction count compared to previous quarters.
Bolster DOOH & CTV
To reach consumers who are hard to find via traditional media tactics, brands should consider using location data to strengthen their approach on DOOH and/or CTV.
OOH advertising is slated to grow from $7.7 billion in 2017 to $33 billion by 2021. Today, it goes beyond billboards to include place-based media, like digital boards and kiosks. CTV is also growing quickly. This year, four out of five U.S. households will be reachable through CTV, according to new research.
Brands can use location data to target and measure DOOH or CTV campaigns and, ultimately, get more from their investment. They can serve mobile ads in real-time to complement their ads or retarget users who received ads at a later date. They can also demonstrate the value of their ad spend by connecting ads to real-world store visitation.
Factual worked with a leading telecom company that needed to reach value-conscious families in two key markets and measure campaign effectiveness in driving store visits. The brand launched a DOOH campaign with Vistar Media targeting a custom “value-seeking family” audience. Through Factual’s measurement data integration with Vistar, the brand gained valuable insights. It turned out that malls and office buildings were the most effective DOOH venues, with a 170 percent lift. The campaign resulted in an 88 percent lift in store visitation among the target group.
Navigating today’s fragmented shopping journey can be a challenge, but the above examples demonstrate how brands can use location data to power cutting-edge tactics – even when their goal is to drive a good old in-store purchase.
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As the VP of agencies and marketers, Ocean Fine is responsible for driving awareness and adoption of Factual’s location targeting ad solutions, with a focus on providing high-quality data at programmatic scale. Previously, she led sales teams for top technology companies like AT&T AdWorks and VeriSign.
