Using Foot Traffic Data to Optimize Your Marketing Strategy

Wouldn’t it be insightful if you could see exactly how many people walked into your business and your competitors’ locations?

What if we told you that was possible? And, not only that, but you can also learn where those people came from, how long they stayed, other places they visited, and how frequently they’ve come by.

Having this information handy is a great asset if you’re trying to figure out why your foot traffic dipped last year or if you’re curious where the majority of your customers are based. It can also help you find out if your advertising efforts are actually getting people through your doors.

With Location Intelligence, we can turn raw location data into a clear picture of what’s going on with your business.

What Is Location Intelligence And How Does It Work?

Placer.ai is an intelligent location-based tracking tool that places a virtual perimeter around a business location and tracks visits using mobile device data. (Don’t worry, this data is always anonymized.)

Placer.ai’s foot traffic guide states that this data is drawn from mobile devices and processed using machine learning. This means it’s very accurate and more comprehensive than traditional methods, like manual counting or customer surveys.

Where Does The Data Come From?

Chances are, you have location services turned on for a number of the apps you use on your phone. Location intelligence data comes from the signals it receives from these apps (for example: weather apps, Google Maps, and even Instagram).

Placer.ai in particular draws from about 10% of the population of the United States. That makes its data pool significantly larger than other typical data panels, which often use about 2-3% of the population. A larger data pool often means more accurate results.

Is It Tracking Individual People?

We understand how this can be a concern but, rest assured that privacy is built into the fabric of these tools. All the personal identifiers of the data they use are stripped before they reach the platform and, instead of specifics, results are presented as aggregated, statistical information. They focus on groups of visitors, never specifics.

Are There Locations These Tools Can’t Track?

Yes. Any place that involves sensitive information, children, or both are excluded. Think places like certain medical centers, schools, and libraries. Also, physical locations that are too small to place a virtual border around will also be excluded.

What Can You Actually See With Location Intelligence?

How Many People Visited And When

Location Intelligence is great for seeing how many people visited your business over a period of time. They can tell you total visit counts, visit frequency, the average amount of time that people stayed at your place of business, and give you a time of day/day of the week breakdown. You can look at a single day, a week, a month, a quarter, or take a peek at year-over-year comparisons.

Say a client wanted to see how an event performed compared to their regular business at the same time the year before. We would be able to give them narrowed-down data to the exact windows they wanted to compare.

Where Your Customers Are Coming From

Knowing where your customers are coming from is a big help when it comes to geofencing. Trade area maps paint a picture of just how far your customers are traveling to reach you. The distance might surprise you!

Many business owners expect that their customers travel about 20 miles to shop with them, but you might see that people drive 30, 50, even 75 to reach you. Knowing this can help you understand where your advertising spend should go.

“We once had a campaign where we wanted to know if it made sense to push advertising to another city,” Vivian says. “Megan, our FDS Placer.ai expert, pulled the data and looked at where visitors were coming from, and was able to make a good, confident recommendation that, yes, it absolutely made sense to expand into that market. The data told her that clearly.”

Who Your Visitors Are

Data shared by location intelligence gives you a good idea at not just how many visitors you have or how often they come to see you, but who they are. It can share demographic and psychographic data about a location’s visitor base, sharing things like median household income, education level, white collar/blue collar skew, average household size, and generational breakdown.

Knowing this information helps businesses make sure their marketing message matches their audience and their interests.

Where Else Your Customers Are Going

Location intelligence can also show you what percentage of your visitors are visiting other locations. For example, a car dealership would be able to see which competing dealerships their visitors have also checked out; a restaurant can check to see if their visitors are also eating at a nearby competitor’s place.

Having this cross-visitation data is great for geofencing, as it allows you to build ad targeting lists around the places your customers are already going.

Tracking non-competitors can be just as helpful as competitors during a geofencing campaign. Think about places that your ideal audience might often be going to, like a medspa tracking the foot traffic of a high-end fitness center. Location intelligence allows you to keep an eye on those places as well.

How Does Foot Traffic Help With Competitive Intelligence?

One of our favorite features of location intelligence is its ability to check out competitors. In a single report, you can analyze your own location compared to up to seven competitors, looking at visit trends, audience demographics, and geographic reach.

Picture a credit union that’s planning on opening its doors in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Before they even open their doors, you’d be able to see the people who are visiting competing branches nearby, where those visitors are coming from, and what their demographic profile looks like. That means the new credit union can tailor its messaging to those folks long before opening day. Then, after they open, you can track whether competitor foot traffic starts to shift, and if people are starting to visit one place over the other.

“After taking a look at the audience and competitor traffic, that new credit union can shape its entire launch strategy around real data,” Vivian says.

Can Location Intelligence Help Me Figure Out If My Advertising Is Working?

Digital ad reporting can tell you how many people saw or clicked on your ad, but such reporting often doesn’t know if those people actually show up. Location intelligence adds in that extra layer of information by allowing you to compare foot traffic across multiple data ranges before a campaign, during a campaign, and against the same period of time across years.

Remember it’s not just about how many people came in. It’s about looking at how long they spent at your facility, too. If data shows that visits increased AND dwell time increased, that tells you that the quality of visits improved and what you’re doing in terms of advertising is working.

When The Data Reveals Unexpected Issues

“We had a client, a car dealership, whose traffic was down significantly compared to the same time the previous year,” Vivian explains. “That was because there was major construction on the street where they were located. They knew their sales were down, but we were able to see how significantly their overall foot traffic was down.

“The dealership got creative; they started bringing vehicles to customers’ homes for test drives and they updated their ad messaging. They literally brought the cars to the people, and saw sales increase. That’s what I love about location intelligence. It doesn’t just give you an overview of your numbers, it provides the data that you need to make a smart move and get ahead of pitfalls.”

The best part? When the construction eventually was over, we were able to track the foot traffic increasing in their stores, and adjust their advertising messages and strategy accordingly.

What Kinds Of Businesses Can Benefit From Location Intelligence?

If your business depends on in-person visits, then it can benefit from location intelligence. Here are a few examples of business types that find it helpful:

• Retail/service businesses

• • • Track foot traffic trends, pinpoint seasonal patterns, benchmark against competitors 

• Car dealerships

• • • Take a look at cross-shopping behaviors, time ad campaigns around visit trends

• Credit unions/financial institutions

• • • Research markets before opening new branches, then track growth after launch

• Any business that runs display, CTV, or geofencing campaigns

• • Location intelligence can give you a broader attribution layer than most digital reports are able to provide

How Does FDS Use Location Intelligence For Our Clients?

There are so many ways that Location Intelligence is helpful for our clients. We use it to inform campaign decisions, keep an eye out for new geographic markets that are worth pursuing, look at clients’ performances against their competitors, and give advice on budget allocation.

“What’s valuable about pulling these reports is finding information that the client might not even be aware of yet,” Vivian says. “There might be a spike in visits that lines up with a promotion they ran, or a dip that coincides with something going on in the surrounding area. We get a bird’s eye view of what’s going on with their business and bring it to the client with context. Numbers are just numbers until people tell you what they mean, and we’re here to build the story around them.” 

Foot traffic data is no longer something that only big-budget brands can access, thanks to Location Intelligence. If you’re curious about what your location data might reveal, let’s pull a report and talk about what it means.

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