Successfully attracting customers to a retail store is challenging even under the best of circumstances. But add uncertain elements like pressure from competitors, along with a lack of a target audience, and you will have a problem on your hands. However, leveraging data in your business decisions allows you to identify the strategies to increase footfall in retail store.
In this article, we present eight strategies you can employ to increase the footfall at your store.
From implementing aesthetic enhancements to leveraging data to determine profitable locations, we provides a mix of solutions that will help generate a steady flow of foot traffic to your store location.
How is Footfall Calculated?
Before figuring out strategies to improve footfall in a retail store, it is necessary to understand how footfall is measured at a retail store.
For a long time, retailers would staff employees outside the store with a clicker to count the number of people entering the store. Or the retailer would count the number of cars entering the store’s parking lot.
Integrating technology into assessing retail footfall enables retailers to develop a comprehensive view of customer behavior, some of which include,
- Infrared sensors to track customer footfall entering and exiting the store
- Position tracking camera to identify customer movement
- Leveraging insights collected from POS machines to estimate average footfall in retail stores.
Click here to learn about footfall analysis.
How to Increase Footfall in Retail Stores
Increasing footfall in retail stores requires a multi-pronged approach. Identifying the strategy to boost footfall is an iterative process involving testing out the following methods and determining the ones that give the best return on investment.
Given below are x strategies retail can leverage to increase footfall in retail stores.
- Identifying target audience
- Optimal site location
- Trade area analysis
- Competitor analysis
- Local SEO
- Influencer marketing
- Buy online pay later or click-and-collect
- Attractive signage
The First Strategy to Increase Footfall in Retail Store: Identifying the Target Audience
A target audience is a group of people who have a high intent to purchase products from a store/brand. I.e., the ideal customer.
When a retail brand plans to open a store, determining its target customers and identifying their spread is the first step.
The first step in such a process would be to estimate the Total Addressable Market in a location (TAM). Or defined as the total number of micro-catchment areas with the presence of the target group generating demand.
Following this, the brand maps the unique characteristics of its ideal customer. This characteristic includes the locations where they live, the shops visited by the TG, and the spending quotient of the ideal customer.
Applying these attributes allows a location intelligence AI platform like RetailIQ to determine the exact location of the target customer. The AI solution can then figure out similar locations across the city to help identify the catchment areas for expansion.
For the above example, we have considered the target group of a hypothetical store in Bangalore to be a household earning more than 10L.
The dark green hexes represent locations with a large presence of the target audience, whereas, the hexes in red represent locations with a low concentration of the target audience.
Brands can then focus on expanding their presence in locations with the presence of their target audience.
Let’s consider the example of a kitchen appliance brand that reinvented itself.
It had the arduous task of identifying the attributes of its new target audience, and then discovering their location.
Opening a store in this location ensures a high foot traffic of the target audience leading to an increase in revenue.
Click here to read more about how we helped the brand.
Optimal Site Location: The Second Strategy to Increase FootFall in Retail Store
In the above image, notice the locations of the pockets of bright red colors.
Those are areas with high foot traffic, whereas areas with no redspots are locations with low foot traffic.
Identifying the optimal site for a retail store is a guaranteed way to increase customer footfall in a given location.
Let’s consider the example of a hypothetical store.
Analyzing the foot traffic at different times helps the store anticipate periods of high customer activity. This can help the store then efficiently rotate its staff and increase customer service during periods of high customer activity, thus increasing the footfall.
Furthermore, brands can analyze the footfall inside a store to design a holistic shopping experience for its customers.
By examining in-store footfall data to identify high-traffic zones, retailers can strategically position their top-selling items in these areas to maximize sales and improve the customer experience creating repeat customers.
Furthermore; happy customers are likely to recommend the store to their friends and family.
GeoIQ’s RetailIQ AI solution helps reatilers reduce their uncertainty in retail expansion. The AI platform helps identify the presence of their competitor and complementary brands. This indicates a high potential for retail footfall in a selected location.
Consider the image featured above, it is from a RetailIQ site report for a location in Bangalore. The RetailIQ site report provides brands with a detailed breakdown of the factors responsible for the success of a store in a selected location.
RetailIQ has identified that in the selected location there is a medium presence of competitor brands along with high footfall and high growth. The report also mentions that there is low cannibalization from same-brand stores along with a high presence of TAM. This makes the selected catchment one a good location for expansion
Third Strategy: Analyze Trade Area
A trade area is a location from which the brand draws its customers.
The above image describes the trade area of a hypothetical store in HSR, Bangalore, as denoted by the pin on the map.
The area around the store has been converted into hexes. The color of each hex represents the number of customers visiting the store from that location. The store draws the largest percentage of its customers from hexes colored in a bright red. And, the hexes colored in blue contribute the least to the business of the store.
Therefore, when opening a retail store it is critical to estimate the trade area of a store to ensure a high density of target audience within the boundaries of the trade area.
Click here to learn more about trade area analysis.
The Fourth Strategy to Increase Footfall in Retail Stores: Competitor Analysis
Let’s consider the following example, which a retailer faces when considering expansion.
- A location without any competition and complementary brands
- A location with competition and complementary brands
Retailers need to assess the competitor landscape to understand the target group and the foot traffic at each store.
This is because the presence of competitors indicates the presence of the target group.
Furthermore, analyzing the competitors enables the brand to identify the footfall of the competition, along with their marketing strategies. Based on these inferences, the brand can improve its business strategies to increase its revenue.
In the above image, GeoIQ’s retail AI solution displays the competitor and complementary brands along with their estimated footfall for the hypothetical brand within a five-minute driving catchment area.
Learn how to map your competition here.
Investing in Local SEO is the Fifth Strategy
28% of Google’s near me searches have led to a purchase with over 50% of the customers likely to visit a store within a day after a local search.
The ability of Google’s My Business (GBP) page to generate significant footfall traffic for a retail business cannot be underestimated.
With over 56% of actions on GBP listings resulting in visits to the business website, registering their business on GBP should be the first step for any retail store’s expansion.
The Sixth Strategy to Increase Increase Footfall in Retail Store Is Influencer Marketing
Brands have already begun to leverage the advantages of influencer marketing to drive foot traffic to their stores. The IMH reports state that 80% of brands have a dedicated budget for influencer marketing.
GenZ trusts and loves its influencers because of the close-knit relationships that form between the creator and their audience. In most cases, the nano, micro, and small influencers routinely interact with their audience, driving the affinity this generation feels towards their influencers.
Retail brands should engage with the nano, micro, and small influencers to attract the GenZ audience to their stores. An added advantage would be to work with vernacular influencers. For example, Khatabook, a fintech startup leveraged vernacular influencer marketing to increase the install volume of their brand by 60%.
Strategy Seven: Integrating Buy Online Pay In-Store
Over 42% of Indian shoppers prefer buying a product online and paying for it in-store.
There are three reasons why retailers should integrate this method of paying offline.
- Fosters a connection between the customer and retail staff
- Allows for easy return of items for the customer and reduces the shipping cost for the store
- Reduces inventory cost for the retailer along with ensuring zero over-stock or stockouts
- 53% of Indians prefer click-and-collect for same-day or next-day deliveries
- Allow for upselling and cross-selling when customers come to collect their order
Strategy Eight: Utilizing Attractive Signage
Close your eyes and visualize a busy shopping district/mall.
What do you see?
Chances are you would hear the sound of happy shoppers, and the smell of coffee kiosks, and see the bright displays out of the shops.
A captivating sign extends an invitation to a customer, drawing them to the store. It is the first point of contact between a retailer and the customer.
According to this survey, nearly 79% of all customers draw a parallel between the quality of signage and the services offered by the retail store.
Furthermore, 75% of customers have reported that they purchased something from a store solely based on the signage.
How Can You Use Signage to Increase Footfall in Retail Stores?
- Red is your friend. Judiciously apply red-based signage to your “For Sale” signs. Psychologically humans associate red with danger and retailers leverage this elevated reaction to grab the attention of the consumers.
- Get your point across using as few words as possible and use large fonts that can be visible from across the street. There is a reason why “SALE!” is a universally understood format.
- 42% of customers prefer to shop at retail stores with a video display.
- Additionally, adding signage inside the store to help customers navigate and locate their products will improve the retail shopping experience.
Closing Thoughts about How to Increase Footfall in Retail Store
In conclusion, a store can be said to be truly successful when it manages to attract and retain its target customers present in a catchment area.
Therefore, the first step in any expansion strategy is to identify the presence of the target audience.
Integrating cutting-edge technologies and assimilating them with traditional business tactics will increase the likelihood of a store’s success chances.
Using data to identify the characteristics that attract their target audience, helps brands select the ideal strategies to increase their in-store foot traffic.
To help retailers with this problem, GeoIQ has developed a retail AI solution that leverages over 3,500+ data variables to help retailers identify the exact location for a profitable expansion.
Presenting RetailIQ
RetailIQ is a cutting-edge AI solution revolutionizing offline expansion for the retail sector. It is built on top of extensive location data and brand data to give street-level answers to expansion problems.
RetailIQ is a powerful tool providing site recommendations to maximize success at the store level and minimize the risk of closure. It also helps identify the total addressable market, conduct competition analysis, better understand your target audience traits and their presence, and perform detailed site analysis and reports, all adding up to a successful expansion strategy.