Jan 23, 2025

A beginner’s guide to footfall attribution: the basics

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Author Niyathi Rao

In today’s digital and physical retail world, marketers seek an understanding of how different marketing activities influence in-store visits. Forrester predicts that $28.7 trillion USD of global retail sales will still occur offline in 2028. Footfall attribution is the method used to track and analyze the relationship between online ads, digital campaigns, and the number of people visiting physical stores, helping businesses figure out how their marketing efforts drive customers into their locations.

Let’s break down the concept, how it works, and why it’s important.

What is footfall attribution?

Footfall attribution refers to tracking and measuring how online marketing campaigns (like ads or social media promotions) lead to physical visits at brick-and-mortar stores. For instance, if someone clicks on an online ad and later visits a store, footfall attribution can help connect those two events.

This is key for businesses wantingto see how their digital efforts impact real-world behavior, especially with the increasing role of online-to-offline (O2O) interactions.

How footfall attribution works

Footfall attribution uses a combination of technology, data, and analytics tools to track visitors. Here’s a simplified overview:

  1. Data collection: Data from various sources, like digital ads, location data from smartphones, loyalty programs, and online interactions, are collected.
  2. Tracking footfall: After a customer interacts with an ad or a digital campaign, their visit to a physical store is tracked. This can be done through:
    • Geolocation tracking: This method uses GPS data from users’ smartphones. If a customer has location services enabled, tracking can detect when they enter or exit a store.
    • Wi-Fi or bluetooth: Retailers can place beacons in-store to track when a customer enters based on the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth signals from their devices.
    • Mobile apps: Some businesses use their own apps to track customers who interact with ads and later visit their stores.
  3. Attribution models: Attribution models assign value to different touchpoints in a customer’s journey. Common models include:
    • Last-click attribution: Attributes the store visit solely to the last online interaction (like clicking on an ad).
    • First-touch attribution: Credits the first online interaction that led to the customer’s in-store visit.
    • Multi-touch attribution: Considers multiple touchpoints in the customer’s journey before they visit the store, offering a more holistic view.
  4. Analytics: After gathering the data, analytics tools help interpret the results. Businesses can understand which campaigns or ads are most effective at driving foot traffic to their stores.

Why footfall attribution is important

Footfall attribution can transform any retail advertising strategy with meaningful insights. Footfall attribution is crucial for a number of reasons:

  • Optimize marketing spend: By understanding which ads and campaigns drive in-store visits, businesses can focus their budget on what works, improving their return on investment (ROI).
  • Measure offline impact: Many businesses rely on foot traffic for sales. Footfall attribution helps them understand the impact of their digital strategies on physical sales and store visits.
  • Enhance customer experience: By tracking the journey from digital engagement to store visit, businesses can tailor their online and offline customer experiences for greater success.
  • Cross-channel insights: It gives a more integrated view of how online and offline channels work together, improving overall marketing strategy and performance.Footfall attribution can help you measure and compare the effectiveness of online and offline campaigns across channels, such as native, video, display, connected TV (CTV), digital out-of-home (DOOH), and audio.

Challenges of footfall attribution

While footfall attribution provides great insights, it’s not without challenges:

  • Data privacy: Privacy concerns can arise when tracking customer locations or online behavior. Businesses must comply with regulations like GDPR or CCPA to ensure they’re protecting customers’ data.
  • Accuracy: Geolocation and tracking technologies aren’t 100% accurate. Sometimes, customers might enter stores but not have their location tracked properly, or there could be issues with matching the right online and offline touchpoints.
  • Complexity in attribution models: It can be hard to determine exactly which touchpoint contributed most to the store visit, especially with complex customer journeys.

Key tools for footfall attribution

To effectively implement footfall attribution, businesses use specialized tools. Some of these tools include:

  • GPS and geofencing: Technologies that track when a user enters a specific location based on GPS data from their smartphone.
  • Wi-Fi and bluetooth beacons: These devices are set up in-store to capture the data from customers’ phones when they walk into the store.
  • Location analytics platforms: These platforms collect, analyze, and report on foot traffic data, helping businesses understand customer behavior in relation to their marketing campaigns.
  • Point-of-Sale (POS) data: By connecting online campaigns with in-store purchases, businesses can gain deeper insights into the effectiveness of their marketing.

Real-world examples

  • Retail chains: Large retail brands use footfall attribution to measure how their online ads influence physical store traffic. For example, a clothing brand might run an online ad campaign for a seasonal sale and use footfall attribution to track how many viewers of the ad actually visit a store and make a purchase.
  • Restaurants & cafes: Many restaurants use footfall attribution to understand the impact of online promotions (like coupons or Meta ads) on bringing customers into their physical locations.
  • Shopping malls: Shopping malls use footfall attribution to understand how digital ads influence foot traffic to their stores. Among other data points, they can analyze if promotions for specific stores drive visits to the mall, the number of stores which visitors enter, and more

Footfall attribution is a powerful tool that helps businesses connect their online marketing campaigns to real-world actions. By tracking and analyzing how online activities drive foot traffic to stores, companies can make smarter decisions, optimize marketing spend, and improve customer experiences. While challenges like data privacy and accuracy exist, the insights gained from footfall attribution are invaluable in today’s interconnected marketing landscape.

With the right tools and strategies, businesses can leverage footfall attribution to measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and drive success in both the digital and physical worlds.