Location data and retail – optimising OOH

Retail brands can utilise location data in order to optimise their OOH advertising and gain offline attribution based on store visits. 

What is location data

For retailers, it’s important to understand what is going on in and around your store.

This kind of retail insight is already available for online adverts. You can tell how many people view your advert, click it and purchase your product. But in the real-world physical store, the customer journey becomes more difficult to pin down. How can you determine the effectiveness of your out-of-home, physical advertising? Offline consumer attribution involves using accurate, proximity location data to understand how audiences react to your out-of-home advertising.

When we talk about location data, we are talking about understanding how consumers move in and around your retail space. This is what we like to call the offline world. Understanding it is valuable for brands and can present information that can dramatically improve footfall and sales. According to a recent report, over 96% of surveyed marketers believe that location data is a key part of their mobile marketing strategy. My question is – what were the other 4% thinking?

An accurate solution to an old problem

Retail brands are beginning to realise that this is important and that it’s a crucial part in any successful retail marketing strategy. What brands might not realise is how accurate this data can be, and the effect this can have on OOH advertising. Location data is precise – and provides an accurate understanding of the customer journey. With the right proximity sensors, you can measure this journey with an accuracy of up to 1m. 

This accuracy is provided by the number and precision of the sensors on our proximity network. This delivers valuable insights into retail environments, and how consumers move. One application of this data is to measure the effectiveness of OOH and redefine how your OOH works. 

It’s currently quite difficult to measure how real-world adverts are performing. Attribution is key for the modern marketer and It’s not always apparent where footfall traffic is coming from. Location data solves this problem by allowing unprecedented insights into the journey to store and to purchase. 

Let’s look at how this could work for retail brands.

Using location data, you can understand when a user is in front of your advert. You can then use in-store sensors for attribution – to understand which users then visited your store because of the OOH. 

Very quickly this can give insights into how your physical adverts are performing. You can understand which customers respond best to your OOH and determine how much of your footfall traffic is being generated from these adverts. This provides an accurate ROI for physical advertising.

With the accuracy of proximity sensors it’s possible to even determine which area of the store users visit after viewing OOH. This kind of insight is unprecidented and provides numerous advanatages for brands that implement this strategy. 

These insights are highly actionable for brands. For example, using real-time location data marketers can adjust OOH advertisements in real-time depending on footfall data.

James Ewen

James is the head of marketing at Tamoco