Like any business owner, you are likely always on the hunt for ways to drive footfall into your place of business, as well as ways to increase footfall traffic. And, like many other facets of marketing, you probably stumble across one-size-fits-all solutions geared at driving footfall into stores. Are you tired of suggestions that speak to increasing footfall in a mall when you are a salon owner or restauranteur? Do you often feel like the proposed solutions are too generic to truly influence your conversion ratios? Then you’d be right. Read on to discover some of our custom sales and conversion solutions…
Know your peak times
In order to better predict consumer behaviour in a retail or restaurant environment, it can be very helpful to know when foot traffic is highest outside of your place of business, as well as when there is the highest amount of footfall in your place of business — be it a store, restaurant or shopping mall. Knowing peak traffic times can allow you to target marketing efforts in order to increase conversion at those times.
To most effectively be able to calculate your footfall conversion rate, you need to know how many people set foot in your store or restaurant at those key times, as well as how many people decide to stay and eat (for restaurants) or to make a purchase (for retail shop owners). This is where footfall systems such as infrared sensors, cameras or footfall software come into place.
The 5 W’s (who, what, when, where, why) of targeted footfall conversion strategies
These invaluable tools are able to show your business when the most people are coming by your store or restaurant (with likely spikes at meal times for restaurants and evenings/weekends for shopping malls), how many people are coming by your business and that time, and who is actually taking the plunge to become a customer, rather than a passerby. Once you know these factors, you can begin to influence the why associated with each prospective customer’s decision — to stay or leave, to buy or walk away.
For restaurateurs, you might access the information from your footfall system in order to create discounts for days of the week where footfall is lagging or to incentivize passersby to stay and eat after work by offering a happy hour combination on lays with high foot traffic but low conversion. (This is especially true for restaurants operating in a business district, who often only attract a lunch crowd).
As you can imagine, the laws of attraction differ significantly in a restaurant and a salon, multiplex or shopping mall. For salon owners (who often rely heavily on word-of-mouth or referrals for new customers), footfall and conversion ratios might help them to pinpoint whether marketing strategies and signage are effective at drawing in new customers. For multiplex owners, footfall might indicate how noticeable their complex is from nearby thoroughfares and intersections. For shopping centre owners, the battle is slightly different: if you can figure out where the customers are coming from within the mall, e.g. traffic patterns outside the store, you can also direct signage and promotional material accordingly.
Know your business, increase your conversions
By now, you realise that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution for increasing footfall traffic. The above suggestions for increasing footfall traffic are designed with your business in mind, and recognise that no two business owners are facing the exact same problems in terms of increasing conversions and driving footfall into their stores, malls and restaurants. What doesn’t change from business to business is the need to capture footfall figures in order to calculate footfall conversion rates. To do so, your business should employ a customisable footfall tracking system in order to best determine how to increase footfall and drive footfall to your store, salon or restaurant.
