Drive-to-Store is a strategy that integrates online and offline to attract customers to your physical store. Through various marketing and sales initiatives, the ultimate goal is to ensure all your touchpoints offer memorable customer experiences.
And, like any strategy, it's necessary to go beyond planning and execution, and it's essential to measure what's working and what's not. Driving people from online to offline and increasing conversions is the focus of this concept, but there are many potential results it can bring to your business.
To help you, we've put together some metrics for you to map and understand what's working in your Drive to Store . Stay tuned!
Essential Drive to Store Metrics
Store visits
Visits to your establishment are a key part of drive-to-store marketing, and here are some metrics to track:
Number of users on the site (Clicks)
Here, we're talking about how many users clicked on ads or links that direct you to information about your physical store. It's important to track these clicks to assess the effectiveness of your online campaigns in driving traffic to your store.
Phone calls to the store or contact through customer service channels
It's common for people to want to get quick answers to their questions, especially when it comes to local businesses they've found online and want to visit in person. Therefore, it's important to map incoming phone calls and, more importantly, understand how contacts are handled through customer service channels , especially WhatsApp.
Get call and contact metrics by channel before, during, and after campaigns to assess the engagement impact of drive-to-store initiatives.
Directions by Google
Google Business Profile metric indicates how many times directions to your store were requested on Google Maps. An increase in this number after a Drive to Store campaign may indicate increased customer interest in visiting your physical store, as they're looking to understand how to get there.
This highlights the impact this type of campaign can have on increasing customer flow to physical establishments, strengthening the connection between the online and offline worlds of the business.
Additionally, recent Google studies show that 50% of consumers who search for a location online visit a physical store within 24 hours.
Post-Campaign Traffic
In addition to monitoring what's happening in your business during the campaigns, it's important to track traffic on your website, digital platforms, and physical stores after a Drive to Store campaign ends.
An increase in post-campaign traffic may indicate that the actions had a lasting effect on customer awareness and interest, for example.
Conversions
Conversions can include a variety of desired actions, from filling out contact forms and downloading promotional coupons to customer traffic and actual in-store sales.
In-store sales
When we talk about in-store sales, this is a direct result: how many sales were made in physical stores as a result of your campaigns? Here, it's important to monitor the before, during, and after stages of in-store sales to understand whether drive-to-store initiatives had an impact on your financial results.
New customer rate
It's important to understand how many new customers are coming to your business, so find out the percentage of new customers who visit your physical store as a result of your drive-to-store campaigns.
Return on Investment (ROI)
ROI is a financial metric that calculates the return on investment in a campaign. It shows how much revenue was generated relative to the campaign costs and is essential for determining the effectiveness and profitability of your Drive-to-Store strategies .
Here, you need to have a view of your conversion rate, routes planned, average ticket, and combine all investments in local marketing , whether it's platform monthly fees, advertising, professional prices, among others.
Average Order Value (AOV)
Average Order Value (AOV) indicates the average value of all transactions made in a given period and directly correlates with the business's revenue and profit.
It's important to understand your customers' average spending to analyze your store's financial health, and having indicators like this is essential for making truly strategic decisions.
Engagement
Engagement can include different ways in which customers interact with your brand, such as sharing content, commenting, ratings, or participating in promotional events, for example, and it's important to track several of these possibilities.
Time spent in the store
Measuring how long customers spend in-store can provide valuable insights into their level of interest and satisfaction with the shopping experience. An increase in dwell time may indicate a positive customer experience after their drive-to-store purchases.
Click-through rate
This metric shows how many people clicked on ads or links compared to the total number of people who viewed your ad. A high click-through rate indicates a high level of interest or relevance of your content to your target audience, while a low rate indicates that you need to review the content your business is sending to its audience.
Interactions with content
This includes all forms of user interaction with your campaign content, such as likes, shares, comments, and reviews. Tracking these interactions helps you understand audience engagement with your brand and drive-to-store campaigns.
How to Measure Drive-to-Store Metrics
Drive-to-store tools
Measuring drive-to-store is no easy task, and for this to happen, you need tools to structure your journey and map it with data for analysis.
Harmo is one such tool, offering a drive-to-store solution across multiple locations. With this tool, the company leverages its strategy of increasing customer flow to its store network , attracting customers from online to offline.
Through this tool, you can create an updated and standardized digital journey from end to end, across all channels, providing visibility into all your actions and strategies for your business.
Tracking tools
There are several tracking tools to understand your customer's journey, and you need to pay attention to them, such as:
- Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business): Tool for managing metrics for local searches and understanding indicators such as listing views, directions to your store, clicks, and phone calls.
- Google Analytics: This is one of the most powerful tools your business needs to track, providing visibility into link tracking, online visits and conversions, and searches related to your physical store.
- Ad platforms: Get reports with specific metrics on platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads, for example. Use your page's own insights, track performance, and understand what makes the most sense for your social media.
- CRM Tools: Integrate drive-to-store data with your CRM to get a complete view of the customer journey .
Geofencing
Geofencing is a location-based technique that allows you to define specific geographic areas and send messages or advertisements to mobile devices when they enter that area.
It's important to design this strategy through virtual zones around your stores to identify when a customer enters or leaves the area and use push notifications or personalized messages to customers who enter the store area, for example.
With this tool, you can track and generate essential location metrics and insights for your drive-to-store campaigns.
Conclusion
More than just implementing actions, the success of a drive-to-store strategy also depends on the ability to measure and interpret various metrics to understand what works and what doesn't in your business.
Looking at your scenario, designing, and plotting your own metrics is a step that cannot be postponed until later at each point in your customer's journey.
How are you measuring your drive-to-store initiatives? Take advantage of the metrics we mentioned, understand what makes sense and what doesn't, customize your needs, and measure everything you're doing to achieve even better results in your strategy. And of course, count on Harmo to boost your drive-to-store strategy!
