In the world of retail, understanding consumer behavior is the cornerstone of success, especially during crucial periods like back-to-school (BTS) season. Leveraging location intelligence with Foursquare’s comprehensive suite of Attribution, Audience, and Proximity solutions can be a game-changer for retailers, allowing them to target, reach, and measure campaign effectiveness with precision. At its core, location data accurately reflects real-word behaviors and serves as a potent indicator of consumer intent, providing invaluable insights into when, where, and how shoppers engage with brands.
Step #1: Understanding Consumer Behavior
To craft effective back-to-school campaigns, it’s essential to first grasp trends in spending and behavior. By analyzing historical data or tapping into research from trusted sources such as the National Retail Federation, retailers can gain valuable insights into shifting consumer preferences. As consumers make their final back-to-school purchases, retailers can position their marketing campaigns to provide tips and checklists, and provide deals and promotions to help with last-minute shopping.
So how can retailers effectively tap into location-based insights to understand and align with customers’ routines and preferences? Last year, Foursquare analyzed consumer shopping behavior, discovering correlations between shoppers’ online and real-world behavior during the back-to-school season.
Key learnings that location data reveals as emerging trends to help retailers and brands prepare for the 2024 school year include:
Step #2: Reaching the Right Audience
The back-to-school season is highly competitive for retailers. Stand out from the crowd by harnessing the power of location technology with Foursquare Audience. As summer comes to an end, consider targeting audience segments such as back-to-school shoppers at shopping centers, malls, big box stores, and office supply shops; outlet shoppers looking to buy trendy clothes; and, family-friendly restaurants, and entertainment venues.
How can you elevate your marketing strategy and deliver unparalleled shopping experiences to parents and college students? Reach new customers and align with the right moments using Foursquare Audience:
- Targeted Promotions: deliver deals and discounts to customers based on location, increasing relevancy and conversion rates.
- Conquest the Competition: reach shoppers that recently visited competitor store locations to gain market share and grow your business.
- Re-target Back-to-School Shoppers: stay relevant by re-targeting consumers that took part in back-to-school shopping the previous year.
With Foursquare Audience, you can easily choose from 1200+ ready-to-use audience segments, based on real world consumer behavior, available in our Audience Designer and all major DSPs and DMPs, or create highly customized audiences in our self-serve UI.
Foursquare Audience features
1200+
ready-to-use audiences
Harnessing location technology not only enhances customer experiences but also generates business results. Utilizing Foursquare Proximity enables retailers to engage with customers in real time with accurate and custom geofences as they navigate shopping centers, malls, fashion retailers, and other locations. With real results and tangible impact, location intelligence drives your business by:
- Increase Foot Traffic: attract more customers to your stores with targeted, location-based promotions.
- Influence Path to Purchase: reach consumers in the ideal buying mindset as they engage in activities that customers tend to do before or after visiting your store locations for back-to-school shopping.
- Keep Your Brand Top of Mind: geofence stores to deliver shoppers’ ads in real-time and influence customers to select your products over competitors during their shopping trips.
Learn more about how you can leverage Foursquare’s location data in your back-to-school campaigns with our Q3 Targeting Strategy Guide.
Measuring Campaign Effectiveness
Retailers can also measure the effectiveness of back-to-school campaigns and gain valuable insights to enhance future strategies with Foursquare Attribution. Our omnichannel measurement solution provides a powerful tool for measuring the effectiveness of back-to-school campaigns for retailers by tracking foot traffic and consumer behavior patterns. Through Foursquare’s location data, retailers can analyze the impact of their marketing efforts by correlating increases in store visits with the timing and reach of their back-to-school promotions.
With Foursquare’s measurement capabilities, retailers can understand their campaign’s influence on driving in-store visits, enabling them to assess the effectiveness of different campaign strategies and channels, such as social media ads, connected TV ads or Out-of-Home ads, by attributing store visits to specific marketing touchpoints. This comprehensive analysis empowers retailers to optimize their back-to-school campaigns, allocate marketing budgets more effectively, and ultimately drive higher sales during this critical shopping season.
Take Action Today
As back-to-school season quickly approaches, retailers must harness the power of location intelligence to maximize campaign results. By understanding consumer behavior, targeting the right audience segments, and measuring campaign effectiveness, retailers can drive meaningful outcomes and stay ahead of the competition. Take the next step towards success by scheduling a meeting to explore how location intelligence from Foursquare can elevate your back-to-school campaigns this season. Let’s make this back-to-school season your most successful one yet!
