Measuring marketing ROI is important for a brick-and-mortar brand, but it’s often more difficult than for an online business. Effective measurement of your marketing ROI will tell you how well your latest marketing campaigns are performing, if you need to make any improvements, and where to best allocate your marketing spend.

And while measuring marketing ROI for an offline location is harder than for an online business, it’s not impossible. Although you won’t be able to credit every real-life visitor or transaction to a specific marketing campaign, you can use a combination of reliable business key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics.

Measuring ROI through footfall tracking

Real-time footfall camera tracking of customers visiting a physical store tells you the volume of people visiting, gives you reliable data on your busiest times, and will signal how to drive conversions.

Using footfall tracking analysis before and after a specific marketing campaign will provide data on the effectiveness of that strategy. Customers can also be asked why or what prompted them to visit, which can be a particularly effective measure for localized marketing campaigns.

How to use business metrics to generate accurate marketing ROI

Traditional retail KPIs can also inform marketing ROI for a brick-and-mortar location. Business KPIs such as gross and net sales, average spend per customer, and sales per square foot can be tracked and correlated to individual marketing campaigns and pushes.

Extra KPIs can now be utilized that integrate customer experience with marketing ROI, such as experience per square foot which can be measured through dwell measurements.

How social media check-ins can measure ROI

Social media engagement, customer reviews and check-ins can also provide accurate measurements of marketing ROI through various channels. Facebook Store Visits can estimate the number of visits to physical store locations by customers who clicked on local store ads.

In addition to the number of check-ins, using location signals from mobile devices can compare groups of consumers who have and who have not been exposed to particular ads online.

Wi-Fi and location data can reliably assess marketing ROI

Developments in guest Wi-Fi can give you reliable figures on business traffic, which can calculate customer acquisition, sales conversion rates and spend per customer. You’ll also be able to specifically track the ROI of any in-store Wi-Fi campaigns. Location data will allow you to monitor specific marketing campaigns from targeted, local ads and track customer behavior within the store.

Use a combination of the right metrics to deliver an effective ROI measurement

There is no single best metric to measure marketing ROI, and a brick-and-mortar store can find this even more challenging. But using the right combination of quality metrics, such as business KPIs, footfall tracking and Wi-Fi data, for what you need to measure will give you an accurate ROI measurement for your marketing activity.