3 Ways to Increase Foot Traffic to Your Brick and Mortar

Whether you've just started your business or had it running for a while, you want more people coming to your physical location. Your website is getting enough traffic, but your brick-and-mortar isn't getting the foot traffic you want. This can be because more and more people are shopping online. In fact, 8 in 10 American consumers are now shopping online.

Furthermore, foot traffic to brick and mortar locations decreased by 11 percent in 2017. Again, the rise of eCommerce stores is likely what caused this decline, so businesses are having difficulties maintaining and growing foot traffic in today's digital world.

Luckily, there are many ways you can increase foot traffic to your physical location and help your customers relish the touch-and-feel experience that comes with shopping in-store.

1. Use Google Maps

You can advertise your company's physical location by running map ads on Google Maps. This not only makes it easier for people to get to your location, but also makes your business more visible to customers, especially on a mobile device. Google Maps offers lots of advertising features you can leverage to drive more foot traffic to your physical location. These features include:

Promoted Pins: These promoted ads show up in the search engines when customers search specific keywords that relate to your business and offerings. The more people see your company's Promoted Pins, the more exposure your business will get and the more foot traffic you'll receive.

In-store promotions: By offering promotions and sales on your products, you can help your business drive more store visits. You can even specify sales and promotions to be available only in-store. This incentivizes customers to visit your physical location instead of making a purchase on your website

Customizable business pages: These pages include key information about your local business such as the address, customer reviews, star ratings and more.

Local inventory search: Some consumers avoid shopping in stores because they're unsure if a particular product is in stock. But if you provide local inventory information on your customizable local page, customers will be able to search through that inventory, which means they're more likely to visit your store.

2. Leverage Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a great way to get your business noticed and attract people to your brick and mortar location. This form of marketing includes a variety of methods such as social media marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Since more and more people are using the web to search for businesses and read reviews, it makes sense to leverage the multiple opportunities to market your company online.

This will increase brand awareness. When more people know about your business, more people will start coming to your physical location. Not everyone wants to keep shopping online. Lots of consumers will still go to stores and other businesses to meet their needs, so digital marketing will help you reach those types of people.

3. Use Sidewalk Signs

To get more people in the door, you can use outdoor signs. For more foot traffic, you must attract the attention of people walking by on sidewalks or directly in front of your store. This will increase your overall visibility in the community. You can include sales, special offers and promotions on your signs to provide an incentive for customers to come into your store. To increase the effectiveness of your outdoor signs, be specific. Include details such as location-specific instructions and relevant product information. This is a practice known as narrowcasting, which involves putting out the right message in just the right place.

Just because so many consumers are going digital doesn't mean you should tear your physical location to the ground. By implementing the right strategies to maintain and increase foot traffic to your brick and mortar business, you'll be able to keep your operations going for the long haul.