Geoff Michener is the CEO of dataplor, a startup focused on helping companies succeed abroad through high-quality geospatial data.
Businesses seeking to outmaneuver their competition need deeper insights into real-world customer engagement. Sales figures, customer reviews and market reports often lack insight into what is happening on the ground and fail to account for physical customer engagement or location-specific trends. If businesses want to stay competitive, they must start at the foundation: physical storefronts and consumer behavior.
Mobility data offers a powerful solution by providing deep insights into customer engagement and competitive positioning. Foot traffic patterns help businesses identify underserved markets, assess customers’ interactions with competitor locations, refine strategies and remain agile to future shifts in behavior.
A Sharper Focus On Consumer Behavior
Mobility data equips businesses with the tools to analyze their competitors’ store locations. Organizations can see under what circumstances customers choose competitors by analyzing time spent at locations, hourly popularity scores and estimated visitor counts. This information lets businesses see where, when and why customers choose competitors.
For example, downtown Portland saw 27.3 million visits in 2024. Data indicated their foot traffic peaked during the summer, with significant events like Coraline’s Curious Cat Trail leading to an 11%-14% increase in weekend traffic. Looking for localized trends and analyzing competitors’ performance near high-traffic events, like Coraline’s Curious Cat Trail, could help a business ascertain when and where to open new locations in the Portland area, run promotions or create pop-up shops.
A restaurant franchise could similarly use mobility data to determine why foot traffic increases on weekends at its competitor’s store. By analyzing peak customer flow times at competitor locations, they can look at dwell time, surrounding attractions and promotions and decide when to offer discounts or ensure their locations aren’t over or understaffed. The restaurant can even better understand consumer behavior by seeing which store customers are most likely to visit based on other stores they frequent.
The granular insights from location intelligence help businesses identify the factors that influence customer loyalty and refine their marketing strategies and customer experiences. Additionally, knowing and understanding when customers favor a competitor can help companies optimize promotions and product offerings to align with customer preferences.
Intelligence For Market Entry
Location intelligence also reveals areas with high foot traffic but low supplies of specific goods or services, empowering decision-makers with ideal areas for market entry. It can showcase underserved neighborhoods or regions based on traffic density and customer flow. This information removes the guesswork regarding site selection to prioritize high-potential, high-impact markets.
Global retailers can use mobility to expand into new regions and identify areas with heavy foot traffic but minimal competition. By evaluating competitors’ existing storefronts, businesses can enter markets with high demand and low risk of oversaturation.
Data is already being utilized by hospitality platforms which use location intelligence to optimize pricing against their competitors. Analyzing neighborhood characteristics, distance to public transportation and local attractions help to ensure they are offering competitive rates and can increase bookings. Competitors that rely on static pricing or adapt too slowly will struggle to keep up in underserved or highly competitive areas.
However, privacy is a critical undercurrent to any discussion about data-driven decision-making at scale. Companies should ensure they use anonymized foot traffic data, as it’s the only approach that preserves individual privacy and adheres to domestic and international regulatory environments. Policy trends will continue to favor privacy and security—businesses adopting a privacy-centric approach will meet these evolving compliance requirements and help build consumer trust.
Organizations no longer have to guess when it comes to site selection. Using mobility data, they can prioritize sites with high demand, avoid oversaturation and ensure they pursue impactful opportunities to compete in new markets.
Vital Tools For The Race Against The Competition
Mobility data enables robust comparisons against competitors and helps businesses identify where they could lose market share or fall behind. These trends help companies predict and counter competitor strategies, such as new openings or seasonal promotions. Unlocking these insights allows organizations to pivot quickly based on real-time competitor behavior.
A grocery store with a new competitor location opening up down the street, for instance, could monitor the competitor’s latest store opening and how it impacts customer flow in nearby storefronts. Then, they could use the data to adjust advertising strategies, launch local promotions or introduce loyalty programs to retain customers. They might also utilize foot traffic data to understand where locations perform the best and if there are businesses nearby that their target audience also visits.
Real estate investors might use mobility data to identify high-traffic areas with strong commercial potential. Foot traffic trends help pinpoint emerging neighborhoods, evaluate property values based on visitor patterns and assess the viability of mixed-use or retail developments.
Consumer-packaged goods brands can also benefit. Analyzing consumer behavior near outlets helps them anticipate stock demands and adjust distribution strategies.
Why Foot Traffic Is Essential In Outpacing Competitors
Foot traffic gives businesses unmatched insight into customer behavior, market opportunities and competitor activities. Rather than relying on incomplete information, companies can use mobility data to locate high-traffic areas ideal for expansion, refine strategies based on competitors’ foot traffic trends and see consumer movement trends to adjust marketing and promotions. These insights unlock benefits across industries, from retail and consumer packaged goods to marketing, real estate, urban planning by city governments and quick-service restaurants.
Mobility data offers more than just clarity on what’s happening now. It gives business leaders powerful data to understand how consumer movement impacts business growth and where to plot future pivot points and growth strategies.
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