The modern retail marketing strategy: winning the O2O battle
If you are serious about retail marketing strategy, a store visit starts long before a customer walks through your door.
In fact, most of the time, it starts on a mobile screen. While on the sofa, while on the bus, or while they’re between meetings, shoppers are doing research and making decisions in private.
The modern customer journey is fragmented and non-linear. It’s scattered across channels and devices, and often ends with a visit to a physical store even when it begins with a search or click online.
The ROPO effect explained
Your competitors might not have noticed yet, but this behaviour is called the ROPO effect (Research Online, Purchase Offline).
Retailers who understand it are growing market share while those who ignore it are losing ground. Because they optimise for e-commerce sales, they lose all the revenue that happens after the click.
You cannot optimise online in isolation. Your e-commerce website and your physical stores must work together. You need a strategy for Online-to-Offline that can drive measurable footfall.
In this guide, we share our O2O roadmap for building a retail marketing strategy that can drive footfall, starting with the search for “near me”.
The mobile-first mindset
Phase 1: The research phase (Discovery)
The customer has a problem, and the first thing they do is start looking for information online.
For example, their trainers have worn out. They don’t know the exact model they want but they need something to fit over their feet.
They search for “best running shoes for flat feet” and start watching YouTube reviews. At this point they are not ready to buy. They are learning.
Your role is to be at the top of the list. Appearing on page 3 with a paid ad is not enough.
This is where broad keywords and video can help. You are not trying to close the deal, you are trying to be part of the shortlist.
You can automate this phase using tools like Performance Max campaigns. These can show your ad in multiple formats across YouTube, Display, and Search, so you appear when the customer is looking and learning.
See how to get set up with Performance Max for Store Goals here.
Phase 2: The decision phase (Intent)
The customer is clear on what they want now. They know what to buy. The next question is where.
“Running shop near me”, or, “Nike Pegasus in stock” are the searches you must win.
It’s no longer enough to show a text ad, though. The customer needs an answer that’s certain. Google Local Inventory Ads can help you show the product with an In Stock signal.
Instantly, you have demonstrated that it’s available and the risk of a wasted trip is reduced.
That’s the point at which a customer’s thinking becomes acting.
If you’ve shown up when they need you, you’ve just turned a browser into a visitor. And all without a click on your site.
Learn how to surface your stock with Local Inventory Ads here.
Phase 3: The action phase (Visit)
Your customer now drives to the store, tries the shoes, and buys a pair.
Most retailers will track their ads up to this point. But a smart retail marketing strategy sees Phase 3 as an opportunity to start the loop again.
Footfall tracking can bridge Phase 1 and Phase 2 activity to Phase 3, the visit.
The insights you get from closing this loop (attributing visits to the activities that influenced them) can unlock your budget, because you now have hard data to scale the ads that actually move the needle on footfall.
Learn the mechanics of footfall measurement here.
Turn ROPO behaviour into measurable growth.
Book an Online to Offline Growth Session and we’ll:
- Map your omnichannel customer journey
- Spot the biggest footfall leaks
- Recommend the fastest O2O wins to test in 30 days
The targeting trap
Many retailers waste their marketing budget with radius targeting. It’s the wrong way to find people who will visit your store.
Radius = circle. This isn’t how people travel. They move along roads, across bridges, in and out of traffic jams, following specific routes around commuting, school runs, and shopping patterns.
A customer might live five miles from you, but never visit because there is a river in the way. Another might live ten miles away but visit every week because a motorway cuts travel times in half.
It’s not about distance, it’s about accessibility. You need to target your spend on people who can realistically get to the store.
That’s where postcode targeting is so powerful. You can map and analyse drive times to build a more realistic view of where your customer base can reach you from.
Learn the postcode vs. radius targeting gap here.
Aligning your teams
Retailers need marketing and retail ops to talk. They need alignment.
They should share data, budgets, and priorities because the customer does not care about your internal structure.
E-commerce want to keep stock in the warehouse for online sales. Stores want to sell their stock to make a target.
The problem is both are right. So your marketing should reflect that and help both sides win.
Measurement matters. If your e-commerce team is only rewarded for online sales, they will avoid activity that might impact the physical store.
Incentivise on total sales and budgets will start to be shared, and people will invest in campaigns that drive both online and offline.
Case study: the strategy in action
We partnered with a UK furniture retailer with a big retail marketing strategy problem.
Their e-commerce team was running Facebook Ads, measuring ROAS, and reporting 2.0x return.
We re-focussed their strategy on the full O2O journey.
- Targeted people researching furniture to a 20-minute drive time.
- Showed them local inventory ads for sofas in their local showroom.
- Measured footfall.
Results? The business changed.
Our client discovered that for every £1 they generated online, the ads drove £8 in-store sales. The “real ROAS” was 10.0x.
This made the retailer stop slashing budgets. They started scaling what worked.
Find the full story and the details of this 215% Increase in Store Visits.
FAQs
What is the ROPO effect in retail?
Customers are using digital channels (search, reviews, stock check) before buying in-store. It is called the ROPO (Research Online, Purchase Offline) effect.
How do I increase retail footfall with digital ads?
Make the intent-to-action path easier: be on page 1 when they search for “near me”, show local availability, remove friction (hours, directions), and measure visits.
What is an omnichannel customer journey?
The shopper journey the customer takes in the real world. A successful retail marketing strategy does not treat social, search, website, and store as different.
What should I prioritise first: ads or measurement?
Priority 1: Build the basics (local trust + accurate information). Priority 2: Run campaigns that support the journey. Priority 3: Add measurement to prove it works.
Why is radius targeting a waste of money for retailers?
Radius = circle. A circle is a terrible, simplistic representation of the real world with its roads, commute routes, rivers, bridges, drive times, and busy periods. Postcode targeting allows you to analyse drive times. Map out who can realistically visit you from your target areas, and spend only where they can physically get to the store.
Conclusion
Your retail marketing strategy cannot stay the same as the customer journey evolves.
You can no longer trust old methods, treat your channels as silos, or focus only on the search clicks.
The customer journey is complex, and the good news is that your response can be simple.
Be mobile-first, show your stock, make it easy for them to visit, and measure what happens.
If you want to understand how to win the O2O battle, we can help you map your customer journey and identify the biggest gaps to bridge.