#MetricsThatMatter - Cost Per Visit

In the digital age, Click Through Rates (CTR) and Cost Per Click (or CPC) are two of the most common metrics that marketers use to determine campaign success. However, for physical world brands, nothing signals purchase intent more definitively than a consumer who visits your store after being exposed to your digital ad. Naturally, marketers have been demanding a new metric that indicates purchase intent and real business outcome rather than feel-good ones like CTR and CPC.  This is where Cost per Visit (CPV) comes into play.Defining Cost Per VisitSimply put, CPV is the cost incurred in driving a physical store visit from a customer who has been exposed to your digital campaign. It’s the real-world equivalent of CPC, and naturally holds immense value for brands looking for an ROI-centric metric to evaluate campaign performance and optimise ad spend.

At first glance, CPV may seem like a simplistic metric. But in order to arrive at this, brands needs to first accurately measure footfalls driven to physical stores as a direct result of their digital campaigns. This in-depth and accurate attribution of store footfalls is only possible with location intelligence.What makes Cost Per Visit a critical metric for new-age marketers?Often, digital-only metrics may indicate that a campaign is successful, but the reality might be completely different. If an ad click does not result in a real business outcome such as a store visit, it is nothing more than a click. It means that although your ads are getting traction online, it is yielding fewer footfalls than you would like. Understanding the Cost Per Visit allows marketers to analyse the real cost involved in a real-world business outcome like driving a visit to their physical stores. With CPV in hand, marketers can finally understand if their ad spends are resulting in footfalls and optimise their ad spend accordingly.CPV analysis at work – A case studyA leading auto brand was looking to bolster the sales of their new entry-level sedan and advertised heavily across social media and other digital channels. However, they soon noticed that while the ad seemed to be performing well across online metrics like clicks, likes, and shares and was scoring an above average CPC, the number of footfalls driven to their various dealerships was minimal. Upon further analysis, the marketing team uncovered that while CPC looked great, the Cost Per Visit was extremely high. This signalled subpar campaign performance as far as real world outcomes were concerned. As a result, the brand focused their efforts on optimising campaigns that were driving footfalls to their various dealerships, and ensuring optimum CPV, resulting in a 40% increase in driven footfalls and signalling campaign success.Understanding and taking action on Cost Per Visit and going beyond conventional online metrics helped the brand gain more footfalls as well as optimize their marketing budgets for real world outcomes – something they wouldn’t have achieved had they relied only on online metrics throughout the campaign flight.Before you go…Measuring Cost Per Visit as an industry-standard metric allows marketers to measure absolute ad effectiveness and understand the true ROI of their digital campaigns in driving footfall. Gain access to CPV analysis and a host of other report categories through Lifesight to help you take your digital campaigns to the next level. Reach out for a demo today.