Hyperlocal marketing, or promoting your business on a local level, is an increasingly important practice as internet users perform more “near me” searches. As a marketing consultancy, we are always seeking and evaluating new options for our clients to expand their reach.
Over the past few years, a new hyperlocal based social media platform has emerged as a promising opportunity for marketers – Nextdoor. Our hyperlocal clients often solicit our POV about Nextdoor, and last week’s announcement that the company will be going public has stimulated renewed interest (see more on the story here). For this reason, let’s break down the Nextdoor opportunity and how your business can use it to your advantage.
What Does Nextdoor Do?
Nextdoor is a social network that focuses on neighborhood groups. Users input their home address to connect with others in their area and can join various user created groups with different purposes. It is primarily used to organize and discuss neighborhood events, sell items, alert neighbors to danger, and share recommendations for local businesses and services. The platform touts itself as being more trustworthy than other social sites, as it puts users through a verification process before they are permitted to join neighborhood groups.
According to a company press release, Nextdoor is used in more than 275,000 neighborhoods around the world and in nearly 1-in-3 U.S. households. CEO Sarah Friar also reports that they saw a 50% growth in daily active users last year.
Nextdoor for Businesses
Nextdoor offers free business profiles to local businesses, similar to a Yelp or Google My Business profile. This allows your business to populate information on a platform where users are frequently searching for local recommendations.
Businesses on Nextdoor can use their listing to make posts, interact with users, and host user “recommendations”, which are essentially business reviews. It is important to note that your business will not appear in Nextdoor searches until it has at least three recommendations. Nextdoor suggests that you share your business on other networks to help reach this goal.
Advertising on Nextdoor
To push your business in front of even more purchase-ready customers, Nextdoor also has a paid advertising program. Read up on the platform’s Neighborhood Ad Center here.
Ads on Nextdoor are similar to ads on Facebook – they typically consist of text, one or several images, and a central offer or call to action. Businesses running ads on the platform can choose whether they are paying per impression (CPM) or paying per click (CPC). Ads can appear on the app in either the main newsfeed section and/or the right-hand rail.
Advertisers get significant customizability on Nextdoor. First, users choose their main campaign objective: awareness, consideration, or conversion. In-depth targeting then allows users to narrow down their ad audience by geography, age, income, interests, and much more.DSG has run several different campaign types on Nextdoor for our clients, and we’ve seen significant success on the platform. To learn more about what DSG can do for your business through Nextdoor advertising, reach out to us.
