How to Leverage Nextdoor Advertising for Your Business

What is Nextdoor?

Nextdoor is a social media platform focusing on connecting neighbors or individuals within the same neighborhood. Think of it as a digital bulletin board for your neighborhood, where residents can join their specific neighborhood’s network to share local news, recommend services, post classified ads, and discuss community matters.

For local businesses, Nextdoor offers the opportunity to reach those most likely to walk into your store or use your services — the community around you.

With Nextdoor advertising, businesses can take advantage of the hyper-local nature of the app. Here, you’re not casting a wide net and hoping for the best. Instead, you’re targeting the very community your local business serves, resulting in more relevant engagements and potentially higher conversion rates.

Nextdoor also offers the opportunity for more genuine community engagement. Local businesses can engage in local conversations, offer insights, and become part of the community. These interactions can foster trust and position the business as a community member rather than a store or service.

In addition, Nextdoor advertising takes word-of-mouth marketing to the next level. On Nextdoor, when locals recommend your business, the entire neighborhood sees it. These endorsements can significantly boost credibility and trust.

Nextdoor presents a distinct opportunity for local businesses to thrive in their communities. However, harnessing the potential of this platform requires more than just presence.

To stand out and engage the community, local businesses must optimize their Nextdoor advertising strategies, tailor their content, and understand the platform. Here are a few tips to enhance your Nextdoor advertising strategy:

Set up your business presence on Nextdoor

The first step in using Nextdoor to boost your business is to create a free business page. Again, a Nextdoor account is completely free, so there's no reason not to have one. Your business profile serves as your brand’s local digital storefront where Nextdoor neighbors can learn about your offerings, read reviews, and engage with your posts.

Once you’ve created your Nextdoor business page, you’ll need to optimize your profile with accurate business details and visuals. Ensure your business profile contains your business hours, contact information, and location. You can and should also add high-quality images that represent your business. The more comprehensive and visually appealing your business profile, the more engagement you can attract.

Craft compelling Nextdoor ads

Nextdoor advertising works similarly to Facebook advertising. However, you’re more limited in the types of ads you can choose. In general, you can create three types of ads based on your marketing goals.

Your options include:

1. Increase website visits
2. Promote a sale or discount
3. Get more messages.

Your Nextdoor ads are seen in three locations: the newsfeed, the marketplace where neighbors buy, sell, or giveaway items (also known as ‘For Sale’), and the area to the right of the main feed (‘Right Hand Rail’) on desktop devices that contains additional content for neighbors.

Understanding these ad options can help you choose which ones best align with your advertising goals. For instance, if your goal is advertising products, you might choose to increase website visits or promote a sale. In general, ads consist of a headline and an image. If you choose the sale or promotion ad option, you can include a call-to-action (CTA button).

When creating Nextdoor ads, remember that your audience is local customers. You may even see these people regularly. Crafting attention-grabbing ad content hinges on a blend of authenticity, relevance, and persuasive advertising techniques.

Begin by understanding your neighborhood, including its values, interests, and pain points. You can use compelling, familiar visuals, such as local landmarks or community events. You should also craft messages that directly address the needs of your local audience, which may include offering exclusive neighborhood deals or referencing local events.

Consider incorporating testimonials or endorsements from fellow neighbors to capitalize on the power of local trust. And always ensure your CTA is clear and encourages direct engagement. Remember, on Nextdoor, it’s not just about selling; it’s about becoming part of the community.

If you need inspiration, check out these advertising examples or browse Nextdoor to see what your competitors are doing.

Remember, Nextdoor’s strength is that it’s hyper-local. Use its audience targeting features to ensure your ads reach the most relevant local demographic.

Whether it’s families or young professionals. Nextdoor allows you to select locations you want to target by state, city, or postal code. From there, you can narrow your target audience by gender, age, device, household income, homeownership, and interests.

The homeownership targeting option is based on the % of homeowners. For instance, targeting ranges of above 50% indicate that you’re targeting areas where 50% or more of neighbors are homeowners.

Interest targeting is based on first-party interests identified by the neighbor and third-party interests identified by third-party data partners.

Once you understand the audience targeting features, you can move on to creating your ads. Remember to tailor your ads to specific local demographics and interests. You can use insights from your local community interests and Nextdoor’s analytics to create ads that mirror local preferences, needs, and interests. More personalized ads ensure higher engagement rates as your ads become more relevant and appealing to the local audience.

Showcase local expertise and trustworthiness

In a community-driven platform like Nextdoor, it’s crucial to demonstrate genuine expertise and establish trust within the community. With a business profile, your local business can build credibility by participating in discussions. Whether it’s a community event, local issue, or general neighborhood chatter, your involvement can showcase your brand as genuinely invested in the community.

You can also offer expert advice. For instance, if you’re a local landscape business owner and there’s a discussion about yards, you can offer your advice to potential customers. These gestures don’t directly promote your business, but they can establish your brand as knowledgeable and trustworthy.

Having a Nextdoor business page also gives you plenty of opportunities to share helpful insights and respond to community queries from potential customers. A local cafe might share a recipe to become a go-to resource for community members.

At the same time, if a community member has a question about your business, ensure you respond quickly and professionally to provide clarity and show that you value these interactions.

Your free Nextdoor business profile allows you to collect reviews, make posts and ads, support local businesses, and become a part of a community. Reviews and recommendations can significantly influence a business’s reputation, especially on a platform where word of mouth has a profound impact.

After a successful transaction or service delivery, encourage satisfied local customers to share their experiences on your Nextdoor business page. A gentle reminder with a thank you note can prompt them to leave positive feedback.

Of course, not all feedback on your business page will be positive. As a business owner, addressing negative feedback professionally is crucial to maintaining a positive reputation. You can acknowledge the feedback and state the measures you’re taking to rectify the issue.

If possible, try to move the discussion offline or to private messages. This will allow you to address the concerns more intimately and prevent potential escalation.

Remember, negative feedback is a learning opportunity. If certain issues and complaints become recurrent, it may indicate that there might be an operational issue that needs to be addressed.

Ultimately, not every business gets positive reviews all the time. However, by handling negative feedback correctly, you can maintain a positive reputation and brand image.

Embrace Nextdoor as a local business ally

Nextdoor offers a unique neighborhood-centric framework for local businesses to connect with local customers. Unlike other social media channels with a global focus, Nextdoor narrows down the digital space to mirror neighborhoods. This hyper-local approach allows businesses to directly engage with their local customers, building rapport and trust deeply rooted in community ties.

Build ads for your targeted audience and grow your business with Mailchimp. With our suite of tools, you can create engaging Nextdoor ads that resonate with your local audience. Of course, Nextdoor isn’t the only way to create hyper-targeted advertising campaigns.

Mailchimp’s robust marketing capabilities can help you craft targeted and personalized campaigns for local audiences using segmentation and customer data.