Why Nextdoor is the next platform to test in digital advertising

This is an interview with Molly McCarty, digital marketing program lead at Nextdoor , discussing the Neighborhood Ad Center self-serve ads platform. To get started, visit this site, sign up for an onboarding call and mention FOXWELL during onboarding for $300 in ad credits for any account you want to test on!

We sat down (virtually) with Molly McCarty from Nextdoor’s digital marketing team to discuss the Neighborhood Ad Center that recently launched, a self-serve advertising platform for Nextdoor. The interview discusses how advertising on Nextdoor can be a great fit for many businesses, particularly due to the specific neighborhood targeting, vast amount of daily users, and ability to reach the right people for your products and services.

Keep reading to learn more about advertising on Nextdoor, and if you’re ready to get started, don’t forget to mention ‘FOXWELL’ during onboarding for $300 in ad credits!

This content was produced in partnership with Nextdoor.

Courtney Alexander: Thank you guys for joining us. My name is Courtney Alexander and I work with Foxwell Digital. We're here today with Molly McCarty from Nextdoor. I'd love for you to introduce yourself and then we're going to hop into some questions.

Molly from Nextdoor: Thanks, Courtney. Like you said, my name is Molly McCarty, I work at Nextdoor. I oversee our digital marketing program, so I help members find their way onto Nextdoor. I also help small businesses and mid-market advertisers launch some advertising programs on Nextdoor.

Courtney Alexander: Wonderful, thank you. So we're gonna hop right in. So in case our viewers, readers, listeners, aren't sure what Nextdoor is, can you give us a high-level overview of what the Nextdoor platform is for anyone who's not familiar?

Molly from Nextdoor: Yeah, definitely. So Nextdoor is a place where neighbors can come together and plug into the neighborhoods that matter to them. I always like to give some real-life examples of my experience on the platform when I talk about Nextdoor. I recently moved from San Francisco, about 45 minutes south to Redwood City. When I moved, I had a bunch of moving boxes, I didn't want to just throw them out or recycle them. So I posted them on Nextdoor, and I found a neighbor who was moving down to Orange County, and he was eager to take the boxes off of my hands. I also have used Nextdoor to help find which restaurants neighbors like the most in my new neighborhood. So I'm constantly going to what we call the neighborhood favorites. And then finally, I know of a few neighbors that have been able to find babysitters, and just other useful neighborhood experts on the platform.

Courtney Alexander: Great. Thank you for explaining that. Super helpful. So you explain a little bit about your role at Nextdoor. Can you go just a little bit more in depth of what you do and kind of what your role entails? I'm sure it's a lot of things.

Molly from Nextdoor: Yeah, definitely. So I am our digital marketing lead for member and businesses. That means I try to get more neighbors on the platform and try to get both local and mid-market advertisers active on Nextdoor. I do this through writing ads across multiple digital marketing channels. Prior to joining Nextdoor, I worked for a few different marketing agencies. And yeah, and then I went from agency to in-house and I'm very happy here.

Courtney Alexander: Awesome. Well, congratulations on that. So I know that the Neighborhood Ad Center is a little bit new to Nextdoor. Can you tell me a little bit more about it, and then specifically, why advertisers should be excited about the neighborhood ad center?

Molly from Nextdoor: Totally. So like I mentioned, I used to be at agencies prior to joining Nextdoor. And while I was at the agency, many brands were often asking if they could test new channels. They wanted to make sure that they were early adopters to new marketing channels, and they also want to make sure that they weren't relying too much on their existing channels. It's always good to have a good mix of advertising channels. When I was at the agency, I reached out to Nextdoor multiple times on my client's behalf, hoping that I'd be able to run some ads on Nextdoor. That said, the ads had a pretty high minimum and it was hard to get access to advertising on Nextdoor. Now with the Neighborhood Ad Center, or NAC, as we call it internally, we have this beta opportunity where any mid-market advertiser can launch ads through our own self serve ad platform. It's super exciting, because I think whenever there's a new advertising channel, people just get excited. It's fun. And I especially love what NAC has to offer, because our members are verified. If you need to reach a neighbor who lives in a certain geography, you can do that. If you need to reach homeowners, you can do that. If you need to reach millennials who are interested in pets or subscription-based products, you can do all of that on NAC. I think our targeting options are awesome. We have pixels for tracking. And I also just think like I mentioned before, it's nice to have a new self serve platform out there to add into your portfolio of channels.

Courtney Alexander: Absolutely. That sounds wonderful. So what brands do you think will have the most success advertising on NAC?

Molly from Nextdoor: Yeah, I really think that any brand that is having success advertising on other digital channels, whether that's Google or Facebook or Snap will be able to find success on Nextdoor. We are seeing that any kind of large advertiser that can have some sort of local message that tends to be very successful, subscription-based services are working really well. So food subscription products, where they can say neighbors in and then you can dynamically add in the city or the neighborhood into the copy. That's working really well. Any sort of product that's frequently bought by the household decision maker that's performing really well. The targeting options really do allow for any advertiser that is willing to test find success on the platform.

Courtney Alexander: Great. So what sets NAC apart from the competition, in your opinion?

Molly from Nextdoor: Totally. So Nextdoor members come to Nextdoor looking for recommendations from neighbors. I've used Nextdoor to find recommendations on the best restaurants in the area for takeout, I've used Nextdoor to find recommendations for a plumber, I know some of my neighbors have used Nextdoor to get recommendations on new refrigerators, outdoor furniture, stuff like that. So I think what really sets NAC apart from its competition is that when the members sign into Nextdoor, they are looking for recommendations from neighbors, and you're able to reach that household decision maker. The ads also fit really well into our newsfeed. When you're scrolling through your Nextdoor feed, you see an ad and it often looks like something you would see from a neighbor because we really tried to get our advertisers to post content that looks natural in the feed. Nextdoor is all about the power of local, and we have dynamic creative that allows advertisers to easily add in city or neighborhood names into the ad copy. This just helps the ads feel much more normal and organic in the feed, which I think helps overall performance.

Courtney Alexander: I like that a lot. So you mentioned that we're in a beta test currently, what features are coming up in NAC that advertisers should be on the lookout for?

Molly from Nextdoor: Yeah, so every month, there's new features being released, to call out a few that I'm most excited about. Right now, we only have static images. But we're getting ready to launch carousel and video ads in the near future. Right now, we only have interest demographic device targeting. But in the not so distant future, we're also going to have first-party data ingestion. So lookalikes, exclusion list remarketing, all of that is coming up. We do have a conversion pixel on NAC right now, but it only records 30-day click attribution. So we're going to also be adding one-day view attribution. It also currently only allows you to follow one event. So usually most advertisers are are tracking checkout or purchase complete. Pretty soon it'll be able to handle multiple events through a single pixel. So you can follow things like add to cart and add payment info and checkout. So those are just some that are on the near horizon. But we're constantly updating the product.

Courtney Alexander: Great. That sounds so good. So you mentioned a lot about geotargeting and targeting neighborhoods. Besides geotargeting, what other kind of targeting options does not have?

Molly from Nextdoor: Right now we have interest targeting. So if you're in the NAC platform, you can just click on the little interest box, and you'll see quite a few different options to choose from - it is both first- and third-party data. We also have demographic targeting, so that includes age, it also includes household income, homeownership. And then we also have device targeting. Advertisers can select to run on both the newsfeed or the for sale and free placements, which perform page perform really well. I think that most advertisers are excited about the newsfeed because it's what they're most familiar with. But then they're pleasantly surprised to see the performance of for sale and free. For sale and free is Nextdoor's local marketplace. And I think what's so powerful about the for sale in free section is that when a neighbor does navigate to for sale and free, what they'll do is they're looking to purchase something, they're looking to buy something or to exchange goods with a neighbor. So we do see a lot of success in that placement as well.

Courtney Alexander: Great. Do you have any advice to help advertisers ensure that they are set up for success if they decide to expand their clients or themselves in their ads into the NAC platform?

Molly from Nextdoor: Yeah, definitely. So I think the biggest recommendation I have is making sure that you're not limiting yourself with the targeting that you select. I know on some advertising channels, it can be dangerous or a bad habit to have audience overlap. So I know when I'm doing my targeting for Nextdoor, I'm often adding an exclusion so that each ad set or each ad group is unique in and of itself in that you don't have to worry about audience overlap. So what I tend to recommend is that an advertiser, start with a broad targeting, maybe it's targeting all of the U.S., or maybe it's targeting a few states and not really layering anything else onto it, just kind of seeing how that broad audience performs. Then I also recommend running some sort of demographic targeting option, so that might be homeownership or household income. And then finally, I recommend launching two or three interest-based campaigns. So maybe you want to look at how people who are interested in eating out perform versus people who are dog lovers. There's are obviously just examples. But, one of the most powerful things about Nextdoor is, you can really learn a lot about your audience. In the example I just gave, you might learn that people who eat out a lot really like to purchase your product, and that can help kind of guide the creative changes you might want to make. So that's my biggest recommendation, I also recommend messing around with the frequency capping. That's a tool that we have in NAC that lets you choose how often you want somebody to be served your ad. It's set to 10 times per week, but you can update it to closer to about 15 or 20 times per week, if you want somebody to be able to see your ad multiple times in a single day. And then finally, I also recommend using creative that feels normal and local. Making sure your creative will look normal in the in the Nextdoor feed or in the for sale and free section. Some of the creative that we see perform really well, is actually just pictures that people have taken on their iPhones. We don't recommend having too much text overlay. We do recommend having a strong CTA. But I think the most important thing is, is this something that a neighbor will want to see in their newsfeed, and does this look organic to Nextdoor? If anybody is planning on running advertising on Nextdoor, I do recommend just becoming a neighbor if you're not already, so you can familiarize yourself with the next door platform.

Courtney Alexander: To follow up on that, in terms of setup, how difficult is it to get set up, starting from scratch on the NAC platform?

Molly from Nextdoor: I love that question. Because I am confident that anybody can get set up if you have your creative and your copy and your landing pages ready to go, you can have an ad running in 10 minutes. And we will happily work with any advertiser to get set up; we'll do screen shares and walk through it with you will help you employ best practices. So you're definitely not alone. You have a whole team at Nextdoor that is supporting you. It's very plug and play, you just need to have your copy ready to go, your creative ready to go, the landing page ready to go. Adding in the targeting is just a few clicks of the button. We review all of our creative manually right now. So once you do launch your first ad, it might take a few hours or even a day for it to start running. But the actual process of getting everything built out is pretty seamless, and pretty quick.

Courtney Alexander: So if we're pitching to our client to start testing out Nextdoor, do you have maybe a one sentence elevator pitch of why we should start testing Nextdoor for advertising?

Molly from Nextdoor: Yes, Nextdoor is really the place where neighbors go to get recommendations to find local businesses that they love. And also just to understand what neighbors are talking about in their neighborhood, I think advertising on Nextdoor is a huge opportunity for any agency or brand, because it is kind of an untapped channel right now. And, we do have a lot of neighbors on the platform who are eager to click through the ads to check out your landing page and to eventually purchase your product.

Courtney Alexander: That's great. Is there anything else that our listeners and readers should know about Nextdoor that would help them make this decision or anything else you want to add that maybe we didn't cover?

Molly from Nextdoor: Yeah, so I think it's important to keep in mind that there are no minimums to get started right now. So it's really, if you have a little bit of a testing budget, it's worth testing on Nextdoor for sure. If you're finding success on any other digital marketing channel, you can find success on Nextdoor. And I also think it's important to keep in mind that we have a team here that's ready to help that can answer questions via email, or hop on screen shares. So you don't have to feel like you have no idea what to do or you have no idea how to get started. We want to help you. We want every advertiser on the platform to find success. And I think that the the more local you can get in your messaging on your ads, the better your ads will perform. Even if you are a large global brand, talking about why somebody should purchase your product, a specific city or neighborhood will really help performance.

Courtney Alexander: Wonderful. Well, that's all the questions I have for you. I'll let you get back to your day, but thank you so much for joining me. I feel like I've learned a ton and I'm so excited for our audience to we'll get to hear this and meet you and hopefully have some success on the NAC platform.

Molly from Nextdoor: Great. Thanks so much, Courtney. It was awesome chatting with you as well.