The Next App For Small Business Advertising – Nextdoor

Adam Jones  00:00

So Alyssa,

Alyssa Mullins  00:00

yeah. What’s up?

Adam Jones  00:01

Did you see the moose in our neighborhood?

Alyssa Mullins  00:04

There was a moose. Yeah.

Adam Jones  00:06

Okay. Well, okay, so I didn’t like see it. But like I saw it in the next door

Alyssa Mullins  00:09

app. What’s that?

Adam Jones  00:11

Well tell you about it and our viewers after these messages. So next door slash the next door app, their rent is a little odd, is a really cool, newer platform that is a social media platform that nobody is really talking about, like, have you seen that? Have you interacted with a whole lot?

Alyssa Mullins  00:34

No, I can honestly say, I never really knew about it until you brought it up. So I have no context.

Adam Jones  00:41

So as a platform, it’s fascinating because it allows users to not only like, say, like, what city they’re in, but then also be able to say what neighborhood they’re in. So like, we live in a fairly small town. And I think there’s probably 15 neighborhoods that are within our vicinity. 15, right. Like there’s quite a bit that that’s going on. And the price for advertising inside of the platform is really, really affordable. For our area, it’s $20 a month in some bigger areas. It’s like $50 a month.

Alyssa Mullins  01:14

Oh, wow, that like a month, a month, for a month, you can put out ads. Almost however many you want.

Adam Jones  01:24

Yeah, yep. We’ve been doing it for some of our clients. And we’ve been seeing some good early successes. So can you describe the kind of ads that we’re doing, though, because they’re, they’re a little bit different than what we’d expect?

Alyssa Mullins  01:34

Yeah. So next door, they’re almost like short little like conversation starter topics that can be really relevant to you to your business, or to your neighborhood. So there are some that are like, oh, where’s your favorite park in Pullman. And it’s like, oh, we like going here, and you put like short like one to two sentence responses for that one. And you can have almost as many of those running as you want, you can put in your own topics to answer. And it’s really nice, because then they just kind of show up on the feed. And it’s not too invasive, it doesn’t take up too much space when it’s there. And so people who are interested in like, Yeah, I like that they can respond to they can interact with the ad, whatever the call to action may be. The other kind of ads that you can do, are kind of like promotional sales. So for example, if there was a business that was doing 50% off, you know, these big ticket items, or 50% off, like, you know, all these handmade goods from this local person that was selling something, you can put that on next door app and create an ad for it, where you get a simple headline, you get to put an image of your choice, and then a description explaining the ad explaining the deal, whatever that may be, and that, and then again, it’ll kind of pop up, like how Facebook and other ads do work just shows up on on the feed. And you can just kind of see everything like oh, okay, and you get to let your neighbors know about the deals that are going on. The third kind of ad that they do is very similar to the one that I just talked about with the promotions. The only difference is, it is solely intended to drive people to your website, you know, you could do like, Hey, I have a new blog up, you know, if especially if you’re more of like a small business influencer. And maybe you did a blog on how the first quarter of sales when or what the first quarter, it was like running a business and everything like that. You can announce, hey, I have a new blog up on my website. I talk about this. And then same format, headline, image, subtitle, like other texts and everything like that. And then when they click on it, they can go to your website. And yeah, and all of those do have like different rates, though, like when you do you can pay for the 20 to 50, whatever the cost is per neighborhood. But for some of the promotional ads, and other ones, you will pay a separate fee per ad. So a thing to keep in mind is, how do you want to advertise on the platform? Do you want the conversation starters? Because those ones are like really nice for the $20 a month one? Or do you want to do the more promotional ones, where you do have a separate fee, and that does vary, again, between neighborhood and everything like that?

Adam Jones  04:16

Yeah. And the big thing to realize when looking and evaluating platforms is, you know, is it being effective, right, next door app is pretty new, but it has some pretty powerful features and a good user base. And it’s an interesting user base, because they’re not necessarily the people that are going to go on Facebook, and post a whole lot. Usually these are localized to the extent of hey, you know, have you seen that red car that’s always in the neighborhood? Who do we know who owns that? You know, it’s kind of almost like a neighborhood watch app. But then there’s these additional conversations and pieces that operate and it’s really delightful. Can we say that this is driving conversions. Not not as deeply as we’d like to say just yet, the ads that can say, okay, let’s drive you to the website, let’s do some additional things. That does show some promise. But the big piece that next door app does is brand awareness. Which brand awareness, we really do, we really do. And the funny thing that happens because these people are willing to engage and share the neighborhood secrets, or Oh, hey, here’s the best place in town, here’s, oh, hey, did you know this park? Or oh, there’s this new mural. There’s so much organic, good conversation that occurs that when someone says, Hey, I’m new in town, where do I go to get my car fixed? There’s incredible opportunities for that referral and word of mouth. Because you’ve been top of mind in advertising, saying, oh, yeah, this place does it right. And you have that efficacy in that referral. That’s so powerful, because you’re not just getting necessarily a full advertisement. You’re getting the locals opinion. Oh, hey, this is the good shop. Oh, this is the bad shop. Oh, yeah, they only really do tires. Oh, they these guys do transmissions, you know, a lot of those things that when you’re new to an area, or you’re still discovering, you may not have the full trust built. And you’re relying on the true locals to tell you. And that’s what the next door app really has is your true locals.

Alyssa Mullins  06:22

Yeah, people that are invested in the community that they’re in. And, and so you know, word of mouth is great. Like, the other day, I was messing around on the app, just trying to see what was going on. And there was talk of a new business that’s gonna come into town, and just being like, Hey, this is kind of an update of what’s happening. And there were comments, there were reactions, there were people like, oh, wow, that’s so exciting. And also trying to figure out, you know, oh, well, what do they do? What’s the business about and being able to get that onto that app, or you can have that access to local people in your community, who will honestly be very invested in become, you know, potential loyal customers, or even, you know, brand advocates like, those people are really valuable for you, for your business and for your brand. And that’s one way that, like you were saying, next door app can truly like help you and you can find some true value and benefits there.

Adam Jones  07:24

Yeah, so the three things that we would recommend, when looking at next door app is one, it is a very hyper localized, affordable alternative to Facebook advertising. We do see some like National sponsorship ads, there is a national sponsors there, but hardly anyone else is using it. I’m not saying to go abuse that. People do we there’s kind of a scorched earth thing that can happen with marketing. But we are saying if you’re looking for a good alternative, for hyper localized, it’s a great place to be. The other thing that we really recommend to be aware of is that this is brand awareness, a lot of the conversions are going to be effort dependent, meaning like you really have to engage, you really have to be in the platform, you have to be talking and engaging to a certain extent. And so at baseline minimum, it is brand awareness. But it’s brand awareness that is priceless in the way that we would describe it. So the third thing, though, we would say cow’s recommendation, but while warning in a certain regard, is that there is some gossip on the platform, right? Because you’re like, Oh, my goodness, Whose car is that? Who’s still has their Christmas lights up? Me I do, I still have some real lights up. The lights are pretty, it’s true, Mr. And he’s put you spend so much effort in it, keep your lights up, you know, there’s gonna be a little bit of gossip, there’s gonna be a little bit of emotional stuff, not nearly as bad as Facebook, because it’s less anonymous than Facebook. You’re not just Bob or Karen, your Bob and Karen that live on X Hill in this specific neighborhood. And so when you remove that anonymous entity, it removes a bit of the trolls, and it begin, people begin to censor themselves on a much deeper level, which is helpful. But we would still say to be very, very careful with that. Yeah,

Alyssa Mullins  09:19

be careful and kind of like what we said, another weekly socials and everything, just be positive, it’s a good place to happily and positively engage with those in your neighborhood. And even as a business or as a personal, you know, using it as a personal account. You can see who’s in your neighborhood and you can, you know, make genuine connections so that way they see value in you and in your brand and in your business as you continue to grow. And so that’s it’s just, it can be really, really valuable.

Adam Jones  09:53

Have fun with it. Right, like social media is meant to be fun. Yeah, it’s meant to be engaging. It’s meant to be just community building. And so we see a lot of good potential in this app. And that’s why we’re encouraging people. Check it out and download it login. It’s free. If you want to use it for business, it’s 20 bucks. And that $20 is very affordable moving forward. So I think that’s all we have for today. It is a little bit cold out here, but we’re almost done with our studio. Stay with stick with us while we go on this journey. Yeah, we’re getting there. We’re getting there. Thanks so much.

Alyssa Mullins  10:29

Hey, so cold