How Nextdoor Drove 453,000 Shoppers From Their Feeds to the Grocery Aisle

Guiding Stars takes the guesswork out of grocery shopping. Their shelf tag system assigns 1, 2, or 3 stars to products based on nutritional value, helping shoppers make better choices without parsing every label. But a shelf tag only works if shoppers know what it means before they get to the store.

To build that awareness, Guiding Stars partnered with Nextdoor on a hyper-local display campaign targeting health-conscious households across the Eastern U.S. The campaign focused on people ages 35-54 living within 20 miles of participating retailers — Stop & Shop, Food Lion, Hannaford, GIANT Company, and Giant Food — using first-party audience data and CPC bid optimization to reach shoppers with the highest likelihood of acting. Creative was localized at the city level and featured shelf tag imagery designed to connect the online ad to the in-store experience.

The engagement results came in strong. Nextdoor delivered a 0.45% click-through rate against a 0.30% benchmark, and 678 neighbors took meaningful on-platform actions — visiting the store finder, reading about the star rating methodology. CPA dropped 32% over the course of the flight as performance found its stride.

The foot traffic results were stronger. Analysis showed a 25.6% lift in store visits among exposed audiences compared to the control group, producing 453,751 incremental store visits that wouldn't have happened without the campaign. Visitation was highest in Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Norfolk, Washington D.C., and New York.

Nextdoor neighbors are household decision-makers already shopping for their families. For a brand whose success depends on what happens at the shelf, that's the right audience to reach.

Read the full case study.