Below you'll find answers to the questions we get asked the most about Shop1Local.
Despite the fact that 81% of shoppers research businesses online before making a purchase or visiting in person, 55% of small businesses believe their business doesn’t need an online presence or digital advertising—a misconception that limits growth and customer reach.
As a result, countless local businesses will remain invisible online, with their products and services overshadowed by larger, national brands. Without a strong online presence, these businesses risk being overlooked entirely by digital-first shoppers, leaving them unable to capitalize on the rapidly growing digital marketing landscape.
That’s why Shop1Local was created. Our communities shouldn’t have to compete with Google, Facebook, and thousands of outside advertisements. We need a simple, affordable solution that delivers the seamless online experience customers expect—focused entirely on helping them find hyper-local goods and services from their own local businesses.
At its core, Shop1Local is a platform designed to bring back the simplicity of finding products and services offered by local businesses, making it easier for communities to connect. Finding something as simple as an affordable home service provider or a local salon shouldn’t require relying on word-of-mouth or Facebook groups.
On top of that, digital marketing has become so complex that only companies with extensive resources can navigate it effectively—and that’s just not fair. Shop1Local solves this problem with customizable subscriptions to our hyper-local advertising model and custom marketing services, specifically tailored for medium to small businesses, self-employed individuals, and entrepreneurs.
What does success look like to us? It’s knowing that someone searching for a specific need on Shop1Local.com discovers one of our subscribers through their business profile and advertising efforts, then uses that connection to purchase from that business. In that moment, Shop1Local becomes a resounding success.
An advertorial is a combination of an advertisement and an editorial, designed to educate and engage readers while subtly promoting your business. It builds trust by providing valuable content, enhances engagement, and often leads to higher conversion rates. By blending useful information with promotion, advertorials effectively connect your brand with your audience in a more meaningful way.
Shop1Local’s search delivers hyper-local, highly relevant results by restricting business listings and ads to the selected parish, using advanced vector search powered by ChatGPT to analyze keywords and match user intent with business details, intelligently ranking results, and allowing subscribers to boost visibility with detailed listings—all for a truly localized search experience.
White-label services are essentially partnerships we’ve established with companies that offer powerful, often expensive applications and tools that would otherwise be out of reach for individual businesses. These agreements enable us to provide essential digital marketing solutions to our suscribers without the need for in-house development. This means you can access top-tier digital marketing solutions that might otherwise be unattainable, while we handle everything seamlessly behind the scenes.
DSP (Demand-Side Platform) Ads are digital ads purchased and managed through a platform that allows advertisers to automate the buying of ad inventory across a wide range of digital channels. This includes displaying only local ads on Shop1Local.com, ensuring that ads exclusively support local businesses. A properly focused DSP advertisement model is affordable and ideal for businesses looking to scale their advertising efforts, optimize targeting, and efficiently reach local audiences.
Unlike other platforms, we don't use Google Ads on our website as we manage all advertising in-house. This allows us to control the accuracy and frequency of ads displayed. Moreover, we ensure in great detail that only businesses with a physical presence in your area are shown in your search results, guaranteeing that local businesses reach local customers.
You're starting to see why Shop1Local.com is so useful. For our premium subscribers, a "Service Request" is a feature that lets potential customers submit requests directly to a company. The company receives an automated transmission of your request without your contact information initially. They then have the option to accept or decline the request. If they accept, your contact details are provided, and they must respond to you within hours, confirming the method you prefer to be contacted by. If the company declines your request, you will receive a notification. This feature allows you to communicate your needs to a company efficiently, eliminating the usual back-and-forth and saving all communication on your profile, thereby streamlining the entire conversation process.
After creating an account and claiming or creating your listing, you'll gain access to a personalized customer portal at my.shop1local.com. This portal enables you to perform various administrative actions and access reporting features related to your listing, including the ability to launching new digital campaigns. Click HERE and use the same credentials you used during account creation.