For independent shops
Parade is a weekly guide to what’s worth visiting locally. Your shop gets a set number of placements every month — new stock, an event, a seasonal offer — in front of readers who signed up for exactly this.
Fixed price from £39 a month · No ad account, no contract, cancel in two clicks · 0 readers across 1 city editions
What your placement looks like
Corbett & Fern · Independent shops · Institute Road
First Thursday of every month the shop stays open until nine, there’s wine, and everything is ten per cent off. It is not a large shop, so come early if you want the good stuff.
Wine, 10% off everything, until 9pm
ExampleAn invented business, in the real Spotlight format.
Why independent shops use this
Late-night openings, a new line landing, a maker’s day. Each placement can carry something different.
Your directory entry has photos, hours, and a map, and it ranks above unclaimed listings in your category.
£39 to £199 a month depending on how much placement you want. It doesn’t rise because a national brand outbid you.
The question we get asked
Only if it makes someone walk in. That’s the honest limit of what we can measure: we can tell you how many people opened the edition and how many clicked through to you, but we can’t count footfall. Several shops use a code in their offer line to close that loop themselves.
The card format
Independent shops · Institute Road
First Thursday of every month the shop stays open until nine, there’s wine, and everything is ten per cent off. It is not a large shop, so come early if you want the good stuff.
Wine, 10% off everything, until 9pm
How it works
After setup the only decision left is what offer to run. Each edition carries 1 Spotlight, 6 featured cards and 12 roundup mentions — that inventory is fixed.
Pick the number of placements you want each month and pay by card. Monthly or annual — annual is two months cheaper. Your account is created the moment the payment clears.
A guided form: what you do, where you are, photos, your link, and the offer you want to run. Ten minutes on a phone. On Featured and Spotlight we draft the promotional copy from what you give us and send it to you to approve.
Submissions are checked against our editorial standards automatically. Most clear straight away. Anything unusual — a regulated claim, a broken link — goes to a person, and we tell you within 24 hours either way.
The scheduler allocates your placements across the coming editions using a published rotation rule. Your listing goes live in the directory immediately. Your report arrives at the start of each month.
Pricing
Live availability for Marlow. Other cities on the pricing page.
Month to month. Cancel any time from your dashboard.
One placement a month, plus a proper directory entry.
Billed monthly, no contract
1 placement every month
No Listed slots left in Marlow this month.
Three placements a month, each with its own card and offer.
Billed monthly, no contract
3 placements every month
No Featured slots left in Marlow this month.
Five placements a month, one of them the lead story.
Billed monthly, no contract
5 placements every month
No Spotlight slots left in Marlow this month.
Reader listing — £0
A claimed entry in the directory. Free, forever. No placements, no card. Useful if you want to be findable before you spend anything. Claim a listing.
Founding rate
The first 40 paying businesses in each city keep the price they signed up at for 12 months, even when we raise prices as the readership grows.
Alternatives
| Aspect | Running your own Meta ads | Parade |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | Business Manager, a pixel, a payment method, creative, audience setup, a learning phase. | One form, once. We assemble and schedule the placements. |
| What it costs | An auction. Your cost per result rises when bigger advertisers move into your area. | £39–£199 a month, fixed. It doesn’t move because someone outbid you. |
| How people see you | An interruption in a feed. You’re competing with everything else scrolling past. | A recommendation inside a guide someone chose to subscribe to. |
| Reach | Effectively unlimited, if you keep paying for it. | Capped by our reader count in your city. We publish that number. |
| Targeting | Granular — interests, behaviours, lookalikes, retargeting. | One dimension: the city edition someone subscribed to. |
| Measurement | Detailed, and increasingly modelled rather than observed. | Sends, opens and clicks, counted directly. No conversion modelling. |
Before you buy
We would rather lose the sale than have you cancel in month two.
We guarantee placements — a specific number, in specific editions. What those placements produce depends on your offer, your photos and your prices. If we don’t run the placements you paid for, we refund that month.
We can tell you how many people were sent an edition, opened it, and clicked through to you. We can’t tell you who walked in. If that matters, put a code in your offer line — several customers do.
Every city page shows the current number of readers. If that number is too small to justify the price for you, don’t subscribe yet — join the waitlist and we’ll tell you when it grows.
Regulated claims, unverifiable superlatives and anything we can’t stand behind editorially get turned down. Our editorial standards are published in full, and you’re refunded if we reject your submission and you don’t want to change it.
Scheduling, sending, tracking, reporting and billing are. Editorial judgement isn’t. Some submissions are read by a person, and the Spotlight write-up is written by one.
Questions
A set number of placements in your city’s weekly edition each billing month — one on Listed, three on Featured, five on Spotlight — plus a permanent directory listing and a monthly performance report. The placements are positions in an email that actually sends; you can read past editions before you buy.
As many as are subscribed to that city’s edition, minus the ones who don’t open it. We publish the live subscriber count for every city on the pricing page and on each city page, and your monthly report shows the actual send and open numbers for the editions you appeared in.
By a published rule, not by who asks loudest. Each edition has one Spotlight, six featured cards and twelve roundup mentions. Slots are filled in that order, and within each tier the business who has waited longest goes first, with anyone behind on their contracted placements caught up first. The full rule is on the how it works page.
Then it sells out and we stop taking subscriptions there until we’ve grown the readership or a customer leaves. Overselling the inventory would make the product worthless for everyone already paying. You can join the waitlist for that city and we’ll email you when a slot opens.
On Listed, you write a short description and we publish it. On Featured and Spotlight we draft the headline and body from the details you give us, and send it to you to approve or edit before anything runs.
Yes, from your dashboard, as often as you like. Featured plans can have one offer live at a time and Spotlight can have three. Changes go through the same standards check as a new submission, which usually clears in minutes.
Two clicks in your billing settings. No phone call, no retention queue. Your placements run to the end of the period you’ve paid for and your listing drops back to a free directory entry. We’ll ask why you’re leaving, and you can ignore the question.
Everything we publish is on the site. If the format doesn’t suit your business, you’ll know in about two minutes and it won’t have cost you anything.
| Ongoing work | Creative refresh, budget management, fatigue, rejections. | Change your offer when you want to. Otherwise, nothing. |
|---|
Getting started
Running your own Meta ads
Business Manager, a pixel, a payment method, creative, audience setup, a learning phase.
Parade
One form, once. We assemble and schedule the placements.
What it costs
Running your own Meta ads
An auction. Your cost per result rises when bigger advertisers move into your area.
Parade
£39–£199 a month, fixed. It doesn’t move because someone outbid you.
How people see you
Running your own Meta ads
An interruption in a feed. You’re competing with everything else scrolling past.
Parade
A recommendation inside a guide someone chose to subscribe to.
Reach
Running your own Meta ads
Effectively unlimited, if you keep paying for it.
Parade
Capped by our reader count in your city. We publish that number.
Targeting
Running your own Meta ads
Granular — interests, behaviours, lookalikes, retargeting.
Parade
One dimension: the city edition someone subscribed to.
Measurement
Running your own Meta ads
Detailed, and increasingly modelled rather than observed.
Parade
Sends, opens and clicks, counted directly. No conversion modelling.
Ongoing work
Running your own Meta ads
Creative refresh, budget management, fatigue, rejections.
Parade
Change your offer when you want to. Otherwise, nothing.
If you already have someone running paid social well, Parade is a complement, not a replacement. If you don’t, this is the version that doesn’t need one.