What Are Yelp Ads?
Yelp Ads provides enhanced profiles, improved metrics, and targeted paid advertising for your small business. According to a Nielson 2016 study, 74 percent of consumers searching online for a local business turn to a review site before making a purchase. In addition, 79 percent of users who make a purchase at a business they found on Yelp do so within a week, making it a shorter sales cycle.
Yelp users are active, savvy, and ready to purchase. Let’s make it easy to reach them.
Further benefits of participating in Yelp Ads:
- Yelp Ads puts your business in front of consumers nearby who are looking to make a purchase.
- These ads appear in a variety of places including on relevant search result pages and competitor business pages.
- Yelp Ads are mobile optimized, which is important for the increased number of searches coming from users on mobile devices. Your business is promoted across all Yelp platforms: desktop, mobile website, and mobile app.
- Their Customer Leads feature helps you learn how people interact with your business on Yelp. This feature shows you when a Yelp user has recently called your business, mapped directions to your business, or clicked through to your website.
- Your cost per lead is an important marketing metric to know, and Yelp provides it. Their Revenue Estimate tool multiplies the customer leads your business receives from Yelp with the average revenue per customer for a business like yours, based on a 2013 BCG study of US businesses. (You can modify the revenue estimate anytime to match your business’ growth.)
It’s important to note that the pay-per-click advertising and enhanced profiles are two different pieces of the advertising puzzle. Cost-per-click advertising is performance-based, so you pay when Yelp users click on your ad.
In contrast, the Enhanced Profile upgrades your Yelp Business Page, so you’re able to add a call-to-action button, a photo slideshow, and more to your page. You can also remove competitors’ ads from your profile.
Should I Advertise on Yelp?
In short, yes! Yelp provides an additional outlet to reach new customers, as it’s become a go-to for many consumers ready to make purchase decisions. But, there’s a caveat.
If your website needs a refresh or you’re having trouble maintaining active social profiles, you may want to update your profile but refrain from running ads until you have a more established marketing plan in place.
Free Yelp Audits to Maximize Your Ad Spend
This includes:
- Results for Yelp searches
- Analytics like mapped directions, mobile check-ins, and website clicks
- Areas for improvement, like Specialties and competitors advertising on your profile
- Adding a call-to-action (CTA) button
- Mobile optimization
- Dedicated account team
Monitoring the number of times your Yelp profile has appeared in searches is an essential part of improving your overall strategy. This is included in every audit, along with the number of times people mapped directions from your profile, checked-in on their phone, and visited your website.
The audit also highlights different areas for improvement, like adding keywords to your Specialties section. This allows you to better appear in both Yelp and search engine searches. When you become a Yelp advertiser, you also have the opportunity to remove ads from competitors on your page, minimizing the bounce rate as viewers head to their profile.
A CTA button makes it as easy as possible for users to contact you, especially on mobile. It allows users to perform the action you value most, such as Schedule Appointment, Get a Quote, or Print Coupon.
When using a Call Now CTA on mobile, it brings up a pop-up that allows users to call directly from Yelp. This is just one of the ways that Yelp Ads helps you get the best results possible from mobile users. (Which is a significant amount of Yelp traffic.)
Our Yelp Strategy is Part of a Larger Marketing Strategy
We believe that there’s no one platform that will be the magic fix to your marketing problems. Instead, we use a mix of platforms to create a strategy that will meet your unique needs. Yelp Ads is one part of this.
If you begin serving ads to your target audience without addressing your website and social media, you can lose leads. Instead, use this once you have a well-designed website, active social media, and a monitored Yelp page. At this point potential customers will be more likely to purchase.
Once we help you create an engaging website that is consistently updated with blog content and any business updates, it’s time to work on both your social media content and your Yelp profile. We use a mix of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, based on your needs. Your Yelp profile though, moves through a standardized review process that helps us establish possible updates you may need before beginning any advertising.
This includes a free Yelp Audit, which helps you and us better understand where you are right now, so we can set goals moving forward. This audit includes everything listed above and is fully customized to your company.
Based on what we find through the audit, we make the following profile updates:
- Updated hi-res logo, if needed
- Updating your top photos (available for profiles enrolled with Yelp Ads)
- Responding to reviews
- Submit requests for inflammatory negative reviews
These updates help increase your brands’ cohesiveness throughout the platform for the best results possible.
Once these updates are complete, it’s time to start advertising! Whether you choose to just use their Enhanced Profile or also use their pay-per-click advertising, your marketing strategy can help you achieve your goals.
To learn more about our workflow give us a call at (415) 640-8009. We’d love to help make your Yelp profile ROI positive.
