Is Yelp advertising worth it? For many local business owners, Yelp is an essential marketing tool to connect with potential customers. A 2016 Nielsen study commissioned by Yelp shows that 74% of consumers searching online for a local business turn to a review site at least monthly. The consumers who used online review sites ranked Yelp as the most trusted, most influential, and most useful.
I am one of these consumers. While best known for restaurant reviews, Yelp has helped me personally discover my business accountant, my landscaper, and my moving company.
Should your business advertise on Yelp? I asked several business owners to share their experience to understand whether advertising on Yelp is worth it. Let’s delve into what’s good, what’s bad, what’s ugly about Yelp Ads.
What Yelp Ads look like
Advertising with Yelp vs. free Yelp listings
Any business owner can create or claim a listing on Yelp for free. A free business listing on Yelp enables the page owner to
- update your information, such as business hours, phone number, and website URL
- upload photos to your listing
- add categories and service offerings
- respond to reviews via direct message or public comment
- respond to requests for appointments or quotes
- create a Yelp Deal (similar to a Groupon voucher, shown) or check-in offer (example, “Check in on Yelp for a free soda”)
- access the Yelp for Business Owners dashboard or mobile app, which shows statistics such as pageviews of your Yelp listing, number of phone calls generated from your listing, and clicks to your website from your Yelp listing
In addition, Yelp offers paid page upgrades (called a Yelp Enhanced Profile) that enable you to
- add a call-to-action button on your listing (shown)
- remove competitor listings from your Yelp page
- create and customize a photo slideshow
- access Yelp customer support
Finally, Yelp offers a self-service pay-per-click (PPC) platform, by which you can
- create and manage PPC campaigns on Yelp
- customize your Yelp ads with photos and text (shown)
There’s almost no downside to claiming your free business listing (except for the solicitation, which we’ll discuss), so this article pertains specifically to Yelp’s paid offerings.
Free Yelp Ads: Yelp’s $300 advertising credit
Often, business owners experiment with Yelp upon being offered $300 in free Yelp Ads.
This offer may come from Yelp’s sales team, which has a reputation for being aggressive. Kathlena Rails, publicly known as The Allergy Chef and owner of Free and Friendly Foods bakery in San Bruno, CA, calls Yelp’s sales efforts “borderline harassment.” Still, she does occasionally use Yelp’s advertising platform, but only, she says, “when it [is] discounted or when they send an email with a promo code.”
The $300 of free Yelp Ads is a smart way to see whether the platform is right for your business. But if your intention is not to continue after the credit is exhausted, do not forget to cancel, or you will be charged.
Yelp Ads: the good, the bad, and the ugly
The good
Yelp Ads can be effective
Zach Hendrix, co-founder of GreenPal, says that his company has “tested Facebook Ads, Google AdWords [now called Google Ads], Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram Ads. However, we have found that our best return on investment has been with our Yelp page sponsorships.”
As a self-funded startup, he says, “we have to be very cautious with where we allocate money for paid customer acquisition. We find the traffic we get from Yelp page ads converts 67% of the time into a paying customer, and we simply cannot top this on any other paid channels.”
Is Yelp advertising worth it? For GreenPal, absolutely. “Traffic we get from Yelp is solely people at the bottom of the purchase-making process,” Zach says. “They have read your reviews, they have read about your business, and they are qualified and ready to buy.”
Kathlena agrees, but only to some extent. “For the right type of business,” she says, “Yelp Ads are great. If you need a boost in local foot traffic, and your products cater to the Yelp user base, it’s fantastic.” She reported a dramatic increase in her bakery’s customers, especially those seeking vegan and gluten-free foods.
Yelp Ads is easy to manage
In addition, Kathlena says, “I found [the platform] to be rather easy. In a few clicks, the ad was live.”
You set your own daily budget
Like other PPC platforms, Yelp Ads enable you to control your budget. You can advertise on Yelp with as little as $5/day.
The bad
Yelp Ads can be expensive
Even though Kathlena reported a spike in her bakery’s foot traffic, “we don’t feel it’s worth it for us… Our cost of goods is quite high. For us to keep up with Yelp Ads, it would eat up most of our profits.” She recommends Yelp Ads only for companies with the profit margin to support it.
Yelp’s targeting options are limited
Earl White, co-founder of House Heroes LLC, experimented with Yelp in 2017. “I signed up for a yearly plan at $1,000 a month,” he says. “I was drawn in by the feature that my ads would show on competitor Yelp listings.”
Ultimately, however, Earl discontinued advertising on Yelp. He describes his business as a “fix and flip” company that targets property owners who want to sell. The problem with Yelp Ads, he says, is that “anyone searching about real estate services would see my advertisement and contact me — often about real estate services I don’t provide.”
“If your business has general services,” he says, “it’s probably not a problem, as a broad array of industry-related search terms can yield business.” However, he cautions, “if your business has a narrow focus, Yelp’s general approach to search terms may not be the right fit.”
Managing the effort takes time
Nick Leffler, owner of Exprance, has tested Yelp advertising for his own business, as well as for clients his agency manages. Is Yelp advertising worth it? For his own business, Nick says, “I received one paying customer that barely paid back the initial investment. With all the time involved, it ended up not being worth it.”
The ugly
Yelp’s reporting is questionable
Geoffrey Radcliffe, CEO of PostLaunch, manages online marketing for companies, often including Yelp Ads. He finds Yelp’s reporting to be inflated and unsubstantiated. Yelp’s analytics, he says, “can’t be validated by any other tracking software (Google Analytics or Host account analytics).”
He offers this example: “I have a dentist client that was paying almost $3K per month for Yelp Ads.” Yelp’s reporting showed 40-50 calls generated per month, “but the reports from the phone company couldn’t even validate this.” In addition, “Yelp was reporting 1,700-ish click-throughs to that client’s website,” he says, “but total traffic was less than 300 monthly.”
Yelp’s sales team is aggressive, and its support team less than helpful
Business owners report numerous solicitation calls from Yelp’s sales team. Nick describes Yelp’s support as “extremely responsive when they’re trying to get you to spend money.” However, “After you are with them, then they become significantly harder to get a hold of and get answers.”
So, is Yelp advertising worth it?
Like so many answers in PPC, the best answer is “it depends.”
As the business owners interviewed here show, Yelp Ads can work but don’t always. In Nick’s experience with his agency clients, Yelp Ads “has worked well for some businesses, while others pay dearly and get little return.”
Is Yelp advertising worth it? The TLDR conclusion:
Yelp Ads may work if your business
- has an adequate budget to support it
- offers general vs. specialized services
- is willing to invest some time in managing the effort
Yelp Ads may not work if your business
- does not have the profit margin to afford it
- requires specific customer targeting rather than general search terms
The best way to know is to experiment for yourself. Claim your business page with Yelp and get $300 in free Yelp Ads, then see whether it’s a good fit.
This article contains some affiliate links. This means that I may make a small commission (at no extra cost to you). All opinions are always 100% mine and I don’t work with any product or company that I don’t use and love.
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Scott W Johnson
Yelp is a total waste of time and money – DOn’t do it.
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