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Yelp Help

Yelp. Just the sound of that name brings joy to some and complete frustration to others. If you are a small business owner successfully and profitably running ads on Yelp, that’s fabulous, but you’re probably in the minority. If you are a small business owner and have a listing or reviews on Yelp, but have not claimed your business, keep reading. If you have claimed your business but find advertising on Yelp completely worthless, you’re not alone, and this article may offer some solutions for you.

Despite the horrible rating in BBB, and the many (MANY) issues that digital marketing firms and/or small business owners encounter when attempting to manage an ad campaign on that particular referral site, Yelp is NOT ALL BAD.

Let’s begin by explaining what an updated, accurate listing on Yelp CAN do for your small business. Yelp DOES:

  • Provide an in-bound link that offers veracity and increased dominance in local SERP.
    Allow Yelp users (we’ll talk about these people in a minute), to leave reviews for OTHER Yelp users (we’ll take about these people in a minute).
    Allow you to list specific services you provide and create a personal “feel” to your profile so potential customers can decide if you’re a good fit for their particular need.
    Allow direct messaging from Yelp users via the Yelp App to which an owner or manager can respond from their cell-phone, their email, or both. This is great if you offer any type of “rapid response” services such as plumbing or water damage clean up. You can communicate with a potential customer in real time, close the deal and be on the job site with little to no miscommunication.
    Allow you to respond to reviews and demonstrate good customer service in response to both positive and negative remarks.
    Allows “other advertisers” listings to be blocked. However, you must enter into a high-tier monthly spend 6 month minimum agreement with Yelp for this to take effect. (I’ll touch on this later.)
    Allows businesses with highly visual products and services to showcase their work. This is great for boutique bakeries serving beautiful eclairs, or for a local photographer specializing in children’s portraits. Yelp is GREAT for this type of business.

Here’s some important features and services Yelp does NOT offer the small business owner:

  • The inability to create specific ads for specific services. This CAN be acceptable if you are a housekeeping / maid service that also offers one-time deep cleans or other similar services because they are all represented in your company’s ad for “housekeeping services.” This inflexibility can be detrimental, however, if your company offers a variety of services like a concierge company. If you want to run ads for “dog walking” separate from “errands” and “house-sitting,” Yelp does NOT offer this capability. Yes, your ads for “concierge service” will show, but unless your staff is doing their due diligence on the intake form, you have no idea which services that Yelp user was looking for when your ad showed up. Services that will provide a greater ROI are obviously worth more per click, and if you only have the ability to run one ad to cover all services, this is not providing you, the small business owner, the data you need to determine if Yelp is really profitable. It’s been my experience, because I have yet to get data from Yelp to the contrary, that small business owners who run ads on Yelp pay the HIGHEST rate per click, regardless of which service the Yelp user was searching for. In other words, if the average Yelp cost for a “dog walking” click is $.80 but the average Yelp cost for a “errands running” click is $3.89, guess how much you’re paying for a dog-walking click? Yep, you guessed it, the higher rate. (Until I can see data from Yelp that contradicts this, I am presenting this as my own experience as an advertiser on Yelp and ad manager for clients with listings on Yelp.)
    The inability to set a top limit to what you are willing to pay for a click: Again, this is based on the lack of data and control that Yelp offers a small business owner. How the Yelp algorithm determines what a click for a specific query is worth is a mystery. The account managers and sales managers whom I have spoken to at Yelp will not disclose this information. If Yelp *arbitrarily* determines that a carpet cleaning lead is worth $12, that’s what they charge per click, and the small business owner has no control over setting a limit on that number.
    The inability to set specific geographical ad targeting: While you CAN list the specific cities you serve, if you are a pizza shop, you are likely limited by an actual radius, meaning that you are probably paying for Yelp clicks that are out of your service area.
    The inability to ACCURATELY track where a call / click / lead came from: Most small business owners who are in NJ would scratch their head and wonder why they have paid for a click from a call in Portland, OR. According to Yelp, the “location” of the user is reported based on whatever town the user listed as their “hometown” in their profile. (I will leave this without further commentary, because, in my opinion, this is just sheer laziness on the part of Yelp in failing to track the location of the IP address that the query came from… Absurd.)
    The inability to schedule ads: If you are a coffee shop that’s open in the morning and for lunch, your ads will run on Yelp whenever anyone searches “coffee shop near me” even if it’s 4 pm.So just when you’ve begun to think, “Forget Yelp!” I’m going to tell you not to. As I said in the beginning, Yelp is NOT ALL BAD. For many small business owners, Yelp is a great fit. This is how you EFFECTIVELY use Yelp.Enter into the top-tier agreement with Yelp if:
    1. You have a huge marketing budget, and your goal is web dominance in a multi-city area.
    2. AND you offer a VERY narrow offering of services like “Lawn Irrigation.” You don’t do landscaping, you don’t do lawn care, you ONLY do “Lawn Irrigation” or you only offer “Pest Control” or you only offer “Italian Eatery” (with multiple locations), or you are a “Public Golf Course”. Ok, moving on.

    Don’t enter a “mid-tier” agreement with Yelp at all, because regardless of the size of your business, they only offer 6 month contracts (at the time of the writing of this article anyway). If you are a small business and cannot afford the top-tier contract, I do not recommending entering into an agreement with Yelp that you WILL NOT get out of if things should go south for a season, or a slump in the economy, etc. Just don’t bother with any contract with Yelp unless you can afford to see that marketing money leave and not necessarily return.

    Run ads on Yelp that YOU CONTROL and you can pause the campaign at any time. That’s how you control the spend on Yelp – you must physically pause the ads (which cannot be done if you’re in a contract). I recommend this option for small business owners if they meet this criteria:
    1. Your business is seasonal – like a haunted house or a summer camp.
    2. Your ad budget is limited.
    3. You have the time and/or personnel to monitor the campaign every couple days and make sure you’re controlling the spend.
    4. Your business is year-round, but you offer specials like “back-to-school haircuts” or “summer sale on flip-flops.”

    Claim your business profile on Yelp, and keep your listing updated. Add updated images, respond to reviews, add a link to leave reviews on your website, etc. This should be done by EVERY small business owner. Even if you’re not actively running an ad campaign on Yelp, users can still find your listing organically on that platform.

    Which brings me to the last but not least important component of Yelp: The Yelp User. These are wonderful people. Yelp users are people who care about good customer service, who appreciate convenience (hence the app), and who are seeking to have a great experience AND THEN BRAG ABOUT IT ON YELP! Is there room for improvement in our relationship with Yelp? Absolutely, but the small business owner who understands Yelp (which now you are one of those super people), can make Yelp work for them without feeling like they’ve been taken to the (local 5-star) cleaner.

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Using PPC and Direct Mail together can help with branding and promotions.
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Coordinating PPC Targeting With USPS Every Door Direct Mail

Combining traditional and digital marketing tactics is a very smart strategy for local small business owners.  Using pay-per-click  (PPC) Google or Bing campaigns in conjunction with an Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) campaign provides an impact on your target audience that reinforces your brand, or serves to remind customers of your specials or limited-time offers.

Let’s say, for example, you’re a local yoga studio and you want to publicize a new offering of classes for seniors two mornings a week.  Coordinating an awareness PPC and retargeting campaign with a USPS EDDM campaign can get the attention of potential new customers who are geographically close.

Using this scenario, one could create a PPC campaign that would very specifically target “Senior Yoga” using Keyword insertion {Yoga for Seniors} (or something similar) in the headline. It would also be smart to set “exact match” on terms like “senior yoga” and “senior fitness” so that your ads are only showing for that exact type of search.

But in addition to making sure your ads only show for the right search query, you can set your ads to only show in specific zip codes where mostly seniors live. How do you know what those zip codes are?  That’s where USPS Every Door Direct Mail can help.

When you go to the EDDM website, you can begin to do a little research on exactly where (down to the delivery route) your potential customers are.  You can see average income, number of single-dwelling homes, number of apartments, and average age range as you hover over the map of a zip code you’ve selected.  If your target audience for your Senior Yoga classes is people between the ages of 50 and 85 with an average income of $50,000 and up, you can find which zip codes most closely fit that demographic, and set your ad campaign to show exclusively in those zip codes.

Simultaneously, you can launch a EDDM postcard mailing campaign for those same zip codes, setting the start and end dates of your PPC campaign to wrap around the date of the direct mail campaign.

Detailed? Absolutely, but this kind of thing is right up our alley!  The geeks at Savvy Sister Marketing are committed to providing our clients tailored, strategic marketing ideas that will provide the best ROI with as little waste as possible.  If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, that’s great… enjoy!  If this all seems like Greek, go ahead and contact us today, and WE WILL HELP YOU!  Marketing doesn’t have to be guesswork… strategic, targeted marketing CAN bring results.

 

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Social Media Data Analysis Small Business
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Using Social Media for Market Research

Market analysis and gathering data on your potential and existing customers can improve your ROI, help you find weaknesses in your customer service or channels of communication, and highlight potential new audiences.  Understanding your customers and potential customers, and being able to predict their behavior can be VERY profitable.  That’s why huge corporations pay tremendous amounts of money for “big data” market research and analysis.

If you’re a small business owner, you may think that market research is beyond your budget.  It’s not. If you’re on the right social media platforms, and using best-practices to schedule relevant posts, provide engaging content, and interact with your audience, you ARE doing market research!

Reactions to posts or content on Twitter, Facebook, Pintrest, FlipBoard, Tumblr, your e-mail service, or your website can tell you what topics or products your customers are most interested in.  Evaluating analytics on these platforms can provide the small business owner with insight into what time of day followers are online, look-alike audiences, gender, age, and even other interests.  When evaluated correctly, patterns may be found that can provide enormous opportunities for you to enter into a users’ day and insert your product or service as a solution to a problem, or a complimentary addition to their lifestyle.

For example, if you are a small cafe that serves pastry and coffee in the morning, you’re probably posting “foodies” on Facebook and Instagram galore.  Which ones performed the best? Chocolate, cinnamon, something with a cute design, or maybe an image of a PERSON enjoying the delicious pastry performed best.  When you look at the data, and find a pattern or insight, you’ve just done market research!

Using that same example of the cafe, let’s evaluate what time of day most followers are actively using that platform.  If most users are busy working people who login during their lunch break, make sure you’re running tomorrow’s breakfast special when they’re most likely to see your post – during the 11 to 2 window.

Now let’s have a look at this same cafe’s email data. What is in the subject line of the emails that are opened the most? If “Monthly Newsletter” is in the subject line of the (wait for it…) Monthly Newsletter, but you’re not happy with the open rate, try putting “Pastry of the Month” in the subject line instead!  Let that run for a couple months, and see if your open rate goes up.  After that try “Images of Fun Latte Art” in the subject line, and see how that performs.  Collecting this data, and searching for patterns over time is a form of market research.

So at this point I’m going to shamelessly promote the Savvy Sister Marketing Team because whether you’re using primarily social media, PPC Ads, or relying on email, you probably do not have the time or energy to look at the data and determine what information will help you make the key business decisions that will move you forward.  WE CAN HELP YOU!  Data analysis is one of our strongest offerings for our clients.  By providing business owners with the data they need to make key business decisions and improve their profit margin, the team at Savvy Sister Marketing allows small business owners to confidently make smart choices. Get in touch now.

If you want to learn analytics, we can help.  If you want solid business analysis based on your online performance, we can help.  Contact Robyn at Savvy Sister Marketing today!  I’ve got 10 minutes, let’s talk… 727-742-6473

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Responding to Negative Reviews

It’s going to happen. There are individuals who truly believe that the internet is the appropriate place for them to vent their personal grievances against a business owner or their employee(s). Thankfully, most review sites have some policy guidelines that give business owners recourse to have these reviews removed, but if a review – regardless of whether it was true or valid – doesn’t necessarily violate the policies of the site on which it was posted, a response may be required. Here are some guidelines to help small business owners respond to negative reviews.

Don’t – If the review is truly a “rant” when people read it they will likely determine on their own that this is not necessarily a person from whom they can get an accurate assessment of the quality of products and services they can expect from your business. If the review is emotional, extremely long, and full of misspelled words and grammatical errors, it is probably best to let be its own best testimonial. Some people make it clear from their own words that they are unreasonable and/or not believable.

Keep It Professional – Do NOT make personal statements or offer any criticism about the client / customer who left the review. A great advantage to getting a negative review is that it can be an opportunity to showcase your customer relation skills, and demonstrate that you are committed to client satisfaction. State that plainly and clearly, and you will be likely be admired by potential customers regardless of the legitimacy of the review.

Offer A Solution – If the review is actually legitimate, it’s likely that it can be easily resolved. Offer a coupon, free shipping, free appetizer, a face-to-face meeting with the person, whatever is appropriate for the type of products and services you offer. The outcome may not necessarily be that you win that customer back, but it may demonstrate to potential customers that you are a business owner who cares about the opinion of your clients.

Don’t Explain Yourself – Don’t re-hash conversations you may have had with this person to resolve the issue. The chances of winning them over after you have tried to come to an agreement face-to-face or by phone or email are very slim, so don’t bother publishing your efforts on social media. Explaining your “side” will likely make potential customers feel as if you are not someone who listens and rather that you are someone who needs to have the last word. Don’t bother.

Apologize – If the review is legitimate, if you have truly tried to resolve the issue with this person, if you offered some type of recompense, it’s ok to just agree to disagree and let them express that they had a bad experience. This is so very, very rare. Most people are reasonable, and truly want resolution and peace, but there will be times when it’s just impossible. It’s ok to just offer a public apology and wish that person all the best.

By taking the high road, bad reviews can actually be an opportunity to show potential customers that you truly care, and that you are professional, educated, and willing to admit wrongs and try to make things right. It is a chance to be the bigger person and bring a little peace to your small corner of the world.

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Protected: Evaluating How You Rank Against Competitors

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Local SEO Best Practices
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Smart Local SEO Practices for Small Business

The query “…Near Me” has become one of the most prolific search queries within the past couple of years.  If you are a brick and mortar business, it is absolutely essential that you understand local SEO and how your business is showing in a SERP.  Location specific queries are managed differently by search engines, so it’s important to understand which elements of your website are the most important with regard to local SEO.

When search engines, specifically Google, determine that the user is searching for something geographically near them, the results page has a “local pack” showing the data that Google has on file about relevant businesses in a specific geographic region.  This information is geography based, and the listed choices are featured on a map to the right.  Below the “pack” local organic results appear based on page rank as determined by that search engine at the time of that query.  The search engines are using the data that is currently on your website to display this information, so if your business is not updated with current info, phone number, hours of operation, and service description, you may be losing a sale.

Because it is still the most widely-used search engine, making sure that your Google My Business page is current is foundational to local SEO.  (If you don’t know how to update, edit, post, and reply to rankings on your Google My Business Page, become a member now for an in-depth tutorial on Google My Business or contact Savvy Sister Marketing for help.)

Local directory sites such as your local Chamber of Commerce website, BBB, Patch.com, Local.com, and the local online paper are important as well.

Contextually relevant citations in review sites like HomeAdvisor, BBB, Yelp, Manta, Trip Advisor, Wix, and FourSquare should be consistent across all sites.  Another important element is having “on-page signals” for the search engines that alert them to your physical location.  Your site should list the names of the cities, counties, zip codes, and regions that you service.

If your location is incorrect in Google maps, and you provide goods and/or services at your brick-and-mortar location, this must be addressed immediately.  If you have customers telling you that their GPS sent them to the wrong location, or they cannot find your location in their GPS, correcting this is also a priority.  For more in-depth information on how to ensure your business is showing properly in maps and GPS systems, become a member to access our tutorial, or contact Savvy Sister Marketing today.  Don’t put this off – you’re losing customers.

Getting good local SEO established can be very time consuming, and if you’re a busy business owner, it may be worth it to source this out so that you are certain it is done correctly and consistently across all relevant platforms.  Good local SEO depends on good website content as well as relevant inbound links, reviews, and citations.  It can seem an overwhelming task, but when done correctly it can be a game-changer for a local small-business owner in dominating the local SERP.

If you want an audit of your “local” presence, or if you want help making sure you’re listing properly in local relevant sites, contact Savvy Sister Marketing today.  We Will Help You!

 

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