Yelp – an online business directory and crowd-sourced review forum grown more and more prevalent over the previous decade.
Everyone knows that Yelp is the place to look for the truth about a restaurant, right? Two minutes on Yelp can tell a customer everything they need to know – from 5-star reviews to 1-star, and other concerns. But here’s the question – is the cost of Yelp advertising worth it for you? Does Yelp advertising produce enough ROI to make it worth the time and effort?
In this post, we will discuss the pros and cons of Yelp advertising and whether Yelp advertising is worth it for your business.
Outline
Short Answer
BTW, we love reading Reddit reviews so much, that we are working on the whole catalog of reviews for marketing software based on aggregated Reddit posts. First reviews on CRM systems are already published. Check out this list of 146 CRM systems, for example.
Is Yelp any good as a platform?
Yelp is a potentially lucrative marketing channel for new businesses
All press is good press, right? Yelp is well-known and a potentially lucrative site to channel businesses and customers to your restaurant. As of 2015, Yelp received a grand total of 142 million unique customers monthly. How many of those customers could be channeled to your business?
Convenience
Yelp advertising is intuitive and easy to use. Not only is it convenient for you, on the back end of the advertising, but also for potential customers. They can view reviews and data on your restaurant from the comfort of their home, rather than reaching the restaurant and then deciding to leave.
“Yelp Now”
Reservations can be made online!
You are expected to be there
These days, most businesses and restaurants are able to be accessed via Yelp. If your restaurant is not present, it may set up a red flag for potential customers. That’s right – not being on Yelp’s advertising may hurt you.
Spam
Yelp will not stop calling you about buying into premium services and “improving your business”.
Annoying? Yes.
Stopping anytime soon? Nope.
Limited metrics
Yelp does give you metrics for your ad’s impressions, but they are not known for being very specific. Compared to Google and Facebook, Yelp’s ad targeting is lacking.
Filtered reviews
As hard as you work to gain reviews for your business, you would think that they would all affect your rating, right?
Wrong.
Yelp is known to “filter” reviews, which means only particular ones actually show up on your profile and have an effect on your restaurant’s page.
So is yelp advertising worth it?
Yelp is not the one site to give your restaurant all of the advertising you need. Is Yelp advertising worth it for your business? It depends.
- What do you want?
- What do you need?
- And what are you willing to tolerate in order to achieve these results?
But I’d stay away from it given that there are other marketing channels to utilize, such as local SEO, more transparent paid advertising channels, etc.
Feeling lost? Get in touch and we’ll help you to define your potential marketing mix.
Free of charge – just a friendly chat. No strings attached.