How Yelp Ads Can Help Your Small Business

What is a Yelp Ad?

Yelp Ads help small and medium sized businesses advertise by providing improved metrics, targeted paid advertising, and enhanced profiles. About 74 percent of customers searching online for local businesses in the area will turn to a review site before they make a purchase, according to a 2016 study by Nielsen. Also, a large number of consumers (79 percent) purchase something at a business they found on Yelp do just that within a week, making it a much shorter sales cycle.

Most users of Yelp are savvy, active, and usually ready to make a purchase, so it makes sense to make it easy to reach them.

There are various benefits of using Yelp Ads. They include showing your businesses directly to those nearby consumers that are looking to make a purchase. The ads show up in a few different kinds of places, depending on the relevancy of the search. They will also appear on competitor business pages. These ads are also mobile optimized, crucial for the largely increasing number of searches from those using mobile devices. Yelp also has a Customer Leads feature that helps you understand how people interact with your business on the site. An important marketing metric to be familiar with is the cost per lead, and Yelp also provides this.

Yelp is great for small or medium sized businesses trying to reach new customers, as they provide an additional outlet. It helps that it has become a favorite for many consumers looking to make purchase decisions. But there should be some caution for some. If your company website is in need of a refresh or your social profiles are not being completely maintained, it would be smart to update your Yelp profile but wait on running ads just now. It is advised that you need to have a more established marketing plan in place before running these Yelp Ads.

Thinking of Working with a Yelp Ads Certified Partner?

Certified Partners are distinguished by a Partner badge on both their website and other marketing materials and provide the knowledge and expertise needed to keep your business on the right track. A large amount of these Partners are full-service marketing agencies, so this is only one of the many tools they have to help you.

If you are part of a small business and you are ready to improve their online presence, working with one of these partners is perfect. You already know that Yelp is important but you are struggling with it on your own. Your business does not run itself, and Yelp Ads Certified Partners is there you help you manage it even better than before.

A huge plus to working with one of these partners is that they have access to advanced metrics that can help you. Along with these metrics, they can provide you with an audit that gives you a fantastic starting point.

Maximize Your Ad Spend with Free Yelp Audits

If you decide to work with a Yelp Ads Partner, you will also receive a free audit to go with your Yelp presence, which includes: Results for Yelp searches, analytics like mobile check-ins, website clicks, and mapped directions, areas that need improvement, like competitors advertising on your profile or Specialities, adding a call-to-action button, mobile optimization, and a dedicated account team.

A massive part of improving your overall strategy is making sure to monitor the number of times your profile on Yelp has appeared in searches. This is part of every audit, along with the number of times people checked-in on their phone, visited your website, and obviously the people that mapped directions from your profile.

A big part of the audit is the different areas your business can improve, for example like inserting keywords to your Specialties section. This will aid you in more often appearing in both search engine and Yelp searches. Becoming a Yelp advertiser also gives you the chance to remove ads from competitors on your page, reducing the bounce rate as users head to their profile.

They also have a CTA button that makes it extremely easy for potential customers to contact you, even more so on mobile. This allows users to execute the action you value the most, like Print Coupon, Get a Quote, or Schedule Appointment. When using a Call Now CTA on mobile, there is a pop-up that lets users call directly from Yelp. There are many more ways to gain traffic and results from mobile users.

With your dedicated account team paired with Certified Partners, you have the ability to focus on other important parts of your business. Being part of this team will give you access to data management, content uploads, and strong reporting.

Making Yelp a Larger Marketing Strategy

There is no such thing as a marketing platform that will immediately fix all of your business’s marketing issues. It is all about finding that perfect mix of different platforms that will help you in creating a strategy in order to meet your specific needs, Yelp Ads being one of them.

If you start running ads to your target audience but do not address your social media and website, you can lose leads. The perfect idea is to use Yelp ads once you have active social media, a monitored Yelp page, and a well-designed website. This is the point where potential customers are going to be more likely to purchase.

Conclusion

If your small or medium sized business has a social media presence that is regularly maintained and well-designed and functional website, it is time to get some Yelp Ads going. It is the perfect tool to grab those potential customers that are already looking for your company or one just like it. And with all the tools of Yelp, you can find out the problems you have and improve your marketing and Yelp strategy.

We are here to help you with all your digital marketing needs, which definitely includes Yelp. Contact us to find out how we can help your company marketing strategy improve by using Yelp Ads.

Question

Do you use Yelp? Why or why not? Comment down below!