*** UPDATE 3 ***
A documentary on Yelp called “Billion Dollar Bully” by Kaylie Milliken of Prost Films was just released (currently on Amazon Video, iTunes, and DVD). I was honored to be interviewed to provide my analysis and assessment of Yelp’s paid advertising program for business owners. I am sure you can guess my recommendation…
*** UPDATE 2 ***
It’s hilarious (and by hilarious I mean sad), to see that 7 of our legitimate reviews are hidden. Some of them were from the get-go but others just magically disappeared into the “not currently recommended” section despite having been allowed to show up on our profile for over a year… Since the last update when we had 3 hidden, we are up by four to now seven that are hidden. *tsk tsk*
And yet, the one bogus scathing review from a “Mindy” whom we never spoke with remains…
P.S. We did not sign up for their Yelp paid advertising non-sense (see previous update below). Hmm, interesting eh?
*** UPDATE ***
So my Growth Hacking agency currently have an unpaid Yelp listing so we can help control the online information about us – we’ve had it for some time and recently, an Yelp representative reached out to us via email.
As you can see… it reeked of carrot-dangling vague generalities salesmanship. For example, “$1200 of Extra Free Yelp Ads” which is meaningless because we have no idea what that $1200 actually does and what those Ads are (reading the Main Post below you can see how misleading this is).
And before that he weakly attempted to build rapport by saying that he “previously gone to school and lived in Los Angeles” and as such… knows the “business climate like the back of [his] hand.”
I personally have no idea how going to school and LIVING in Los Angeles would have any bearing on how well you know the business climate. I mean, by that logic, any elementary schooler in the L.A. area would also know the business climate!
And he ended his email with the “assume the sale” tactic by giving me an option between tomorrow or Wednesday (taking away the option to say “NO”).
My response was terse.
“Hi, What is this about? We already have a Yelp listing.“
And you can see below in his response… he just intensified his salesmanship.
He again blew a lot of smoke about a bunch of nothing… “lot of opportunity,” “promotion of $1200 of Extra Free Yelp Ads” (which still explains nothing), “gain exposure,” etc.
Blah blah blah.
And he tried the same “assume the sale” close at the end to get me locked down for a call.
I think he was hoping I’d get swayed by the $1200… little did he know that I knew exactly how absolutely meaningless that $1200 meant in this context.
So I told him straight up,
“Go ahead and send me some info so I can decide if it’s something worth us hopping on a call, I’d hate to waste your time or mine.“
And several days later, he came back like a dog on a bone…
So the dance continued.
I mirrored his email style and shot back the following response (see if you can pick up the similarities between our two emails)…
And this is about the time he called quits because a few days later, he responds with “I will no longer be your point of contact over here at Yelp. You will receive a new rep soon. In the meantime, you can call 877-767-9357 if you have questions. Have a great night.”
In the same email, he sends over some nonsense generic Yelp Ads Video and Yelp Advertising information which are nonsense fluff not geared lacking transparency – I want to know the CPC, where my ads will show, how much (quality) impression I can expect, who will be viewing my ads, demographics, etc. But nope… none of that. And unfortunately, this sales rep wasn’t able to help.
With that said… it’s been almost a month and no one else at Yelp has contacted us so maybe they gave up? *shrugs*
All I wanted was to get something in writing so I can hold them accountable but they shied away from accountability.
On a separate note… we had three 5-star reviews removed from our listing.
Now… I can understand Yelp removing the top two reviews – they are from no-face reviewers whose sole review are the ones left for us. But removing Bree G. (3rd review) when there’s a legitimate image, location, 114 friends, AND 6 reviews?? That made no sense.
And of course trust Yelp to leave a 1-star review on our listing by a angry resentful person who was NEVER a customer and even resorted to name calling in his review.
*sigh*
Way to go Yelp.
*** MAIN POST ***
Maybe you know and maybe you don’t… but Yelp (a local search and reviews online service) offers paid advertising for businesses called the “Yelp Sponsorship Program“.
To sum it up, according to the page advertising this opportunity, this Yelp Sponsorship program allows you to:
- Put up a slideshow of the images of your business.
- Highlight a user’s review that you like the most (as the business owner)
- Promote your business as a sponsored search result and on your competitors’ business pages. Target potential clients while they are making decisions about where to spend their money on a business like yours
It sounds all fancy spansy right? Sounds like you get even MORE control over your business listing which will help “put your best foot forward” and sneak attack your competitors, stealing all their would be clients.
But Stop the Music, Do These Yelp Advertising Features Actually Accomplish Anything? Or are They Just Fluff Designed to Lure You in so They can Zap You?
Suck Them in & Then ZAP Them!
Before we proceed, I’d like to first state that my experience and knowledge of this Yelp Sponsorship program comes from dealing with them on behalf of one of my clients. This client signed up with Yelp (despite my warnings – apparently Yelp’s salesman are SMOOOTH) and I got to learn all about this program.
Having said that, that’s only ONE experience which doesn’t make me an expert but it certainly makes me more knowledgeable of this Yelp marketing program than those who’s never experienced it.
Furthermore, in case you are not familiar with how Yelp works, anybody can post a business on Yelp, as long as it falls under one of their categories and is a “fit” per their policies. And the rightful owner can claim that Yelp page by jumping through some hoops and voila, you have a FREE listing about your business.
And for comparison’s sake, here’s an example of a PAID Yelp review page:
With that said… let’s examine feature #1.
The “Slide-Show”
Now, granted the larger images and the “slideshow” adds a bit more snazziness to the page but honestly, how big of a difference does it really make? If you wanted to see pictures, wouldn’t you be inclined to go visit the business’ actual website?
I’d love to see some split test on this…
Favorite Review
As far as feature #2, I suppose this is a good thing, like Yelp for Business Owners says, “put your best foot forward”. But then they go and shoot themselves in the foot by posting the “Rating Distribution” graph next to it. This graph, as you can see, shows all the reviews, INCLUDING the negative ones.
As humans, we are so inclined to ask “what’s wrong” that I reckon most wouldn’t take the “favorite reviews” at face value; they’d go and seek the worst reviews to find out why those folks gave bad reviews.
Yelp’s Business Owner’s Sponsorship Program feature #3 is my favorite.
Yelp Advertising… on Others’ Pages
So the idea here is similar to Google AdWords, when someone searches for a term related to your business, your listing shows up (as, “Sponsored Result”) with the hopes that your business gets clicked on.
Here’s the caveat though, Yelp is charging you per impression basis instead of per click basis. What this means is that whenever your listing shows up in this manner, it counts against your total allotted amount that you paid of (so you are paying “cost per impression”). If it were click based (cost per click) you would get charged ONLY if your ad gets clicked.
This brings into a few questions, the least of which are:
- So how much is it per impression?
- How many impressions can you expect to get (this is of course dependent on the search volume) – bear in mind that this is a LOCAL search and review online system. Which means that you are really throttling the number of impressions your ads will show up because the number of LOCAL folks doing searches related to you business within your area is a tiny tiny fraction of the searches done nationally combined.
- Are you able to test different the keywords with which your listing shows up (which is costing you money)?
- Are you able to TRACK the results you are getting on fine details? I.e. what keywords are converting, when is the best time to show your Yelp sponsored listing, etc. Basically, questions that any savvy AdWords expert would ask.
- How much control do you have over this campaign? After all, you ARE paying for it.
Before I Go On, Let’s Talk About Leakage
What is “leakage“? Well, in digital marketing term, it means actions taken by your website visitor that doesn’t contribute to your ultimate goal (such as capturing the lead, making the sale, etc.) This often includes having active links which serve as distractions that take the visitor ELSEWHERE.
Now… take a good look at just about any Yelp review page, do you see leakage? Do you see links everywhere? But more importantly (and relevantly from a marketing perspective), do you see the box that says, “People Who Viewed This Also Viewed…”? Do you see how these links tend to be links to direct competition to the business review page you are viewing?
Yelp.com Pay Per Impression is a Friggin’ Joke (& Rip Off You Can Argue)
Okay, so going back to the sample list of questions listed earlier on. Let’s dig deeper and find out exactly what sort of program Yelp is running (and charging you for).
First of all, here’s the cost for Yelp’s advertising program:
$300/mo – promotes you to 1,500 people in your area looking for a business like yours.
$500/mo – promotes you to 4,000 people in your area looking for a business like yours.
$1000/mo – promotes you to 10,000 people in your area looking for a business like yours.
So you are looking at $100 CPM (cost per thousand impressions) to $200 CPM to advertise on their network. In the AdWords world, this is ridiculously high for paying CPM unless you are in some highly competitive and profitable business like real estate and 401k portfolios (oh wait… given the crash of the economy, DOH!). Even then you are pushing it a bit. Folks who are paying high CPM on the pay per click networks have thoroughly tested their campaigns, have tracked EVERY single detail, and have all the control in the world.
But on Yelp? Hellllll no! You don’t know what your “campaign” looks like let alone have any control over it. You are like a blind mouse and they are the big bad kitty toying with you. And yet, they are still charging you an arm and a leg. And one quick look around Yelp will tell you that most businesses are NOT high-price markets, they are mostly smaller markets like restaurants.
This brings me to my second point of frustration when dealing with these Yelp folks, where’s the proof of these impressions people paid for??? Where are my listings showing up? And what’s the conversion rate?? Again, they tell you nothing and keep you blind.
YUCK.
Sales Team Who Doesn’t Know Jack and Preys on Toy Mice
Okay, so I had the opportunity to speak to a Yelp representative on the phone on my client’s behalf. Armed with my knowledge of AdWords, marketing, the works… I came prepared. Sadly for the person on the other line, that’s more than I can say for her.
I asked about all the things I mentioned before (about click through rates versus impressions, how I can track my campaign, how much control I have, etc.) and she was STUMPED. She couldn’t understand why we would care about such matters. As a matter of fact, I’d venture so far as to say she didn’t know JACK about marketing, and yet, she’s representing a team that’s suppose to help us market.
But what REALLY got to me was when I asked her about a 24 hour backout clause, which means that within 24 hours of the start of the campaign, if I am not satisfied with the results I am seeing, I can cancel. Nope she said… and the reason is because it takes time for the program to ramp up for me to really start seeing results.
EHHH? It’s the internet we are talking about here right? I can track clicks fairly easily right? Hmmm… okay.
So then I went on and asked what is the minimum sign up period, to which she replied, “6 months”.
OMGWTFBBQ, 6 month minimum at $325 a month where you have NO IDEA what’s going on? Thanks but no thanks.
The Proof is in the Pudding – Proof that Yelp Sucked
Against my better judgment, my client went for it anyway, and looking at the chain of emails he received from Yelp along with how their program is setup, I can sympathize why.
See, Yelp is banking on folks NOT knowing the difference between “impressions” and “clicks”. They are banking on the fact that businesses will confuse “impressions” with “visitors” – as in, “For $300 a month I can get 1,500 NEW customers every month? SWEET, sign me up!” They are banking on folks not knowing how to track their progress and not caring to either. They are banking on being able to just sweet talk their would be victim on the phone and dazzle them with fluff.
And worse yet, without the clients being able to track the campaign, Yelp is able to get folks to resign, again and again, by giving out meaningless stats.
To give you a perspective of just how much SUCKINESS is in this program, with the aid of Google Analytics and my idea of adding a page that leads people to a printable in-store coupon, we were able to see how the program performed. Here are the stats, in 2 months time, Yelp drove 64 unique visitors to this special landing page (which again helps us track the comers from our Yelp advertising campaign) and of those 64 visitors, we got 9 customers that we can tell.
This meant 32/1,500 = 2% conversion from visitor to Yelp to the website and 0.3% from impression to actual customer. Put it another way, my client paid $72.22 for each of those clients – clients who are just diners to his restaurant.
NOTE: We are not even sure if these visits and visitors are a direct result of my client PAYING for this Yelp advertising program, read below to see what I mean.
Ouch.
Look, You Don’t Need to Pay for Yelp, Nor Do You Want To
Don’t get me wrong, Yelp.com is awesome, I use it all the time to get the low down on new restaurants, find a plumber, etc. But you don’t need to pay to use it! Business owners can get free Yelp review pages and those rank (from a search engine optimization perspective) just as well as the paid for pages.
This means you’ll get traffic regardless!
Hope this was enlightening for you. Like I said earlier on, I’ve had only one experience with Yelp and boy was it a horrible one. I’d love to hear some success stories and some proof that it worked.
Until then, don’t pay Yelp a dime to join in on their “Yelp for Business Owners” program, especially if you are a restaurant owner.
Raymond Fong
If you are looking for real trackable result, I’d like to recommend you take a look at our gowth hacking agency. We help businesses (both startups and traditional businesses) gain more exposure, get more leads, obtain more customers, and ultimately add to their bottom line leveraging the internet.
P.S. You might be interested in this post I wrote as well, “Yelp Strikes Again…“
P.P.S. You might enjoy my book on growth hacking, “Growth Hacking: Silicon Valley’s Best Kept Secret”, because it’ll help you grow your business.
I’m really sorry about these complaints you all have because review sites like this are necessary for both consumer and businesses to gauge client satisfaction which is a mutually desirable end.
What have you done about it since learning about this, it can be frustrating but throw your support behind and honest and thought out start-up or even an existing service like it of your choosing. I’m sorry google hasn’t developed that and faacebook is not a solution either.
This might appear self-serving but note this, I decided to start RaveOrBash because of my deep concerns for consumer issues being one.
This fall, we will change the face of consumer reviews, we’ll tackle fraud and cliquey memberships among others.
i’ll keep you posted but follow us on twitter for more updates and throw your support behind us now on facebook.com/raveorbash by liking us and sharing with your network.
A balanced consumer review site for all is on it’s way to being your destination on the web for all consumer reviews.
Raveorbash.com
raveorbash.ca
raveorbash.co.uk
This Fall
Yelp totally is bogus when it comes to paid advertising. I didn’t have to pay to know that. The best way to deal with yelp.com is to set up a free website that
provides review services and KEEP it free. Don’t charge for advertising, just keep it free. That website should be for small businesses only. If you want to charge big corporations then set up a different commercial website and make your money that way. yelp also has this kind of cheap thrill social network happening and if an alternative FREE and always free bulletin board/chat/dating division on the website for small business is created that will help pull consumers away from yelp as well. The best way to do all this is to gear the new domain and website toward the city it is headquartered in. That city should be New York City. Dedicate the website to consumers and businesses in New York. Build it up (remember, it needs to remain FREE) , and then as you gain consumer traffic on there, use the domain and website as a launch pad for something global.
Anyway, I agree that Yelp sucks ass. The sales people on there seem desperate like they are going to get fired for not being able to persuade us to sign up and pay. Nobody on yelp seems to really know what they are doing.
They have a communications team of amateurs. It’s easy to defeat yelp, because they are sabatoging themselves every day.
Also, another thing about Yelp that bothers me is that on mobile version of YELP using Iphone, you don’t get to click on the “filtered reviews” to see the filtered reviews. So, you only see some businesses with the lonely 1 star review, not realizing the 50 5 start reviews are filtered. Many people only use the mobile version to find restaurants while they are out. It’s so unfair.
If a business owner has a big ad spread, I know they fell for YELP’s baloney. Now I am wary of restaurants with YELP spreads. There’s nothing like word of mouth for good eating. YELP restaurants (in my experience) are to be avoided.
Vince:
No, I’m not in either category. In fact, there are more and more disatisfied Yelpers these days. Just like those who criticize the president aren’t necessarily republicans or non- U.S. citizens, to say those who criticize yelp belong only to those 2 categories is wrong.
VINCE…you are wrong…go to www.yelpscam.com and see who is complaining about Yelp..this is extortion …no different then then the old Mafia protection racket..but they hide behind the “we are not responsible for what people say ..its freedom of speech” ,,,BS ..they munipulate the reviews …thousands of people and business across the nation have join the coaltion..and hundreds join every week.
Seems like everyone with negative reviews of Yelp itself on this site is either:
1. A business owner with a poor Yelp reviews.
or
2. Someone in the same business line as Yelp trying to discredit a them.
@Franciso It’s disgusting isn’t it? You also are in the epicenter of the Yelp community, don’t look at anybody cross-eyed around there, they will slander your name all over Yelp.
Responding to Jeremy, I feel your pain. Over 4 years ago, a guy bought a few dance classes, a special offer, which was agreed to be non-refundable. Six months later the guy comes back, and wants a refund. Explaining to him it was non-refundable, and he could give the lessons to anyone he wishes, the guy posted a scathing review on YELP, about how the studio is a bunch of crooks and the studio is a scam, etc etc. The studio resolved the issue with the Better Business Bureau, and to this date the studio’s reputation is AAA. However, the negative review is still posted prominently, whereas 50 positive reviews are buried. YELP salesmen called, offering to remove the negative review if the studio buys advertising. Since the studio advertises on Google, and all over the web, YELP was turned down.
(The studio was won many awards, best in San Jose, best small studio, year after year.)
4 days after leaving yelp (in San Francisco) one star review, they sent me an email saying they are deleting my only other one star review I wrote 2 years ago. coincidence? I don’t think so.
Think y’all might enjoy this (from CBS MoneyWatch on Yelp):
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_162-57423392/when-yelp-advertisers-yelp-at-rates/
As somebody that works for a company that doesn’t have the best reputation on Yelp and whose job it is to try and clean up that reputation, I can honestly say that Yelp is not a friend of businesses. Yes, we have bad reviews, no they aren’t all true, but some are, at least partially. Most are from people that have never received our services, admittedly so, and most of them come from Silicon Valley, where apparently it is all the rage to whine about every little thing aspect of your life on the internet. This public whining is something that is encouraged by Yelp, with their Elite statuses and their ‘it’s not our fault, we didn’t write it attitude.’
Yelp doesn’t give any real power to the business owner and they rarely respond to emails and never (in my experience) do they do it in a timely manner.
Our company’s main focus is to be better in every aspect of what we do. Better customer service, better prices, faster installation time etc. etc… We have spent 1000’s of man hours, 100,000’s of dollars trying to rectify the mistakes of the past, but none of this matters to Yelp. It doesn’t matter that we have responded in some way or another to every one of our critics. It doesn’t matter that we do everything we can to make our customers happy. We bend over backwards, work overtime, work for free and sometimes lose money on our jobs because we want our customers to be happy. Is this reflected on Yelp? Do the customers whose situations we have rectified remove or edit their reviews about us? NO and NO. All people see on our Yelp page is negativity, even though Yelp reviews make up, literally, less than .5% of our customers. We have 100’s of videos of happy customers, REAL PEOPLE WITH REAL REVIEWS of our company, hand written and notarized letters and testimonials from people who love us. Does this matter? Not to Yelp, and not to the people that use it. They’ll take one look at our Yelp page, which out ranks almost everything on Google and pass us by, literally costing us millions of dollars a year.
Our company is not a bad company; we are a great company, a company that has succeeded in spite of a bad economy and a company that keeps pushing forward even when companies like Yelp try to beat us down. But, the story isn’t the same for other business around the country. Yelp has caused businesses to shut down, people to lose their jobs, families to lose homes, for what? So they can continue to spread gossip, negativity and lies?
Who holds a company like this accountable? A company that has caused more jobs to be lost than be made? Yelp needs to be brought under control, the longer they exist the worse things will get for business owners.
There is no accountability with Yelp. They hide behind the laws that protect them, they hide behind their users like a Chihuahua yapping away at its enemies from the safety of its owners arms. They refuse to man up and admit their faults, they’d rather let the users take the fall for them. So if you are reading this Yelpers, remember, Yelp doesn’t really have your back. They only let you say what you want because they know that the laws are protecting them and they’ll be the first ones to point a finger right at you when the water gets hot. Yelp will throw its users, has thrown its users, under the bus the same way they have thrown the economy under the bus. Yelps founders and managers i.e. Jeremy Stoppelman should be ashamed of themselves; they have thrown morals out the window and are patting themselves on the back for it.
YELP is garbage. As people have posted, to profit by extortion is inexcusable. Investors will dump this stock only when they think YELP will crash. Soon …
Ray, as per every ones concern admits we all are victims of Yelp, so as people of the UK and abroad are victims of Murdock family of England. NOW Murdock calls it a mistake, failure, etc. I can see a day that team Yelp has to hide from people and never mention that they ever associated with them since they destroyed American small businesses for their agenda and money. I as a business owner can’t understand how someone plans to make money over destroying others livelihood. Shame on every selfish S.O.B working in Yelp. Shame … Shame … Shame!
http://www.aljazeera.com/video/europe/2012/04/201242455722955950.html
It’s one thing to review the service: how was the food, the ambience, etc. It’s another to say the owner is a womanizer, or the waiter is a pervert. This is the type of crap YELP publishes.