*** 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.
Yelp ads suck period. Customer service is the worst. Its absolutely true that you pay for basically nothing. The expensive that you incur you are better off using those ad dollars elsewhere. The fee for canceling is also a rip off along with 30 days notice by email.
Yelp ads suck period. Customer service is the worst. Its absolutely true that you pay for basically nothing. The expensive that you incur you are better off using those ad dollars elsewhere. The fee for canceling is also a rip off along with 30 days notice by email.
I used Yelp Ads for our business for 4 months with no bump in customers, I cancelled and with 30 days notice still paying for Yelp ads along with the cancellation fee, you get taken to the cleaners.
DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME WITH YELP ADS!!!
twice they almost got me to sign up but i held off.
Your honestly just paying for your business to show up in searches and just be noticed and get known. Thats all really.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave my ad campaign open-ended, but set a finite budget, not a monthly budget, that didn’t require cancellation. By the time I got the first credit card statement with $150 for NOTHING – over $8 per click! – it was too late to avoid getting ripped off. Now I suppose I’ll have to bend over again when I get my October credit card statement….damn. The guy on the phone insisted that I hadn’t set it up with a finite budget, but rather, an ongoing one. I know that isn’t true, but how do I prove it?
Yelp begin calling me. Wanting me to advertise with them. At the time I had several clients give me 5 star reviews. On the yelp page. This reviews where recommended by yelp. After a lot of b.s. by yelp. Yelp changed my reviews to not recommended. Which makes them hard to find.
Yelp is very shady .
I’m a business owner who has been strong armed by Yelp. It was so bad that I actually wrote on our Yelp page ~ “We don’t pay Yelp or post fake reviews” to let the public know that we are not involved with this scam. Angie’s list is just as bad about lying, and taking people’s money . I did a ton of research on Yelp, Angie’s list and many other websites that boast “unbiased” reviews Here’s what I came up with ~
http://www.maverickpaintingsandiego.com/San-Diego-Painting/tips/searching-contractor-shouldnt-trust-pay-online-reviews/
As you all realize by now, Yelp plays hard ball (some call it extortion) with businesses who do not “Pay to Play” for advertising. And their great reviews get filtered where no one is likely to see them, and the bad 1 & 2 star reviews sit right there on the front page for potential customers to see…and judge your business unfairly.
I started a service to deal with this because I have clients whose businesses have been dramatically impacted by those negative reviews. Their income was being affected because they’re losing customers, & they were at a loss as to what to do. I knew they weren’t the only ones dealing with this problem. I’ve read hundreds of complaints like the ones on this page!
I was approached today by a one of their reps.
I also found them to be pressuring and she wanted me to sign up today or I’d miss the June 1 deadline. DON’T CARE!
In just the small amount of research I’ve done, I’ve found it probably won’t be worth it. I did a test on one of the example businesses she used in her presentation that was paying for ads. I searched from several different computers on different networks so that I could bypass any IP tracking that might give me different results. I also checked on my phone and a tablet.
What I checked for was the prepopulated search category this business was focused on and their city and their zip code from their listing. The results I got were that this businesses ad never appeared on top of any results, additionally their business page showed up at the bottom of the second page from the computers and was the 56th result on the mobile devices.
Also on each search, the top results were always businesses that could barely be classified in the same category and were businesses still using their free listing.
Full disclosure, I still use Yelp and think it’s great to get reviews. I do however think most people will be best off using their free listing but directing their clients to review them as it seemed that the most reviews would show up at the top of the results.
I was contacted by a slick talking Yelp Rep today (i set up a Yelp business listing 2 weeks ago). She knew her stuff, and I let her take me through this well planned Yelp sales presentation, an email with links tailored specifically for me, all of which was intended to lead me to an immediate and spontaneous purchase decision. She was saying all the right things and was well trained. Being a well trained sales guy / web developer myself… I hung in there to listen to her offer and service…. and who knows, maybe I’d learn something! Well, I learned that Yelp is going all in trying to get a piece of Google Adwords market. But unlike Google Adwords, where you have total control over your marketing campaign… Yelp starts you out in a “little box” that they refer to as a” package,” with limited flexibility, and dings your card on a monthly basis for X amount. Sure you get a dumbed down control panel that shows you basic info, but i get this FREE with Google. They even give you a calculator that shows you how much money you are making off of this advertising platform. But for this to work, YOU pluck a number out of thin air regarding how much a customer call is worth to your business and the calculator uses that figure. The kicker… Yelp is partners with a slew of other websites (Yext being one, YP being another) that share your information with each other. Your information then goes to countless sales call lists and you get get bombarded with calls from people trying to sell you something. All of these calls, are made on your Biz tracking phone number set up by Yelp… that you are paying for! In short, you pay Yelp to sell your info to other companies who hammer your phones with… more sales calls. So a dumb business owner will look at the Yelp call tracking for the month and says… “WOW, this program has really generated interest in my business… have some more money Yelp so I can get even more business!” Don’t be a dumb business owner. Sure you may pick up a customer or two from Yelp. But you’ll pay for hundreds of sales calls. Lots of companies like Yelp are doing this. But in my experience, Yelp is a social platform where users are motivated to review business experiences. NOT find new businesses. This is a very attractive, well thought out, rip-off that targets uneducated business owners.
The answer to the question you pose is – Yes – they do rip people off.
The whole idea of filtered reviews and only showing reviews of people who continue to post on Yelp ad nauseum (granted some of them are very talented – I’ve read restaurant reviews so funny that tears rolled down my face) is total crap. But paying to advertise there is asking to be screwed.
I admit to getting sucked in as a paid advertiser and fit the bill of the semi-naive advertiser profile you describe. The customer service from my first rep was shockingly abysmal. Where do we leave Yelp reviews for Yelp and its employees? – that’s what I want to know. Just as bad – they play very fast and loose with your credit card – mistakes – big ones of many 100s of dollars – are way too common and very very slow to be addressed once you catch them.
But worse – there is no way to monitor the legitimacy of the activity you’re charged for. I found your post after getting off the phone with a rep who’s unable to address the absurdity of my ad suddenly receiving 20-100 times (not doubling as in 100% – but 100 times!!) as much activity in the last two weeks of the year’s contract I was riding out.
Use the site for free but paying for it will be a hugely expensive mistake.
I just received a call from a yelp salesman/ marketeer.
They advised that 6 people referenced my location through yelp in the last 30 days, that might be correct, who knows. An interesting approach.
We don’t pursue retail business but do accept it when the client agrees with my estimate. We never got to costs, the cost per impression vs. the price per click is very interesting. As our advertising budget is zero, any of their programs is beyond our reach. I told them to call back in 9 months, we have too much going on now, I could take in more work with more trained and capable staff, but THAT is my problem right now, not advertising.
Thanks very much for the synopsis.
I was sold on a new advertising program: Pay per click (not impression) for people searching for my services in my area. I am one of the best around at what I do, and I figured that if I got even a 5% contact rate for people who click through the ad them I’m still making my ROI.
However.
All of a sudden, after some weeks of little to no activity, I’m getting all my clicks maxed out, and absolutely nothing to show for it. I got one client back before the click madness happened.
Something is very weird. This isn’t a reasonable outcome. Yelp promised me only people searching for my services in my area would even see the ad, and I’d only get charged if they clicked through. Meanwhile, I’m down $1500.
Something foul is happening. They are setting up my ad so that people who aren’t my target audience area seeing it or they are clicking through it themselves.
I hired yelp to advertise my business. not only did the advertising never pay for itself, the account reps were inexperienced people who are not qualified to help a business grow. They feel far short of the sales pitch and overcharged my credit card, then refused to refund the money. Crooks!! Basically, we are yelp so f-off small business, you were dumb enough to give us your credit card number, so I guess it serves me right.
AMEN>>>>How long is it going to take for the FTC to finally act, and close Yelp down….
Thank you Raymond for posting this. Yelp the Digital racketeering company!
The more I work with client reputation the more I think that is not far from the truth!
In my opinion Yelp clearly hides behind what they call their “algorithms” or automated software of a business’s shown review ratings. More negative reviews tend to show up in clear public site. The “not recommended” reviews are hidden and are NOT factored into a businesses mean average review star rating. WHY?
These negative reviews seem to coincide with Yelp sales to my clients sometimes 3X a day to enroll in their $300 $400 plus programs. Hmmm………I bet their sales room is a boiler situation.
All clients I have worked with had real unsolicited reviews of 5 stars, great reviews, on the “not recommended” hard to find area of their profiles.
Bottom Line Why doesn’t Yelp just show all the reviews like most all other directory sites and average all reviews into their rating system? Or Yelp, maybe it is time to re-write some algorithms?
Reviews are a huge factor in consumer buying decisions and directly affect businesses. It’s a real hardship on small businesses. Especially when it is pure slander as in one case I’m working on now.