*** 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 am embarrassed to admit I got sucked into their web and gave them a lot of money for nothing. Thanks for this article. Wish I’d read it before!
Was offered the CAN rate of 600 a month, just a bunch of numbers with potential income, impressions or clicks apparently if Yelp is used there is 30% chance the user will come to you! I don’t think so! And wtf with all ad or marketing companies calling at the end of month saying the promo is done in a week? Pressure sales and commission based sales employees leads to two people making money and neither of them is the one to purchase the promo!
Add me to the list of those that got ripped off by Yelp and their teaser “$300 free advertising”! Never again……
🙁
I told them I couldn’t advertise with them because I didn’t have the budget and I was not happy that they took off some good reviews for no reason. Not only did they take off more reviews, (11 out of 23) They took off a review of someone they sent a text to recommending my restaurant!!
Yelp has been in contact with me also in the last two days. What a load of crap the shovel through the phone. I did not sign up with them and they go into the “well it seems like it’s something holding you back” song. All while they have been filtering my customers reviews into a not recommend area, and most likely restriciting our page visibility. Do your research before they use their siren song on you. Remember to mind your own business folks. Meaning you don’t want to have to work for yelp(monthly charge) while getting no business or ROI from the advertising program.
I just cancelled my yelp advertising. It was a rip off as far as I am concerned.
Yelp is horrific and they flagrantly lie to reel in potential advertisers!!! They called me several months ago, and I declined to market with them. In the past week, a Yelp sales rep named Henry has been calling every phone number in my department trying to get a hold of me. I called him back so that he would stop harassing my colleagues. He was extremely pushy and would not take no for an answer. After I very clearly said not once, but three times, that my department does not and will not wish to pursue advertising with Yelp, this Henry figure launched into a spiel about how our Yelp page had received over 2000 user views in the 30 days, but only 40 customer leads and how we’re missing a huge opportunity, etc. I had to keep fending him off and nearly had to hang up on him. After me saying no about 10 different ways, he finally said goodbye.
After this nasty phone interaction, I was curious about the number Henry had rattled off. I work for a performing arts venue; Yelp is not a particularly useful tool for us to reach audiences (we sell tickets based on the artists we host, not the beauty of our hall). Once in a blue moon, a customer will post a question about wheelchair accessibility or whether they need earplugs/miscellaneous issues and I’ll answer those questions. This is literally the only reason why we have a Yelp business account, so Henry’s number of 2000 user views in a month sounded pretty ridiculous. I logged into our business account and checked on our page’s activity. Over the past 30 days, we have received 35 USER VIEWS and 10 CUSTOMER LEADS.
If this kind of lying is how they get clients, I can’t imagine they’re exactly transparent with their results. Long story short, STAY AWAY FROM YELP.
A Yelp sales rep been calling my new 3 month old business almost every week offering a 3 month trial. Every month $75 base 250 lead clicks + bonus 50 lead clicks and we’ll be charged $1 per lead click. I been getting very convinced until I found your site tonight, thank you raymond.
When I was starting my hypnotherapy business they soaked me for $300/month for 3 months on a special program. I did it because I know someone who actually built a solid practice using Yelp. However…. it was during the recession so she of course was high on rankings, nobody was advertising. And she still spends$3-5K on advertising MONTHLY. Wow!! It feeds her to be high on the Yelp rankings I guess.
My goal was 2 clients a month. I got 1 client total (a good one but still)
I’ve moved to a much more esoteric form of health practice (Bioenergetics) that nobody would be looking for on Yelp. My marketing plan was to give free sessions to key people I selected, if they have a good response they will spread the word. My first client came from a FB group I was on (didn’t have to give the session away), she has sent me 4 referrals in one month. If I don’t have enough clients I do some free sessions to keep my energy up and help others (I’m not even planning to start my practice until October so that fact I have 2-3 clients per week paying says something about my plan).
Yelp was all hot air, if you aren’t paying they disappear, their support is a joke. Beyond that I believe in how a business is built from the ground up and Yelp has always seemed manipulative and pretty greedy to me. Ironic as I READ Yelp reviews but I would never pay to advertise again, they are just wads IMHO.
Great post, they called me today and I was inspired to see if anyone was having a meaningful relationship with them. I told the guy you are never getting money from me, I want to take my page down. He said I couldn’t, as long as I was in business I “had” to have a Yelp page — so essentially you have no control to take your page down. What the hell is THAT??? When I gave him push back on that he said (brusquely) just mark your business closed and hung up.
Such idiocy and arrogance. I hope they go the way of Yahoo. Google was going to put up a competing kind of thing, not sure it has happened but if it did, I’d use them (they SHOULD do it if they haven’t)
and I second the comment on Groupon, my friend who had success with Yelp did Groupon and it was a disaster. They hold you to whatever “minimum” you agreed on, those folks are not loyal clients and don’t provide referrals.
Don’t court cheapskates, court quality clients who have quality friends
Raymond,
Ah… an intelligent, honest, and savvy businessperson who knows his craft. There’s a myriad reasons why Yelp is questionable in many of their practices and policies.
A great read.
P.S. If you haven’t already, you might want to think about informing the general populace how foolish Groupon is.
This is very timely as my office was contacted via phone, given a link to great reviews and activity claiming it was our business however it is NOT the free site we created 8 years ago. More pushing, then we started receiving contacts from another rep who got downright flaky and contradicted herself multiple times the second call. Now the original contact comes back… much better and smoother but like the writer says, way too much fluff…. next to impossible to prove true conversions ie: people who actually use your business from yelp… been down this rabbit hole with the yellow pages (who also sends out bogus annual bills) and previous advertising and marketing companies, most of which no longer exist. For the 15+ years I have been doing our office marketing, I have yet to see our clients actually using Yelp…. and the pressure sales we have experiences lately makes us wonder if Yelp is on that last ditch brink or was packaged and sold….adding up their “package” deals is totally outrageous! Which is exactly what lead us to this post and have wondered how the reps will mess with our accounts when we say no thank you.
Great write up! Spot on! Sounds to good to be, it is has never changed.
One of Yelp’s reps called me in January and swore up and down he would get me businesses from my area because he runs across a lot of ugly websites. I said, “Oh, really? How many?” He promised me one per month, at least. (We’re a web design company). He talked this advertising program up and assured me that advertising on Yelp would bring in business and with him throwing me a bone now and again, it’s a no-brainer.
So, I signed up and nothing happened via Yelp. Not. One. Call. Additionally, when I called them to get an explanation of my stats, they sent me on a wild goose chase. As Chad stated, there is no way to track anything, nor do we have any control over the campaigns.
After 5 months of no business via Yelp, I decided to cancel and the account person at Yelp states, “Let’s keep you on board for a few months so you can get your advertising dollars to work for you in lieu of the cancellation fee. I thought about it because it made sense to use the $700 toward advertisement, instead of a cancellation fee. Meaning, they would charge my credit card $325 for two months and then, I would be done.
After our discussion today, Yelp charged me the $700 cancellation fee anyway. I called my go-to guy at Yelp and he states, “Oh sorry!” We can refund the money in 2-3 weeks but if you stay on board we will have to charge you again on June 1st (in 2 days), the regular $325 fee.
It’s an unethical company all the way around.
Two thumbs way down.
Just hung up with Chad. Very excited to hopefully work with your company!
GREAT ARTICLE!
I just signed up today. Friday 5/12/17. There is no 24 hour cancellation policy. they got me. what can I do? it’s night time on a Friday and rep won’t be reachable till Monday. I have sent support an email. What can I do? There is a $700 cancellation early fee. I’ve been signed up for 8 hours.
Same. Jet me know how you backed out..this is a crazy scam.
Thank you for this informative article. I just signed my new business up for yelp and got a call from the marketing team. They tried to sale me up to $475 a month in visitor hits per month. It seems a little fishy.
Absolutely great article.
Thank you for posting this and for sharing your knowledge and experience.