*** 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 got sucked in by this BS! and was charged $540 for something I NEVER participated in or saw a return from. And Yelp doesn’t give two shits. I was lied to and my only recourse was through my bank. On top of everything we post our slowest months of business EVER in six years during this time. I feel stupid and duped for sure! I love yelps regular app but this is deceptive at best and criminal at worst
How do we report Yelp! I am not paying for that bogus growth hacking marketing scam. Is there a class action suite that I can send my information and documents to? They are badgering me to pay $700++ HELP!
Hi Julia! I just got scammed by yelp too and I want to start a class action lawsuit! Let’s do it! They are crooks of the worst kind…..
I BEG YOU SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS DO DO ADVERTISE WITH YELP. I canceled my ad about 10 days in because I saw no return. Their website said that my ad was canceled. I received a bill last week for $525 and that the ad was not canceled. I searched after I canceled it and we were no longer an ad. After they billed me and I called somehow my business became an ad again. When I told her there was no one from YELP coming to our storefront she told me that isn’t true people have called my business because of YELP. OUR BUSINESS DOES NOT HAVE A CONTACT PHONE NUMBER. Needless to say I canceled the card and the payment bounced. I have no interest in paying for a service I canceled. Well see what happens now that the card isn’t valid.
The same thing happened to me and now they are sending me letters that clam my credit will be compromised if I do not pay. They are not getting a dime from me. EVER. Does anyone know if there is already a class action suit against them? Do not pay YELP if this is happening to you. There is true power in numbers. I witnessed extortion and told them we would all be reporting it. Small businesses deserves the next bail out. From Yelp.
To get the free $300 in ads, you have to pay $300 in real life money.
There should be a class-action lawsuit against Yelp for their “free ads” scam. Luckily, they only scammed me for $470, but others have been duped out of thousands of dollars. I don’t see how they can just bill you hundreds and thousands of dollars without you signing or agreeing to anything.
The phone representative even told me that “the free $300 ads aren’t really free” and that you need to spend $300 to get the free ads. She told me that the email they send you after you sign up has a link to their Terms Of Service and that is the ONLY INDICATION that you will be billed actual money to get the so called free ads.
So I pleaded with her that they cannot tell people AFTER they sign up that they agreed to terms of service through an email and she said “Then why did you enter your credit card information? You had to know it wasn’t free”.
How many millions of dollars have they scammed out of business owners? I would like to join a class action lawsuit.
Hi. Thanks for this article. An aggressive yelp salesman named John kept calling to sell a paid Yelp profile. A week after telling him no thank you, we suddenly got a negative 1* review from a John in a local town. We didn’t do any jobs in that town. Yelp calls stopped. What can I do to salvage my business reputation from this negative review? I reported it to Yelp but it didn’t help.
I wish I had read your blog before my experience. Some one had called me from Yelp claiming to offer free $950 in advertising for trying their service. He rushed through everything very fast and told me my credit card would not be charged, When a screen popped up about the fee for the call to action button he told me not to worry about it just select a 3 month span and they would be waiving it. After he rushed me off the phone I started to look at everything and saw there was going to be a charge. I called YELP back immediately to cancel and they walked me through the cancellation nut yet I was charged money for the next two months on my card. I just called today to resolve the issue and I did not get any benefit from whatever they were charging and I am still unsure what that was since I pulled the add the same day. Low and behold they say they can see I called to complain about being mislead but I decided to keep the service anyway? What the ****? Why would I want ti keep it after being lied to? I got transferred to 3 different departments until I got a smug personality on the other line who was not even willing to help me or hear me out. I did a charge back with my credit card. They are total crooks and I would not recommend.
Yeah, chargeback may be your best bet at this point… Their sales tactic is quite alarming. Sorry to hear that, please let us know how the chargeback works out. Best of luck!
The biggest mistake of my life was signing a 1 year contract – at $400 per month. After about 2 months I realized that I had made a mistake so called to see if I could get out of it. They talked me into staying and said give it a chance. I worked with them calling every so often to get advice – I thought maybe I wasn’t doing something right. I did everything they said. I encouraged clients to review us and those reviews were never used. I felt that it was almost like they didn’t want our company to do well. After 6 months I tried to get out of it again but learned that I would have to pay them $700 just to leave early. I hate waste so kept on trying – was in communication with them quite a bit. After the year long contract was finished they kept on billing me. They said I had to give them a 30 day notice to end it. This was signed in my original contract but It was never explained to me. Why? Because they are told not to say anything and thats how they pick up a couple of more months. I went another 2 months after my 1 year contract and never knew it. They are dishonest and their product is not what they say it is. I received very little business and spent $5600. I felt sick to my stomach when I realized how much I had wasted on them. Never never never buy ad space from Yelp. It’s sickening how they scam people.
If anyone has suggestions as to where to review Yelp please send. Every time I try to find a sight to review them it just sends me to them. I would like to warn people not to fall into the same trap I fell into.
Horrible experience with paid advertisement! If you have a lot of extra money to spend you can go for it, otherwise don’t spend the time and money on it. I posted a new business and was explained things quickly as she walked me through it having me put my card it and keep clicking next. The $900 credit sounded so great too, don’t buy into that! Just go with the free listing, wish I knew better. Oh well lesson learned (a pricey one though). I called customer service, explained the situation, they could care less.
I have worked with many companies and yelp is the only one I don’t trust. The per click fee is by far the biggest scam I have come across. If yelp sales calls hang up the phone. They will say anything and leave anything out
Yelp is nothing but a scam and b******* I tried their promotion and didn’t go over and they charged my card anyway
Went through the same thing and even worse, i was monitoring the cpm daily lets just say the numbers didn’t add up, being in love with stats this isn’t the right platform, your blind mice when I ate their head off “how come this is a respected company and what the hell can I do with these stats…” i got nothing, except “that’s funny your the only one who this is important too” LOL! But I do I have one tip, if you need to advertise anyway, if you get them on the phone you can arrange a “one-time” “special for you” “need my manager to approve, yada yada yada, totally doable if your focused and on the ball to call them out, things like $300 month offer and $600 over the course of a 3 months is good (you just really have to be aware when the “budget is up” so you dont get way over paid, and everytime you stop a campaign expect a call (i had about 5 different account managers driving me freaking crazyyyy! going over the same stuff i closed with the previous one…dont ask anyway once you air until, boom- silence.)
But, im advertising an air duct cleaning company in CA bay area, what platform can I use instead?..Any suggestions will help! leads is what im looking for.
+Thank you, i enjoyed reading your post started to feel crazy about all this YELP BS.
Have a good one!
Thumbtack. They are constantly changing the way their app works in an attempt to extract more money but the leads are good.
I went through the same dal with Yelp – my initial phone call I indicated clearly that I would generally never spend more than $50 a month on simple ad placements like this as I do on other social media platforms – the agent assured me that it would only cost $40 a month roughly. First bill – $350. I Second bill $175 – that was when I checked and noticed it – I was livid. I checked the traffic – 2 clicks – both from out of state. Absolutely no leads. I called up and explained but they give this ballony about how it was all explained. I canceled immediately – next month I get a bill for $65 – I call up and they tell me it was for business between March 1st and March 5th – 2 clicks at $25 each plus some other website stuff. I cannot believe I was taken in by this crap. The person tried explaining that I am competing for clicks and that is why they are so high and that it was all explained – no it was not. This is a con – do not get dragged in
I have a small 4 person auto repair shop in the Berkshires in Mass. Recently Germain, a Yelp sales rep from New York has been calling a lot and i finally got to speak with him. I’ve been curious about Yelp and have noticed that a few other shops/competitors in town are using them. so I went down the sales path with him as he directed me to web pages , stats and the like, trying to wow me with a lot of fluff, fast talk and pressure to purchase now. I have been around since the mid-seventies and been quite successful with out Yelp or Facebook, etc, so I seldom make an impulse buy, I like to look it over good before moving forward . Germain clearly did not like me intervening in his one sided pitch and tried dearly to force me into buying.I live in a small population that swells for 3.5 months a year with 10 to 12 nearby competitors so I knew from years of experience that Yelp could never deliver the customers he was promising. He tried to lead me down this path where he wanted to make sure I had the man-power to handle all the new customers I was about to get and was trying to fill me up with all this BS data that i was already missing out on a ton a business . Quietly I am thinking to myself, we are one of the busier shops in the area and the only stocking tire dealer with in the surrounding 3 towns, this guy has no idea of what he is talking about. I also notice my ad showing up on the paid ad of some of my competitors so i questioned him about the other shops in town already paying him and how that worked in a town of 5000 where 60 % of people work and drive out of town every day making the pool of potential rural customers smaller, and why paying customers would want a competitors ad on their page. He did not want to talk about any of this, and it was clear to me that they we making up stats and numbers as well as in control of reviews. I smelled scam from square one. We are on the top of the google list for years, every day without paying a dime. DO NOT TALK TO THESE GUYS, DO NOT TAKE ANY FREE ADVERTISING FROM THEM, GET THEM STRAIGHT OFF THE PHONE, HANG UP ON THEM….Thank you, this is a great article….YES THEY NEED A LARGE FEDERAL CLASS ACTION SUIT!!! Bob
Long article and still just the tip of the iceberg. Once you sign up w Yelp it is risky to cancel. Mafia? Yea…. you would think that’s unreal for a company to do that. Sadly, this is common practice. But what r u gonna do? Spend your life savings going to court against them¿ mmm maybe some one will lol.
I fell for the same “smoke and mirrors, vague and overly-generalized, carrot-dangling sales tactics” over a series of lon and drawn out phone calls. I literally had to tell the guy “get to the point” in each phone call.
Bottom line, after asking him directly, several times, to tell me exactly what my out of pocket cost per month would be, he told me $25, every single time, but kept immediately launching into this confusing speech about higher costs that I wouldn’t have to pay because it pays for itself”.
IT’S ALL BS! My first month, my cost was $750. I freaked! To top it off, they told me they wouldn’t reverse the charges bc the conversations were recorded and they said that the sales person clearly explained the cost(s) to me. I was told I would not be allowed to have/listen to the recorded conversations. MORE BS!!!
The icing on the cake was that I’d locked myself into a contract and to get out of it they would charge me another $350, but that no one had ever asked to get out of the contract, so what I was asking was highly unusual. I paid that too.
I recently refused more yep ads (3/2018) and the very next day my “yelp traffic” decreased by 50%, and has consistently stayed at “decreased” -21%.
I also Yelp searched my services Google and IF I show up at all, I’m suddenly on the second page.
I tried using Yelp paid advertising for our DJ Business. They were so anxious to have me try their services, but they did nothing but rip us off. I basically paid $800 in 3 month for 0 legitimate leads- The only call we received was from some guy looking to get gigs at venues. Very disappointed in Yelp’s services. They also did not care to try and win me back or help with the costs. Poor customer service for sure.
We have been on Yelp for years, both paid and non paid. It doesn’t seem to make any difference.
Don’t pay them! We have had hundreds of reviews yet Yelp will never show more than six for our 17 year old business. I have called them and asked about this many times and all I get is that it’s their computer’s algorithm. Personally I think they are blackmailing our businesses. If I had the money, I would sue them for extortion.
This is happening to us as well. They will only show 25 reviews out of 80. Huge scam. We need a class action suit.