Yelp draws 100 million unique visitors each month, and 97% make a purchase after visiting Yelp. A strategically managed Yelp Advertising PPC campaign can leverage the positive impact of Yelp to yield significant benefits for your business. This is where Wodu comes in—our partnership with Yelp positions us to help you maximize returns on your Yelp Ads investment. Some of our valuable services include:
Yelp is a social media platform that allows consumers to search, browse, and review local businesses around the world. Yelp is available in 35 countries, with versions in 42 languages and listings for over 5 million businesses, but more than 90% of Yelp’s user base is in the US, where it is the largest local business search and review platform.
Yelp searches most often don’t include a specific business name — 8 out of 10 users enter general search terms like Thai restaurant, beauty salon, or plumbing repair.
Yelp is well-known for its popularity as a tool for finding restaurants, but Yelp users search the platform for all types of businesses including home and local service providers (33 million average monthly searches), health service providers (30 million monthly searches), and automotive services (19 million monthly searches).
Yelp is mobile-oriented: 80% of Yelp searches are done on a mobile device, with a monthly average of 33 million unique device application uses logged in 2022. Over 265 million reviews are posted on Yelp, and about 60% of all reviews and photos are submitted via smartphone.
This strong mobile orientation implies that many Yelp users are on the move, by car or as foot traffic, actively searching for a product or service they need, with the intention to buy. These users are generally in the consideration stage of the buying journey—they have a need but have not decided who they will do business with. Yelp’s own research indicates that 90% of users make a purchase from a business they found on Yelp within a week; 51% contact a business they found within a day.
Consumers trust Yelp.
Yelp is favored by the valuable 18–54 age range consumer demographic — 60% of Yelp users fall in this bracket, 84% are college educated, and 78% are in the $60K–$100K+ income range. People on Yelp are good potential customers, they trust Yelp over other review sites (like Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor, Open Table, and Thumbtack), and Yelp is the #1 influence among all review sites in their final purchase decision.
Yelp’s search function operates in much the same way as any search engine. On each Yelp results page, a single slot at the top is reserved for a paid search ad chosen for relevance and prominently labeled “Ad” to distinguish it from the organic results below. In this way, Yelp advertising effectively moves the business to the top of visibility in a setting where many competing firms or products are being considered. If no relevant advertisement is available, no paid search link appears in the results.
Yelp Ads provide information about a business while giving the business prominence in a user’s consideration set.
Yelp offers standard PPC advertising packages, with cost per click varying according to the type of business within the more than 1300 Yelp categories, demand in that particular category, and geographic area. Users set a daily average ad spend budget and only pay when someone clicks on their ad.
The ads can be quite effective. Researchers from the Harvard Business School studied 7,209 randomly-chosen restaurants that were given free Yelp Ad accounts for 3 months. The businesses had no previous experience using online advertising. Results showed an average 19% increase in page views, a 7%–14% increase in purchase intention outcomes such as calling the business, viewing map directions, and browsing the restaurant’s website, and a 5% increase in the number of customer reviews received.
The Harvard study also indicated that Yelp has much to offer independent, local businesses — national chain restaurants gained less from Yelp advertising than independent and local chain restaurants. Business owner reports and online reviews show that overall results vary — type of business, available advertising budget, importance of online reviews to the business type, and invested effort in monitoring and managing the advertising campaign are among the decisive factors in the level of benefit associated with Yelp Ads.
Advertising has traditionally fulfilled two functions: informing and persuading. Ads inform a potential customer about a firm or product and identify its ability to meet their needs while working to persuade the customer that they have found the best match to their requirements and preferences.
In the digital age, the consumer journey has a higher degree of complexity, so advertising needs to do much more to be effective.
Because today’s networked consumers commonly leverage the Internet as part of their shopping experience, they are faced with a massively expanded array of advertising and presented with a vast multitude of options during the initial consideration stage of their buying journey. Your potential customers have access to far more information now, and can engage a wider scope of data in greater detail during the active evaluation stage.
The range of choices for the purchase stage is also greater — there are more places to buy things in general, including online for many business categories. Finally, during the post-purchase stage, consumers can now promote their impressions via a variety of online platforms including Yelp.
Yelp is the solution for businesses looking to do more with their advertising. It is a single platform that puts businesses in front of a massive audience of active consumers, increases product prominence in a crowded market, offers potential customers a convenient source of information to aid in the evaluation stage, and provides consumers with a space for immediate post-purchase feedback.
Yelp empowers marketers to exert a strong influence during each stage of the consumer journey. And with Yelp listings integrated into search results from partner brands including Apple, Alexa, Microsoft, and others, advertising reach is expanded far beyond the Yelp platform.
There is no question that Yelp can be a powerful Internet marketing tool. However, user experience gained since the platform’s launch in 2004 reveals a number of important factors that must be considered if your Yelp Ads campaign is to be successful. This is where professional Yelp Ads Management Services from a certified Yelp Advertising Partner deliver an edge.
Wodu has been helping clients navigate the wilderness of PPC advertising since the genre emerged.
Wodu brings decades of online marketing experience to bear, ensuring that your investment in Yelp Ads brings the results you are looking for. We have learned which strategies fit specific niches and needs, and how to amplify the chances of success in the PPC game while minimizing the possibility of posting negative ROI for your advertising budget.
Our Yelp Ads Management Services begin with consultation aimed at evaluating the match between the Yelp Ads program and your business type, needs, and objectives. If Yelp is a fit for your business, we help you design an advertising plan, then assist in the set-up, optimization, and ongoing management of your Yelp PPC Ad campaign.
A properly designed and managed Yelp Ad campaign can definitely generate increased customer awareness and activity around a business. But effectively managing a Yelp Ads campaign requires experience and involves a serious time investment. Failure here is the source of many users’ disappointing experiences with Yelp Ads.
With Wodu on your Yelp Ads team, the chances of success are boosted. Working with a certified Yelp Advertising Partner puts you on the inside track, lowers your stress levels, and leaves you more freedom to concentrate on other important aspects of growing your business. Contact us here at Wodu and let’s see how Yelp Ads can work for you.