Has anyone here used Yelp "PAID" adverstising?

[antti@561detailing]

If you have a listing in yelp directory, do you pay for advertising?
Have you paid for advertising in Yelp.
And do you receive calls from Yelp users?

[herknav]

I was wondering the same. I was quoted $499 to get proper listing on around 30 local review/directory sites.

[antti@561detailing]

I was wondering the same. I was quoted $499 to get proper listing on around 30 local review/directory sites.

Not talking about directory submission, and I have service that can do it for lot less.

I am asking if someone is paying for advertising inside a yelp.
They want annual contract and promise all kinds of things.

But is there anyone who has used it? Paid yelp service.

[VP Mark]

Wow, they tried to talk me into that recently as well. I passed on it. Too much risk with a forced annual contract for an as of yet untested advertisement method.

[Ccrew]

Thing I have with it? I'm in IT so i'm not technology clueless, but all the Yelp users that I know are my kids or their friends - all 20-somethings. All of which have no money and live off their parents. Does that match to your target demographic?

Just saying.

[umana2482]

Thing I have with it? I'm in IT so i'm not technology clueless, but all the Yelp users that I know are my kids or their friends - all 20-somethings. All of which have no money and live off their parents. Does that match to your target demographic?

Just saying.

I have not paid for Yelp advertising services but I am listed on their site. I get a lot of business from yelp and the majority of the customers are between 40 and 60 years of age with plenty of money to spend on a detail.

Yelp representatives do call me often offering their paid advertising. The only reason I had not done it is because of their 6 month to a year contract. I hate contracts, my cellphone is postpaid with Tmobile, my home internet is month to month, my rent is month to month.

If they ever allow month to month service at a reasonable price I will quickly jump on it. Even now with their contracts I know that it's worth it and I would get plenty of additional customers and the monthly fee would payoff with the extra work. But once again I hate contracts.

[jrs1418]

Yelp is HUGE, and I get a LOT of customers from them. However, I do not like they're paid advertising setup.

1) The fact that they want you on a contract shows that they have very little faith in that they're ads actually drive you more customers. Google, facebook and other advertising streams allow the user to adjust daily spending limits at any time, and to cancel at anytime

2) Its basically a pay per impression based system. Meaning that if you spend $325/month and it includes 500 impressions, that everytime your ad appears on someones search, you're paying for it out of your allotment. which brings me to the next points:

3) You cannot control your keywords, location, and demographics for your ad. If you search for your business category on your yelp app, other related businesses ads will appear frequently.. such as glass repair, or body shop. Which means that when someone is searching for glass repair or body shop, your ad might also pop up.. which comes out of your impressions but isnt directly targeting your potential customers. Yelp wont let you fine tune your keywords at all.

3) Impression rates vary based on availability and demand, but there's no way to know when rates may go up or down. For example, if your're paying $325/month you may get 500 impressions one month, but next month when they sign up a few more competing businesses, you may only get 400 impressions because now there's more competition for those searches and they need to fill them with ads. At least with google and FB you can see the current rate for clicks or impressions, and set a daily budget. The more businesses they sign up, the more competition for ads, the more they charge, the less you get.

4) There's no guarantee that your competition isnt searching your ads and using up your impressions. Yelp doesn't give really any use able information and statistics about who is viewing your ads and business. Google has an algorithm that wont charge you for multiple clicks from the same IP. Not sure about FB.

5) This will vary. But normally we are averaging about 400 views a month on our yelp page, when we did yelp advertising at $325/month we saw a rough 10% increase in views. So basically we paid $325 a month to get 40 more views, of which if 50% used our services we paid $16 per customer.

Benefits of Yelp ads: No competitor ads on your page, better photo structuring of your business.

And to end this rant, i HATE YELP. I got awesome reviews so I cant complain, but their review filter is garbage. Some businesses have no filtered reviews while others have all their reviews filtered. I notice that businesses that seem not to care about, or view their yelp often have less filtered reviews than ones that are constantly checking their reviews like me. I have 25 public reviews, 7 filtered. A neighboring unrelated business that does not manage their yelp page has over 100 reviews and only 4 filtered. It is most definitely biased in some way.

[Buff-N-Glo]

I've tried paid advertising in the past, and just like any other company, they will tell you they will put your name at the top of the list on google and blah blah blah. But what they don't tell you is how many other detailers they have on the list, and how often your name is going to be on the top of the list. If you're paying them to have your name on the top, and there's 10 other detailers paying them, then who really is going to be on the top? In my opinion paid advertising for detailing is garbage.

[antti@561detailing]

Wow, they tried to talk me into that recently as well. I passed on it. Too much risk with a forced annual contract for an as of yet untested advertisement method.

They tried same with me, I had listing for 2 days and hadn't claimed it yet, when they called. And I did a search, found my listing being #2 spot...

Thing I have with it? I'm in IT so i'm not technology clueless, but all the Yelp users that I know are my kids or their friends - all 20-somethings. All of which have no money and live off their parents. Does that match to your target demographic?

Just saying.

I don't have any friends who use yelp, and if you look at their demographics, you will see that they are not 20 year old's with no money, also if you search for car detailing in Google, sometimes single listing from Yelp can be on first page. So it's also SEO strategy, not just listing in Yelp.

I have not paid for Yelp advertising services but I am listed on their site. I get a lot of business from yelp and the majority of the customers are between 40 and 60 years of age with plenty of money to spend on a detail.

Yelp representatives do call me often offering their paid advertising. The only reason I had not done it is because of their 6 month to a year contract. I hate contracts, my cellphone is postpaid with Tmobile, my home internet is month to month, my rent is month to month.

If they ever allow month to month service at a reasonable price I will quickly jump on it. Even now with their contracts I know that it's worth it and I would get plenty of additional customers and the monthly fee would payoff with the extra work. But once again I hate contracts.

I don't like also the setup where I have no control over anything, and annual contract...

Yelp is HUGE, and I get a LOT of customers from them. However, I do not like they're paid advertising setup.

1) The fact that they want you on a contract shows that they have very little faith in that they're ads actually drive you more customers. Google, facebook and other advertising streams allow the user to adjust daily spending limits at any time, and to cancel at anytime

2) Its basically a pay per impression based system. Meaning that if you spend $325/month and it includes 500 impressions, that everytime your ad appears on someones search, you're paying for it out of your allotment. which brings me to the next points:

3) You cannot control your keywords, location, and demographics for your ad. If you search for your business category on your yelp app, other related businesses ads will appear frequently.. such as glass repair, or body shop. Which means that when someone is searching for glass repair or body shop, your ad might also pop up.. which comes out of your impressions but isnt directly targeting your potential customers. Yelp wont let you fine tune your keywords at all.

3) Impression rates vary based on availability and demand, but there's no way to know when rates may go up or down. For example, if your're paying $325/month you may get 500 impressions one month, but next month when they sign up a few more competing businesses, you may only get 400 impressions because now there's more competition for those searches and they need to fill them with ads. At least with google and FB you can see the current rate for clicks or impressions, and set a daily budget. The more businesses they sign up, the more competition for ads, the more they charge, the less you get.

4) There's no guarantee that your competition isnt searching your ads and using up your impressions. Yelp doesn't give really any use able information and statistics about who is viewing your ads and business. Google has an algorithm that wont charge you for multiple clicks from the same IP. Not sure about FB.

5) This will vary. But normally we are averaging about 400 views a month on our yelp page, when we did yelp advertising at $325/month we saw a rough 10% increase in views. So basically we paid $325 a month to get 40 more views, of which if 50% used our services we paid $16 per customer.

Benefits of Yelp ads: No competitor ads on your page, better photo structuring of your business.

And to end this rant, i HATE YELP. I got awesome reviews so I cant complain, but their review filter is garbage. Some businesses have no filtered reviews while others have all their reviews filtered. I notice that businesses that seem not to care about, or view their yelp often have less filtered reviews than ones that are constantly checking their reviews like me. I have 25 public reviews, 7 filtered. A neighboring unrelated business that does not manage their yelp page has over 100 reviews and only 4 filtered. It is most definitely biased in some way.

400 views is pretty good, but does it convert into traffic, and at what rate?

[Ccrew]

400 views is pretty good, but does it convert into traffic, and at what rate?

Yeah, I guess I'm biased. I only run a website that averages $15 million a day so those 400 views would make or break me . Busy day I've seen a million uniques an hour. Seriously? 400 views is a pittance. You're better off on Facebook or Twitter for free.

I don't buy Yelp's claimed demographics if what was posted above is correct.. 60 % + of web traffic these days is Mobile, and the 40-60 age group is not the high use mobile demographic. They're maybe 5%. It's a tiny subset of a huge market