Paid Positioning and Upgrades for Yelp Business Pages
It is important to have good reviews on YELP, however, we do not recommend marketing campaigns that ask for Yelp reviews. Why? Yelp doesn’t want you to ask for reviews. Yelp restricts your business from asking for customer’ reviews and will block a review and your page is they suspect you are. Second, you do not want to push online traffic to Yelp when you should be pushing it to your own website.
We also do not recommend Yelp advertising unless you have the additional budget after being fully invested in targeted reach on Google, Facebook and Instagram. Why? Your marketing goal is to get ‘audience reach’ for lead conversion. Other channels have larger audiences than Yelp and will offer greater reach. Yelp has 175 million users compared to Facebook’s 1.94 billion users. Your marketing budget goes further on Facebook and you are able to target reach to highly defined audiences.. But most notably, Yelp’s business practices are questionable (see what Yelp skeptics say here: https://www.facebook.com/IHateYelpcom/posts/1640402822641310 ).
The problem with Yelp is a business can have more positive reviews than a competitor and still show up below their competitor in Yelp search listings. If a business advertises on Yelp, Yelp will list that business higher than it’s a competitor who doesn’t advertise. Yelp will also show a competitor’s listing on your business profile pages.
You can pay Yelp to improve your listing and increase interaction. Yelp charges $75 per month to help increase lead conversion on your profile. But if you don’t pay for enhanced listings, Yelp will push your search traffic to your competitor’s page. Yelp also charges to remove your competitor’s ads from showing up on your business profile page. Paying Yelp for this just feels like a form of extortion, especially when an untrue Yelp review can damage your business. Why would any business support a business that could possibly hurt their business? This dynamic may be the death of Yelp advertising.
Businesses should not pay for or promote Yelp traffic. Sending people to Yelp doesn’t make sense since your goal is to get website traffic to your own site. We do not recommend Yelp advertising and do not recommend you ask people find you on Yelp unless you are suppressing competitive ads on your business profile.
Businesses who pay for their profile position and YELP page upgrades tend to be larger companies with larger marketing budgets. The cost for position and reach on Yelp is not always affordable for smaller businesses. This makes the Yelp’s platform unbalanced and for the consumer, that should make it less trustworthy.
Upgrades Available:
Restrict Competitors’ Ads
$50.00 per month
Keep your customers focused on your business. You can now prevent all ads for competing businesses from appearing on your page.
Slideshow
$25.00 per month
Show off the best photos of your business to potential customers. You’ll be able to select the order of the photos that will automatically start rotating when your business page loads.
Call to Action
$50.00 per month
Convert your visitors to paying customers with a Yelp Call to Action button on your business page. Take customers directly to an order form, coupon image, or other custom landing page on your website.
Enhanced Profile
$75.00 per month
Businesses that set up enhanced profile upgrades have a 38% increase in leads on average.
Includes ALL UPGRADES:
Restrict Competitors’ Ads
Remove competitor’s ads from your business page
Slideshow
Choose the order of photos and videos on your business page.
Call to Action
Convert visitors into leads with a prominent Call to Action Button.