Review sites are here to stay and chances are your customers are already using them. With the rise in online customer review websites, a company’s every action, good or bad, is scrutinized and written down for public consumption. Approximately 26,380 reviews are posted on Yelp every minute, and as of June 2017, the site had accumulated 135 million reviews. Yelp contains information on businesses in at least 32 countries spanning North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Yelp has proven itself to be a industry leader for customers to not only review businesses but also to find quality businesses, whether in their home city or on the go. Unfortunately, many business owners do not take advantage of the services that Yelp has to offer including claiming their Free Business Page and investing in Yelp ads. A business’s current and potential consumers are already visiting Yelp; therefore, it is only logical to advertise where customers are already looking.

Here is how turn your online Yelp presence into a profit:

Claim Your Yelp Business Page

Yelp makes claiming your Free Yelp Business Page fast and simple. It is important to know that even if a company has not claimed their business page it is likely that their business is already on Yelp and receiving customer reviews. According to Yelp, a business typically cannot remove their business profile from Yelp, or other review sites, because it is a matter of public record and consumers have the right to leave reviews. Therefore, own your online presence and cultivate a reputation that you are proud of. The first step in managing your company’s image on Yelp is by claiming the company’s Yelp Page. The Boston Consulting Group found that businesses who claimed their free Yelp Business Page saw an $8,000 increase in annual revenue as a direct result. When a company claims their Free Business Page they are able to:

• Respond to consumer reviews
• Track customer leads
• Add photos of their business, products, and services
• Provide a link their company’s official webpage
• Update business hours and other crucial contact information

(Information provided by https://www.yelp.com/factsheet)

The best part about claiming your Yelp Business Page is that all these services are included completely free of charge. Yelp has even created a free mobile app called Yelp for Business Owners that allows businesses to control their Yelp profiles on the go.

Photo Credit: Apple App Store

Yelp is transparent about which business pages are unclaimed. The image below shows a mexican restaurant in Durham, NC that has not been claimed. If a business owner has not claimed their business page, the word “unclaimed” will appear below the company’s name. To claim your business simply click on the word “Unclaimed” and it will route you to a page that provides step by step instructions. Yelp will then verify that business page was claimed by the actual owner or someone associated with the company.

Photo Credit www.yelp.com

Invest in Yelp Ads

While businesses report seeing an $8,000 increase in annual revenue from claiming their Free Business Pages, companies that invest in Yelp advertising report seeing a $23,000 increase in annual revenue. This means that companies investing in Yelp advertising see revenue increases that are almost 3 times more than their competitors who are not taking advantage of Yelp Ads. The numbers speak for themselves; investing in Yelp advertising is a no brainer.  

Photo Credit www.yelp.com

Advertising is not part of Yelp’s free tool kit and must be purchase for an additional charge. However, Yelp has many options for businesses to choose from, allowing them to control the cost and other key components of their ad campaigns.

What do Yelp Ads Look Like?

Yelp ads provide potential customers with important informations about your business.  Every ad contains the business’s name, photo, rating, location, phone number, and a relevant review or company specialties. If a company has not accumulated enough reviews, they will need to provide a written description of what services their company provides. To learn how to increase your Yelp reviews check out the article 7 Simple Tips On How To Increase Yelp Reviews. It is important to note that these paid advertisements are labeled as “ads,” and this notation appears in the top left corner of the advertisement. Before any of your ads are released on Yelp, you are given the chance to review what the ad looks like and make edits.

Photo Credit www.yelp.com

Now Where do Yelp Ads Appear?

Yelp Ads will appear in several different places on Yelp including in search results and on competitors’ Yelp pages.

For example: I searched for Taco restaurants in Durham, North Carolina which can be seen in the picture below.

Photo Credit https://www.yelp.com/searchfind_desc=Tacos&find_loc=Durham%2C+NC&ns=1

As you can see from the search results the top two options for restaurants are advertisements and then the organic search results start as the third result. Yelp ads will draw attention to your business and ensure that it is featured in front of an audience who is already interested in your products or services. This ensures that your ad will only be viewed by potential customers.

Similarly, ads will appear on competitors business pages. Like ads that appear in the search results, your ads will only appear on competitor pages that cater to a similar audience. However, to ensure that a competitor’s ad does not appear on your business’s page you can add a feature to your ad package that blocks competitors’ ads from appearing on your page. The image below shows two ads appearing on a competitor’s page.

Photo credit https://www.yelp.com/biz/guanajuato-restaurant-of-durham-durham?osq=tacos

Another important feature is that businesses only pay for an advertisement when it is clicked on; therefore, even if the ad appears as the top search result, you will only pay if it is clicked on. In addition, Yelp ensures that your ad campaign will adhere to a budget that makes sense for your business and will never go over the agreed upon amount, which will put any budget conscious business owner’s mind at ease. Once your budget is met your ads will stop appearing. If you notice that your budget is running out quickly every month, there is always the option to adjust your budget. When setting up an ad campaign, Yelp will give you a recommended budget and approximates how many clicks per month that budget will allow. However, there is also the option to create a custom budget, giving you complete control over your spending. When setting your own unique budget you will manually enter the monetary amount you are willing to spend.

Photo credit www.yelp.com

Do people trust advertising?

Even though Yelp has set out safeguards to protect you from blowing your budget, many business owners may ask themselves whether or not people will trust their ads or simply ignore them. It is no secret that we live in a society saturated by advertisements and marketing schemes, creating a generation of savvy shoppers. Therefore, it begs the question about whether advertising is still worth investing in. A recent study conducted by Northwestern University marketing professor, Kent Grayson, came to the staggering conclusion that many people describe “modern advertising techniques” as “credible,” “fair,” and “good.” While people describe marketing techniques such as using celebrities endorsements or paid actors as deceptive, they respond positively to review sites such as Yelp. A New York Times report concluded that, “Certain tactics, such as offering to match a competitor’s low prices, reporting a high rating on a site like Amazon or Yelp or mentioning a recent ranking by a third-party source like U.S. News & World Report, received the most positive reactions from participants.” It is undeniable that Yelp has gained the attention and trust of the general public and is recognized as a reliable source for business recommendations. Therefore, businesses should take advantage of all that Yelp has to offer. Yelp receives an average of 108.4 million unique views from around the world each month, with the vast majority coming from the United States. Yelp has proven itself to be a reliable platform that reaches a global audience accessible from your desktop, smartphone, and tablet. With Yelp advertising you can now reach your target audience anytime and anyplace.

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Online review websites, like Yelp, have revolutionized the way that customers research and interact with businesses. As the leading customer review website, Yelp houses over 70 million reviews for a multitude of businesses and receives an average of 130 million unique visits every month from people seeking advice according to research done at Harvard Business School in 2015 by Michael Luca and Georgios Zervas. Even though Yelp reviews are a person’s subjective opinion, the rating that a business receives on Yelp has the potential to influence their overall success by either encouraging or warning people against becoming future customers. Harvard’s research shows that increasing a business’s rating by one star can increase their revenue by 5-9%. Likewise, a decrease in rating can diminish a company’s revenue. Therefore, companies should pay close attention to their online presence and learn how to increase yelp reviews because it directly affects a company’s potential for success.

Here are seven easy tips to improve your presence on Yelp and how to increase Yelp reviews:

1) Offer Quality Services

This may seem like a no brainer but it is important to reiterate. When a person goes to a restaurant or a store he is looking at the cleanliness of the establishment, the quality of service, and the quality of products. A business who does not offer quality products or services should not be surprise when they receive low ratings. Likewise, businesses who historically receive high reviews may be tempted to start cutting corners since they have already established a strong and positive online rating. However, as the quality of a business falls, the reviews will also begin to decline. Therefore, a businesses cannot become complacent with the quality of service offered if they want to sustain positive reviews.

2) Spend Time Creating Your Yelp Profile

Setting up your business’s Yelp profile is essential to success because it is the first interaction potential customers will have with your business. Creating an effective Yelp page does not have to be a tedious or even expensive process. Yelp offers a package called “Free Tools” that helps businesses set up their Yelp account at no cost. This package allows businesses to converse with customers, upload photos and information about their businesses, and use business analytics to review customer engagement. Yelp also offers a free mobile app called “Yelp For Business Owners” that allows businesses to monitor their Yelp page on the go. The app allows businesses to respond to questions and comments no matter where they are.

Photo credit: www.yelpblog.com

3) Encourage Customers to Leave a Review

While it is illegal to buy customer reviews or to coerce customers into submitting reviews, it is acceptable to ask or encourage customers to rate your business. Businesses can remind people to leave a review by adding a note in the restaurant menu, a sign on the wall, or having a server or cashier remind customers that reviews are always welcome after they complete a transaction. By encouraging people to leave reviews, businesses are able to increase the number of reviews on their page and thus increase their authority. A restaurant with a 4-Star rating that has 200 reviews looks more credible than a restaurant with a 4-Star rating that has only 10 reviews.

4) Increase the Number of Reviews

When the numbers of reviews increase for a given business, the influence of each review decreases. It is important to learn how to increase Yelp reviews because then a business is less likely to be drastically affected by one bad review. However, this can also can also hurt businesses who accumulated bad reviews at any point in time because it will be harder to increase their rating. Businesses with more reviews are also less likely to be involved in or be the victims of review fraud because each review will have little effect on their business. The number of reviews a business has can also increase their credibility by showing how many people like and use their services.

5) Do Not Buy Reviews

Although buying reviews may seem like the easiest way to increase your reputation or decrease a competitor’s rating, it can end up harming your business more than helping. Yelp has created an algorithm that looks for fake reviews. Harvard’s research shows that an estimated 16% of the reviews written on Yelp are filtered out because they are suspected of being fraudulent. That means that about 1 in every 5 reviews is identified as fake. Several businesses have expressed anger because the algorithm has the potential to filter out legitimate reviews that could help a business’s rating; therefore, punishing honest businesses due to the dishonesty of others. Yelp also engages in sting operations by looking at websites like Craigslist for ads seeking fake reviews and then identifying the businesses who are attempting to engage in review fraud. Businesses who have been identified as engaging in review fraud will have a consumer alert banner added to their Yelp page for 90 days unless continuing review fraud occurs. This banner will inform potential customers that a business has been engaging in illegal and unethical practices, thus discouraging people from using their products or services. Even though many businesses successfully engage in review fraud everyday, it is better to err on the side of caution when it comes to a business’s reputation because a business’s reputation directly affects their
success.

Photo credit: www.yelpblog.com

6) Interact with Your Customers Online

Engage with your customers. When someone leaves a positive review on your business’s Yelp page, respond to their comment. Thank customers for their business and for taking the time to leave a review. However, not all reviews are positive and businesses have to be prepared for negative comments or reviews. In the case of a negative review, do not take it personally. Thank the customer for their feedback and assure them that steps are being taken to mitigate the problem or situation that caused them to have a bad experience. Interacting with customers online and creating an open forum for discussion shows customers that a business cares about their patrons and the experience they had.

7) Take Advantage of Yelp’s Features

Yelp offers a variety of features to help businesses attract new customers. One feature that they offer is called Yelp Deals. Yelp Deals are prepaid vouchers that offer consumers discounts for your business’s products and services. For example, a restaurant could be running a deal where a consumer would purchase a voucher for $10 but it is redeemable for $20 at the restaurant. One advantage of Yelp Deals is that there are no upfront costs. Yelp collects payments from the purchasers and then will pay the business at the end of the month. However, since Yelp is advertising these deals and orchestrates the sales they take a small percentage from every sale: 30% for deals and 10% for discounts.

 Photo credit: screenwerk.com

Another feature that Yelp offers is called Yelp Reservations. Yelp Reservations allows consumers to make reservations for restaurants and other services that offer appointments straight from that business’s Yelp page. Yelp Reservations is a free service that businesses can set up through their Business Owners Account. Consumers can then make reservations on both their desktop or mobile devices. This feature will also send customers reminders and allow them to cancel or change their reservations.

Photo credit: www.yelpblog.com

Conclusion

Word of mouth has always been the most effective way to advertise and generate business. As we delve into the digital age, word of mouth reviews are transforming from face-to-face interactions to online forums. For businesses this can be a blessing or a curse. Now millions of people have access to every online review that a business has ever received. Businesses with high online ratings are able to benefit from the positive customer support while businesses with negative reviews repel potential customers who subsequently choose to go to establishments with higher ratings. Therefore, it is imperatives for business to quickly establish a positive rating by offering quality products, good customer service, and cultivating a positive online image. Businesses need to learn how to increase Yelp reviews because they have the potential to make or break a business.

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