Love it or hate it, Yelp has the power to bring you sales and is not going anywhere. Some small business owners choose to simply ignore Yelp but others have learned how to correctly market and engage customers on this powerful review site and enjoy the increased sales.
Even though some small business owners think Yelp only exists so customers can complain about their business, the true goal is to connect people with amazing restaurants and other businesses such as retail stores.
Yelp now has over 31 million visitors a month and is among the top 15 visited websites in the United States today.It also boasts the perfect demographic for any business, 18-34 year old people that make over $60K a year. We hope your image of this site is starting to change. What is also interesting to note is most people do not visit Yelp to leave reviews, but rather to find businesses to spend their money with.
Contrary to public belief, most reviews are NOT negative. 85% of reviews on the site are positive and this means 3 stars and up. This variety should reflect what you would find if you polled your own customers in store. As you know you can’t please 100% of customers 100% of the time. This goes for any product, any business, in any market. People expect to see some negative reviews. If a business only had 5 star reviews from users with limited posts, wouldn’t your BS detector go off? Would that lead to a transaction?
Top 10 Ways to Utilize Yelp.com
1) Fill out information on your business page. Add photos, business information, hours, website and contact info.
2)Use your profile listing to list your new specials, sales or offers. Listings that are constantly updated will have increased page views and more offline sales.
3) Yelp gives you the opportunity to recommend other like minded businesses at the end of your profile. Share your favorite businesses as well to increase community on the site and build networking relationships in your city.
4) Negative reviews will happen. What you do with them next makes all the difference. You can respond in public on the forum or privately through the message feature. Just as would happen in your business, a negative customer experience presents the opportunity to turn into a positive experience and a customer for life. Negative reviews are often changed by users when you proactively approach the situation and offer a solution. Public responses benefit more from other users seeing a business owner who cares and is working to constantly improve their business.
5) Keep a level head. Just as you do in your business, remain calm and handle negative reviews as a professional. Get a bad review? Deal with it once and move on. Don’t let a single review make or break your business.
6) While it may seem like a good idea, don’t solicit reviews from your customers. Yelp has some pretty sophisticated filter’s running that ghost out exceptionally good and bad reviews from new users.
7) Like any business, the most successful ones focus on amazing customer service. Do this on Yelp also and allow word of mouth to be the best method for great new customers.
The average Yelp user visits only 3 listings before making a decision that results in an offline transaction. Having your Yelp listing optimized and being active on the site will result in more sales.
9) Take advantage of free resources at www.biz.yelp.com. The worse that could happen is you will gain new customers.
10) Cross promote your Facebook fan page and Yelp listing to gain new traffic to each.
As with anything you have a couple options. Use Yelp as a free tool to drive real sales to your business and take customers away from your competition or do nothing. With how many daily visitors this site receives that wants to spend money, it seems like an easy choice to us.
Use Facebook To Increase Your Small Business Page Rankings
Google’s newest update now ranks Facebook fan pages within search results. What triggers the displaying of Facebook pages in search results? It’s triggered by local search terms with less competition. Google loves to give its’ users new content and nothing is fresher then social media sites like your Facebook page – that (in most cases) constantly gets new information on its wall several times a day.
OK, so what does this mean for me? Because local search is starting to dominate Google, you can claim another spot on the first page besides your Google place listing and your own small business website. Even a few more visitors to your Facebook can translate into thousands of dollars of increased sales over the lifetime of each customer.
Grab another first page by following these steps to optimize your page:
Keep your Content Fresh – Every time you post a wall update, add new photos, events or discussions, the search engines will come back to your page to index or add the content to their available listings.
Get More Likes – The more ‘likes’ you makes Google think others will like it also.
Related Content – Keep your page content related to your business. If you own a restaurant, Google likes content on your site to be about food, cooking and your restaurant. Use local search terms or keywords in your posts. An example in the restaurant market would be, “Come visit the best Mexican restaurant in Brentwood tonight for half priced appetizers from 4-7 pm.”
Facebook Website Address - Have the URL or address display the city name and business name/market instead of the ugly default address Facebook provides. Example: http://facebook.com/tequilajoes/
Facebook Shares – The more people share your page with their friends the more it helps push your rankings up. Google sees this as you having great content.
Facebook Page Age - Google gives trust related to the age factor of the page. You can’t do much about this one, except make sure you have the other 5 factors optimized correctly and you can outrank older fan pages.
Facebook helps to keep in touch with your customers and be interactive – which increases loyalty, sales and return customers. An increasing number of small businesses have been turning to Facebook to increase sales and take business away from their competition.
Take advantage of these tips today and enjoy the benefits and sales for years to come!
How Joli Productions Can Help Your Business
Is your website like a Billboard in the Middle of the Desert? At JoliProductions, we help your small to medium size business harness the Power of the Internet to grow your business one customer at a time. Before you know it, your lost billboard will be exposed to more and more local customers right in your own community!
Today, over 86% of consumers locate local businesses online, and many traditional advertising mediums like newspapers ads and the yellow pages have become inefficient and wasteful.
Our Promise to you is that we will always treat you the way we expect to be treated – with honesty and respect. We won’t sell you any products or promote services that you don’t need. Our ultimate goal is to strengthen your web presence so you bring in more leads – and convert more visitors to customers!
Welcome to Our Blog
Yelp Marketing for Small Businesses
Even though some small business owners think Yelp only exists so customers can complain about their business, the true goal is to connect people with amazing restaurants and other businesses such as retail stores.
Yelp now has over 31 million visitors a month and is among the top 15 visited websites in the United States today. It also boasts the perfect demographic for any business, 18-34 year old people that make over $60K a year. We hope your image of this site is starting to change. What is also interesting to note is most people do not visit Yelp to leave reviews, but rather to find businesses to spend their money with.
Contrary to public belief, most reviews are NOT negative. 85% of reviews on the site are positive and this means 3 stars and up. This variety should reflect what you would find if you polled your own customers in store. As you know you can’t please 100% of customers 100% of the time. This goes for any product, any business, in any market. People expect to see some negative reviews. If a business only had 5 star reviews from users with limited posts, wouldn’t your BS detector go off? Would that lead to a transaction?
Top 10 Ways to Utilize Yelp.com
1) Fill out information on your business page. Add photos, business information, hours, website and contact info.
2) Use your profile listing to list your new specials, sales or offers. Listings that are constantly updated will have increased page views and more offline sales.
3) Yelp gives you the opportunity to recommend other like minded businesses at the end of your profile. Share your favorite businesses as well to increase community on the site and build networking relationships in your city.
4) Negative reviews will happen. What you do with them next makes all the difference. You can respond in public on the forum or privately through the message feature. Just as would happen in your business, a negative customer experience presents the opportunity to turn into a positive experience and a customer for life. Negative reviews are often changed by users when you proactively approach the situation and offer a solution. Public responses benefit more from other users seeing a business owner who cares and is working to constantly improve their business.
5) Keep a level head. Just as you do in your business, remain calm and handle negative reviews as a professional. Get a bad review? Deal with it once and move on. Don’t let a single review make or break your business.
6) While it may seem like a good idea, don’t solicit reviews from your customers. Yelp has some pretty sophisticated filter’s running that ghost out exceptionally good and bad reviews from new users.
7) Like any business, the most successful ones focus on amazing customer service. Do this on Yelp also and allow word of mouth to be the best method for great new customers.
9) Take advantage of free resources at www.biz.yelp.com. The worse that could happen is you will gain new customers.
10) Cross promote your Facebook fan page and Yelp listing to gain new traffic to each.
As with anything you have a couple options. Use Yelp as a free tool to drive real sales to your business and take customers away from your competition or do nothing. With how many daily visitors this site receives that wants to spend money, it seems like an easy choice to us.
Use Facebook To Increase Your Small Business Page Rankings
Google’s newest update now ranks Facebook fan pages within search results. What triggers the displaying of Facebook pages in search results? It’s triggered by local search terms with less competition. Google loves to give its’ users new content and nothing is fresher then social media sites like your Facebook page – that (in most cases) constantly gets new information on its wall several times a day.
OK, so what does this mean for me? Because local search is starting to dominate Google, you can claim another spot on the first page besides your Google place listing and your own small business website. Even a few more visitors to your Facebook can translate into thousands of dollars of increased sales over the lifetime of each customer.
Grab another first page by following these steps to optimize your page:
Facebook helps to keep in touch with your customers and be interactive – which increases loyalty, sales and return customers. An increasing number of small businesses have been turning to Facebook to increase sales and take business away from their competition.
Take advantage of these tips today and enjoy the benefits and sales for years to come!
How Joli Productions Can Help Your Business
Is your website like a Billboard in the Middle of the Desert? At JoliProductions, we help your small to medium size business harness the Power of the Internet to grow your business one customer at a time. Before you know it, your lost billboard will be exposed to more and more local customers right in your own community!
Today, over 86% of consumers locate local businesses online, and many traditional advertising mediums like newspapers ads and the yellow pages have become inefficient and wasteful.
Our Promise to you is that we will always treat you the way we expect to be treated – with honesty and respect. We won’t sell you any products or promote services that you don’t need. Our ultimate goal is to strengthen your web presence so you bring in more leads – and convert more visitors to customers!