Do you own a small business? If not, do you know someone who does? If so, then Yelp is a tool that needs to be used. What is Yelp? Straight from the Yelp website, “Yelp allows consumers to share the experiences they’ve had with local businesses and lets business owners share information about their business with their customers. Simply put, it’s word of mouth– amplified.” We wrote about Yelp a few weeks back, check out our article on Running a Yelp Campaign for more Yelp-related information.
If you’re looking for ways to get the word out about your business while not spending a ton of money on traditional advertising that doesn’t work…You know what I’m talking about. Those radio spots and print ads that you’ve been paying for that haven’t returned any positive sales growth for who knows how long. Follow the steps below and unlock your business profile on Yelp today.
- Navigate to biz.yelp.com and perform a search for your small business
- Setup your free business profile
- Check out what people are saying about your business
- Respond to any customer reviews
- Check out your stats by clicking the “My Businesses” tab
- Add images and more detail to your profile to make it stand out
- Use Yelp to promote specials, coupons, and events
- Stay active on Yelp to get the most out of the social tool
That’s it. You’re all setup. You can now log into Yelp as much as you want. Employees at Yelp created a great video that goes into more detail on the steps above. Check it out when you have some time.
Thousands of consumers share opinions about local businesses every single day on Yelp. Be sure that you are a part of that conversation. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, it can benefit your small business. If customers share negative reviews about your small business, and you have unlocked Yelp, you have the ability to respond to that review, both publicly and privately. Another benefit of a negative review is that you can learn about what you should be doing differently to satisfy other customers. If customers share positive reviews about your small business then you’ll capitalize on that positive word-of-mouth marketing when other interested prospects see that positive review and decide to give your product or service a try. Either way, being active on Yelp gives your small business a huge advantage over your competitors.
One thing to note is not to solicit positive reviews. First, it’s unethical and Yelp has a way to filter out reviews that seem overly positive and second, prospects become suspicious if there are nothing but positive reviews on your Yelp profile. True feedback is the best feedback.
Click the image below to check out the Business Owner’s Guide and learn more about what’s available to you on Yelp. If you want to get on Yelp, but just don’t have the time, give us a call about our Localize’it solution. Catalyst Marketers can help get you setup on Yelp and manage your account for you.
