Using Yelp Business Tools For Small Business Marketing
On a recent flight from Houston I got talking to the girl across the aisle who was also using her iPhone. As we sat at the gate before take-off, she was furiously browsing around the consumer review site YELP! checking out where to have dinner in Phoenix with her girlfriends who were all meeting there for a weekend gathering.
The great thing about Yelp is that you can not only search by category of interest, but the site also includes consumer reviews and specials offered by the restaurant or service provider. It was very instructive to watch the process of someone using Yelp on a smart phone to make decisions, and underlined for me the importance to small businesses of establishing and maintaining a presence on sites like Yelp.
Yelp has continued to grow and add to its list of services, and is making itself more and more useful to small business owners. For many small business owners, there is a real issue of finding the resoures to be able to maintain an effective presence on social media sites. With so many to choose from, which ones should you prioritize? In our opinion, sites like Yelp where people are talking about your business, and directly influencing others' decisions to do business with you, should be at the top of your list. So what are some of the reasons Yelp should be on your list?
- Yelp has over 32 million registered users at the latest counting and their mobile apps make them a tool for people on the move, like the girl on the airplane, looking for what to do when she got to Phoenix. And restaurant reviews aren't the only category of reivews on the site.
- Business owners can either create, or claim, their Yelp profile, and gain access to a host of tools including the number of page views, reviews, user photos posted, as well as place specials and offers for customers. Hubspot customers can easily see the referral traffic this generates.
- Yelp business account owners now also have the ability to see how many users accessed the site from a smart phone. That number is @ 1 in every 4 users, according to Yelp. And they are will add new features including the ability to see how many mobile users called your business or requested directions from the moble app, etc. Additionally, taking a page out of Foursquare's book, Yelp has added the ability to check in. We wrote about Foursquare in a separate blog post and also think it's worth adding to your small business marketing mix.
- If people are talking about your business and leaving reviews for others to read, you should not only be aware of these conversations but taking part in them. Claiming your Business' profile on Yelp allows you to reply either publicly or privately to customers posting comments. Your presence in the forum establishes credibility with current and future customers.
Other sites like UrbanSpoon and TripAdvisor offer similar functions and might warrant checking out as well.
Depending on your line of business, we believe that sites like Yelp deserve your serious consideration as a place to dedicate resources. Have you signed up for Yelp yet? Have you claimed your business profile and started making use of their business tools and learning what people really think of your business?