I am thinking about giving this a try. I get 90% of my business from Google currently but I am going to be mixing it up next year. Dropping YP.com, only broke even on that, and going to increase my Google spend, invest in a monthly mailer campaign, do some radio and have a little bit left over for something else.
I have always shunned yelp because they wanted a fixed fee for 12 months to be put on the top of the search, much like yp.com. Problem with that model is that if no one looks at your ad, calls, etc. You are stuck with a huge bill every month. At least with pay per click you only pay when someone clicks, like on Google.
I’d consider the # of competing companies listed on yelp you’re going against before forking over so much $$. they tried getting me to sign up for what amount to an insane amount per year($4000+) to be listed higher in the results. I was already being returned 7th with only a few reviews so it made no sense. it wasn’t like I was buried on page 6. I refuse to give them any money and am focused on getting more reviews for higher placement. not sure of what it costs but the pay per click may be worth considering if you’re typically buried in the search results, going back to the # of competitors listed.
My thinking with the pay per click is that they put you on top and I know on google we show up in the 5th position in the organic searches. But everyone always says “you were at the very top so we decided to call you”. I’m only on top because I pay to be on top, but people don’t seem to care that they are clicking on a pay ad. They seem more concerned that I am on top. So I know a ton of people use Yelp for everything and maybe they have the same thought process.
I have 9 reviews that are being shown, and 29 - yes, that’s TWENTY-NINE, reviews that are filtered (renamed to ‘not recommended’). They won’t see a dime out of me. They call me constantly trying to make some BS up about it being urgent and blah blah blah, just hoping for me to fork over some money.
I have heard plenty of angry business owners claiming they are very scandalous with a strong correlation between advertising with them and SHOWN reviews.
I also have customers upset about their reviews being filtered.
They’re not going anywhere for awhile, unless the bs catches up with them. They have only expanded their operations, especially with the Apple maps team up.
Same here, and I have 12 filtered reviews that won’t show up. All are 5 stars! When I told one of their sales people this they said there was nothing they could do but that I should be good spending over $300 a month with them. Screw Yelp.
Sent from my iPhone using Window Cleaning Resource mobile app
we did really well with angies this year, but im not going to pay again. I felt their follow up was just plain bothersome. This chick literally called me every day for a month before my contract expired. We paid for pw, not wc, as wc in my area has at least 10 “paying members” and i didnt really see a point in it. We did go from 3 reviews at the start of the year to over 80 currently, but im just not that happy with the reps at Angies. Big deals are good to build and train employees, but we are kinda past that stage in our growth, and the storefront deals have just become a little too expensive cut wise ( angie went from wanting single digit % of jobs to now 20-30%) . I will leverage Angies, but im 90-% sure i wont be paying.
i honestly was gonna go Yelp this year just for a shot. It is expensive, but if we can do at all what we did with angies, we are golden. I konw yelp is not the most popular, but my mother ( 67 years old) swears by it and so do all of her friends. I figure 1 year cant hurt.
Pay-per-click with Google Adwords is the way to go. I would recommend getting a professional to look at your campaigns though, it makes a huge difference - they can get you a much better ROI.
I just talked to a sales person from yelp today. I’m not going to pay for their service, they want $350 per month. I kept telling him that I was just starting out and couldn’t afford that right now, and he brought it down to 6 months (with managers approval) and was willing to bring it down to a 3 month agreement beings that I didn’t want to be locked in a 12-6 month agreement.
So for those of you who want to try this service but not for 12 months, know that they will bring it down.
I get a lot of my business from Yelp. Granted this is only my second year actually servicing customers so I haven’t tried many things out as far as advertising goes. But I haven’t paid a dime either. They called me a few times over the past couple years trying to get me to pay to advertise. I told the rep it would make zero sense for me to pay when I’m already getting business at no cost. Plus it is pricey. Angie’s list reps are a bit pushy and the last rep I spoke with was jerking me around. Just be smart. Don’t get locked into any year contracts. Angie’s offered me 6 months then changed all the pricing. I’m doing fine without paying. I haven’t got much from Angie’s but yelp has been going good.
opposite angie was good I’ve gotten many leads and reviews that have been built up over time on Angie’s List and Angie has pride much work for me yep on the other hand I don’t believe is done a thing since I signed up how ironic is that
