From a great candid review by Raymond Fong:
Maybe you know and maybe you don’t… but Yelp (a local search and reviews online service) offers paid advertising for businesses called the “Yelp Sponsorship Program“.
To sum it up, according to the page advertising this opportunity, this Yelp Sponsorship program allows you to:
- Put up a slideshow of the images of your business.
- Highlight a user’s review that you like the most (as the business owner)
- Promote your business as a sponsored search result and on your competitors’ business pages. Target potential clients while they are making decisions about where to spend their money on a business like yours
It sounds all fancy spansy right? Sounds like you get even MORE control over your business listing which will help “put your best foot forward” and sneak attack your competitors, stealing all their would be clients.
But Stop the Music, Do These Yelp Advertising Features Actually Accomplish Anything? Or are They Just Fluff Designed to Lure You in so They can Zap You?
Suck Them in & Then ZAP Them!
Before we proceed, I’d like to first state that my experience and knowledge of this Yelp Sponsorship program comes from dealing with them on behalf of one of my clients. This client signed up with Yelp (despite my warnings – apparently Yelp’s salesman are SMOOOTH) and I got to learn all about this program.
Having said that, that’s only ONE experience which doesn’t make me an expert but it certainly makes me more knowledgeable of this Yelp marketing program than those who’s never experienced it.
Furthermore, in case you are not familiar with how Yelp works, anybody can post a business on Yelp, as long as it falls under one of their categories and is a “fit” per their policies. And the rightful owner can claim that Yelp page by jumping through some hoops and voila, you have a FREE listing about your business.
2 comments
Sarah F. says:
January 28, 2012 at 5:11 am (UTC 0 )
How Can I join the class action lawsuit against yelp.com? I am a small business hurt by their extortion scheme of paying for advertising to hide negative reviews. They are hiding NINE of my 5 star reviews. Before calling me for advertising two weeks ago, they were only hiding (they call it filtering) 4 of my 5 star reviews. After I didn’t call them back, they decided to hide another 5 of my 5 star reviews for a total of 9 filtered 5 star reviews. I have screen shots to prove this and emails. They told me on the phone if I paid for advertising they could move them around to my main page Now they deny it by email (of course, because it is in writing). One of the 5 star reviews was on my main page for over 2 years and suddenly it’s filtered? Yeah, right! How can I join the lawsuit against them? I am a small business, open for 5 years and they are hurting my business and online reputation! Please help with any advice you might have. Thank you!!! Super Cali Dog Walker
Adryenn says:
January 28, 2012 at 6:50 am (UTC 0 )
Unfortunately, there is little you can do to make Yelp play fair. So the best advice is to make them irrelevant to your business. Their review filter is seriously lacking. But you knew that. It isn’t intelligent, and it filters real people all the time. That’s actually going to be the thing that eventually takes them down. So deep breath, relax. Now go contact all the people who wrote you nice reviews and ask them to post the same thing on Google.