How Do Yelp Ads Work?

Targeting for Yelp Ads is highly-specific as it\’s based entirely on the profile settings for category and service areas. There\’s no reason to wait until you have a few reviews before you begin advertising as Yelp will simply use a section of the profile description if you don’t have enough reviews to use for ad content. The only thing you have to do is set the daily budget.

Once your ad is running, Yelp uses a powerful algorithm to \”rate\” your business based upon proximity to the Yelp user, the amount that you are bidding and likelihood that the yelp user will purchase from you. It does sound like magic and it sort of is.

How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on Yelp?

• The minimum daily budget is $5 which translates to a monthly budget of $150.
• The demand in your market will affect how many clicks to your ad you will get within your budget.
• Yelp will recommend a budget based on your business type. For many home services clients, that recommendation has been $450/month. But with higher monthly budgets, you can unlock a bunch of enhancements like image carousel and competition removal for free. So instead of paying for the upgrades individually your money will go directly towards advertising. 

How Does Yelp Bill for Ads?

Yelp bills at the beginning of the month for the previous month’s ads.

About the Request a Quote Button on Yelp

Yelp has a button on company pages to request a quote. This doesn’t cost anything, but if it is not enabled for your company, the button will offer to request quotes from competitors. These quotes are received as messages in Yelp.

Yelp will also display a company’s response rate to these messages. A company must respond to every single message it receives to maintain a high rate. Even if the same person sends two messages, Yelp counts that as two separate conversations.

If you go 7 days without replying to a new message and you have not responded to any message in the past 30 days, the feature will automatically disable and Yelpers will not be able to proactively message you–but it\’s simple enough to turn back on.

How Do You Start Advertising?

Localista Media is a certified Yelp Advertising Partner. If you’re looking into running Yelp ads but not sure where to start (or if you’re currently running Yelp ads for your small business but are not sure what return you’re getting from that marketing investment), We Can Help! We have access to tons of useful information directly from Yelp that most DIY-advertisers don\’t have. Before we begin, we will create a proposal for you to help you make an educated decision on how much to spend and realistically how much more business you can handle based on the size of your targeted advertising area. So, fill out the form below and we\’ll show you what Yelp can do for your business.