For most people who might not know, Yelp reviews are no longer limited to only restaurants or cafes. In today’s time, where buyers seek customer reviews for every business kind, Yelp is one great review management platform that allows businesses to benefit from establishing their local search presence. Additionally, Yelp enables more credibility and boosts organic and local searches on a brighter note.

Since we are talking about Yelp today, let us refer to these Yelp statistics as of 2022

• 78% of Yelp users are active in other social media platforms as well. Of which 12% use this platform several times a week, and only 3% use it just once a week. (Source: Financesonline.com)
• Yelp itself shows 31M unique devices leveraging its platform, where different industries had a specific percentage of review distribution. Such as home, local services, and restaurants have 18% of review generations, whereas shopping industries collect up to 16% of reviews and so on. (Yelp Newsroom)

Why use Yelp in Business?

Yelp is a great choice for small businesses to increase their visibility, brand awareness, sales, and revenue. Because of its high ranking capacity on Google for local search queries, Yelp is a chosen platform for millions of people to search for the best results. Yelp promotes every business online without investing in any particular SEO services.

Moreover, Yelp contains advanced marketing and advertising features. From PPC advertising features to CTA (call-to-action) features, Yelp helps businesses list themselves at its top results. Therefore, these features that effortlessly engage more audiences can boost more sales for companies using Yelp.

Yelp Listing for Reviews

Once you are done with your business profile listing where your potential viewers can contact you, now start the real game. You must have time for your customers to interact regularly. Responding to all types of Yelp reviews will help you build trust and satisfied customers. Therefore, businesses should respond to negative reviews and not just positive reviews. It’s the same thing another way around.

Wanna know how you can respond to both negative reviews and positive reviews? Here are two articles you can refer to for understanding both the methods with examples.

• Responding to Negative Reviews with examples.
• Responding to Positive Reviews with examples.

Yelp is such a reputation management platform where the community members appreciate the fact that you read reviews and respond to them. Make sure to check your Yelp reviews and respond to most or all of them, taking enough time and thought. Remember to leave a public comment for each review, whether good or bad or even harsh.

Encourage Yelp Check-Ins

A Yelp check-in is a free tool that helps businesses get more traffic. This offer is free to set up, easy to create, and quite a fun incentive for customers. When any customer clicks on any of your discounted offers, be it a new customer or an old customer, they will be able to redeem it immediately.

Check-in offers are not hard to create. Moreover, they are interchangeable, trackable, flexible, and encourage your customer base to search more about you.

Use Yelp Review Badges

One of the best practices in Yelp is to showcase your Yelp reviews as “review badges” on your own website. Review badges are also a good way to drive traffic to your Yelp business page when you have zero reviews.

Ask for Yelp Reviews

People use Yelp mostly to search for business reviews and ratings. This is often done for decision-making processes, hence a critical reason businesses must secure high-quality reviews from their customers.

Therefore the fastest way to get Yelp reviews is by asking customers, families, friends, and even staff members. You must ensure that most reviews are genuine and left by real Yelp users. A few ways to ask for reviews effortlessly and successfully are:

• Personal Requests
• Through your Websites
• Social Media Posts
• Email Marketing
• Newsletters
• Follow-Up texts

Pros of Yelp for Businesses

When deciding whether you must use Yelp as a customer review software, some strong pro points can be used for your business’s advantage. Good reviews help in:

• Getting increased exposure with much more good reviews.
• Getting social proof when making important decisions by your customers.
• Free to leverage this feedback management software.

Cons of Yelp for Businesses

The cons of having a Yelp business profile is worth acknowledging as it deals with the impact of negative reviews. Let’s have a look:

• Yelp displays negative reviews, which might impact the positive perception customers have for you.
• Businesses often forget that they possess this platform and need to invest enough time without which the profile would soon become outdated and negatively impact your customers.
• One negative and most disheartening scenario of using Yelp is that it can even get costly upon certain terms and features compared to normal PPC campaigns of Google Ads or Facebook Ads.

The Bottom Line

Despite Yelp’s different pros and cons, it still is the largest used and effective marketing platform for every kind of business. All it takes is some strategies and smart moves to prevent bad reviews. Most importantly, Yelp is the best suitable review management platform for small-scale firms to draw in new customers.

Whether you are a small-scale business owner or an owner of a large enterprise, it starts getting tedious while responding to reviews the more you grow with time. Telosa is the right choice for you as it boosts such tasks hassle-free. Their services help businesses with single and multiple locations generate leads, create lead pipes, and interact effortlessly.

With Telosa, never stop building your AUDIENCES!