Does anyone recommend paying yelp $3600/Year for paid advertising?

[loudernet]

For a Lawyer in Chicago?

any experiences with this would be helpful.

[MoosaHemani]

I don’t think anyone will be able to come up with a Yes or No for this question especially with so little information.

Here is what I will look more if I had to make a decision about this:

-          How many actually clients of you are recommending you (with a positive feedback) on Yelp. If your business listing is new on yelp putting that on paid advertizing will not be a good idea because on yelp people read recommendations before converting.

-          How much more eyeballs a business can get (get the estimated data of it) and see if it’s worthy.

-          What is the average client value that you are going to get from yelp?

And few more questions.

Once you have the answers of all the other questions the decision would be easier for you!

Hope this helps!

[FCBM]

We spent $500 per month for 12 months with Yelp, it was quite a waste for us.  For the $6000 paid for the year Yelp was placing our ads in the premium top section of the page in our areas, for related categories.  This was getting on average 35-50 user views per month of the Yelp page.

However, I think that it was just a bad fit for our business. Our business does building maintenance for commercial properties, which does not fit the "Consumer" centric focus of Yelp. Also, we had zero reviews on our profile; we saw better success from Yelp when we got a single positive feedback than we did from paid ads.

I think it would may be worthwhile once you have some (positive) feedback on your profile to start with, then the paid ads traffic will be more effective.

I hope this helps.

[Andy-Halliday]

It depends on what your after, direct sales or brand awareness.

If you after direct sales than I personally would paid $3,600 on Google Adwords - at least you can target the correct audience at the time they need a lawyer (when there searching on Google).

However if your wanting to build a brand that people remember in the time they need a lawyer then possibly advertising on Yelp might work. I am not a huge advocate of adverting on these sites, it might work in certain industries advertising on here, but think like a potential customer. If you wanted a lawyer in Chicago (or any other service), what would you do, go on Yelp or Google (or one of the other search engines).

Go where the customers are.

[danatanseo]

No.

That's all I have to say about that.

I am being serious.

Dana

[danwebman]

I'm with Dana on this No!

Look at how often you go onto Yelp yourself?

Then look at how many times you go onto Google, What I suggest is look where your clients are coming from using Google Analytics, If it's mainly Search Engine, which one? then possibly look into going Google Adwords or similar. If you do go down the PPC route you may also want to consider re-advertising.

Good Luck!

[MiriamEllis]

Good conversation going on here! Opinions are split on this topic. I'll toss some more opinions into the mix for you, John, in hopes that it will help you make up your mind about your own, unique situation:

http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/06/yelp-advertising-is-a-rip-off-for-small-advertisers/

http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/06/yelp-ads-not-a-rip-off/

Hope these provide further insight!

[Level2Designs]

If I might revive this discussion, I actually have a similar situation for a lawyer based in California. He has recently obtained some very positive reviews on Yelp, earning him a 5 star rating. However, he has heard word through the grapevine that Yelp will lower the exposure of his positive reviews if he doesn't start advertising on Yelp as well. Personally, my gut is telling me this is not true (and would be quite unethical of Yelp!), but I have yet to find concrete evidence of it. Would anyone have any thoughts and/or research on this?

Thanks!

[Motava]

FCBM's point about their experience is important:
"I think that it was just a bad fit for our business."

You have to really consider if Yelp is the right place people are searching for lawyers. In my opinion, Yelp is not the right starting place for people looking for a NEW lawyer to hire. It is more likely to be the right place for someone searching for reviews on a lawyer they are considering hiring. Big difference.

The budget? $300/month? You should ask them what the competitor's CTR and CPC are. I just checked for a couple clients and their CPC (on paid ads) with yelp is between 1.3% and 1.6%. CPC is actually set AUTOMATICALLY by Yelp and varies by industry. I've seen $4 to $15 CPC, but no lawyer accounts to help you out with.

Keep in mind - Yelp ad reps will send you an email that will seem very compelling, showing you competitor numbers. The problem is they don't break down the competition's organic vs. paid views (and they don't tell you who the competitor is).

They did this to a client of ours and we were able to crunch the numbers to show that the competitor got 7 TIMES the amount of organic profile views. But the email made it seem like they got 7 times more views (and leads) because they SPEND MORE. I put together this blog post on Yelp advertising that outlines the all the numbers of this falsely framed email that Yelp will send to business owners.

I also write about a client of ours that does extremely well with Yelp advertising and a potential scam that they put us through.