How to Start Advertising on Yelp
Never run Yelp ads before? Look no further. This is your Beginner Guide to Setting up Yelp advertisements. After we nail down exactly what Yelp ads look like we are going to break down the setup process into 5 easy steps.
- Campaign Goals
- Asset Selection
- Choosing Keywords
- Location Targeting
- Budget
In order to set up your ads, you will need to claim your business on Yelp first. For help claiming your business, view this guide.
Now Let’s Jump In!
What Are Yelp Ads?
The first main questions are what do Yelp ads look like and where will they show. Yelp ads actually blend in very well with organic listings, so much so that some users might not even realize they are viewing an ad rather than the organic listings.
Your ads will typically appear in two places, above organic listings in the search results and on other competitors’ business pages. That’s right, your ad might appear as a “similar suggest business” directly on another company’s page. See below for examples of these two ad placements.
As an aside, just like your ad can appear on another’s business page, competitor ads can also appear on your business page. If you want to keep consumers’ attention on your company while on your page, you can block ads from showing on your page for a price. To do this, travel to page upgrades in the side menu and select remove competitor ads. At the time of this article, this upgrade costs $1 a day.
Setting Up Ads
STEP 1: CAMPAIGN GOALS
When setting up Yelp ads the first step will be to select your campaign goals for where you want to drive traffic. Yelp will provide you with three options:
- “Yelp Optimize”
- “Get More Phone Calls”
- “Get More Website Clicks”
It is important to note that with Yelp Optimize, the goal is to land people on your Yelp business page not on your website. So, if your services require filling out a form or reading more information on your site, then we recommend using website clicks as your goal over Yelp Optimize.
For receiving calls, Yelp will replace the phone number on your business page with a custom forwarding number for reporting and tracking metrics.
STEP 2: ASSET SELECTION
Luckily when it comes to assets creating your ads are quite simple. You can choose a feature image from images that have already been uploaded to your business page or pick an image that a customer has uploaded to your page. The other option for images is to let Yelp optimize it for you. Yelp will run your ad using different images and push out whichever image performs the best.
As for text, advertisers again can either write their own copy or pick a customer’s review to highlight in their ad. Seeing as Yelp is all about reviews, choosing to display another consumer’s opinion of your company rather than a biased tagline can actually help your ad appear more organic in people’s feeds.
STEP 3: CHOOSING KEYWORDS
Yelp has a pretty narrow field when it comes to keywords. Right off the bat Yelp will provide you with a list of keywords that they believe to be applicable to your company based on your Yelp business page. In Yelp you are able to remove keywords, but by removing their keywords you are actually “blocking” those terms, which is essentially negative matching them. So thinking through which terms you remove is crucial.
Now even though you can not add keywords to your ads, your keywords are not completely in the hands of Yelp. If you go through setting up an ad and realize that the keywords Yelp is providing are way off the mark, you are able to edit your business page to hopefully make Yelp’s suggestions more relevant.
Yelp will also allow you to “boost” keywords that you want to focus your budget on. This can be done during the initial ad set up or afterwards. You will be able to find this in your keywords manager. Next to each keyword will be a green up arrow for boosting and a red x for removing. This allows advertisers to have a bit more control over how their budget is being allocated amongst the keywords.
STEP 4: LOCATION TARGETING
Yelp has two location targeting options for your ads.
Yelp’s first location targeting option is based on running ads in a radius around your business’ marked location up to 25 miles. In fact this was the only location targeting available on Yelp for a while. This kind of location targeting hinders those who provide virtual services and those who provide services in areas other than where their business is located.
After receiving this feedback Yelp introduced its second form of location targeting, custom target locations. Now advertisers are able to select places to target based on zip code, city or neighborhood.
STEP 5: LET’S TALK YELP BUDGET
First it’s important to know that Yelp charges you on a Cost Per Click basis, so you will only get charged when someone actually clicks your ad, not when someone views it without clicking.
When asked to select a daily budget, Yelp will automatically give you options based on similar businesses in your area. They will also provide you an estimate of how many monthly clicks you will receive with that budget. Even though Yelp provided you with three recommended budgets you always have the option to set your own custom daily budget for as little as $5 a day. This low minimum daily average is great for businesses that just want to test the water with Yelp ads before diving all the way in with a larger budget.
Remember that this budget is based on a daily average, so one day you might spend over the daily budget and the next day you might spend under.
Publishing
After you land on a budget you are ready to publish your ad! Now everything we have talked about so far, budget, targeting, keywords, assets, and goals can all be adjusted after you publish your ad. So don’t worry you are not committed to any one location or ad text.
These changes can be made by going to your Yelp Ads page and scrolling to the bottom to the last section titled “What changes can I make to my ads”.
Reporting
Yelp will provide you with a pretty concise breakdown of your ads performance. So concise in fact that it might have you itching for a bit more information, like what search terms you are showing up for.
That being said, let’s break down what Yelp will show you.
After your ad has started running Yelp will show you how many impressions, Yelp page views, and leads your ad has generated. A lead can be a Yelp reservation, website clicks, map view, or call.
Yelp will also break down your monthly spend, average cost per clicks, and average cost per lead.
Yelp’s final main reporting view consists of a map highlighting where your ads are reaching. You will be able to view this as a heat map but you will not receive exact numbers for each location.
Wrapping Up
And just like that you are running ads on your Yelp business account! Congratulations. Setting up Yelp ads is a pretty streamlined process, and although sometimes advertisers are looking for more control, Yelp’s current platform makes setting up your first ad a breeze!