Yelp

actree

actree

Has anyone used Yelp for their business? Just put a listing on with them and was curious if I should expect a change in call volume. Does anyone have a opinion about it?
 
Did you have to pay to add your listing?

I researched yelp very briefly and it looks similar to angies list.

I have had a dozen or so jobs from angies list over the past couple years, and 7 customers wrote a report about my service (all good thankfully).

I like these types of search sites help customers weed out the butchers.
 
I can tell you all about it. What do you want to know? I have a free listing up and good ratings (all 5 star except for one). I get 3-10 calls per day from it. If you have an ad up for a while, eventually they call you to try to get you to do paid advertising on there.

Ask questions, I'll do what I can to help.

Yelp is a blessing and a curse.
 
@macro, Looks good. I know you were asking for someone else's input, but it looks good.
Maybe you could get a customer to do a testimonial on it.
 
My yelp deal is $75 for $125. Now keep in mind that I don't do free estimates. I charge $125 for the initial consult which gets credited toward the cost of the work done if they hire TreeCareLA to do the work. If they buy the yelp deal, they get that consult for $75, of which I only get $56. They still get $125 taken off the final bill if they hire me.

southsound: the curse is this: Sometimes customers are CRAZY. Sometimes you need to tell them they are full of $#!+. sometimes you need to walk and sometimes you need to dump a load of chips in their driveway and drive off. But with yelp, you can't do that.

For example, if you look at my yelp listing (do a search for arborist in los angeles- we're usually the first to pop up) you'll see 13 5 star reviews. People on yelp love me. Yay.

But 2 or 3 weeks ago, some d-bag gave me a 1 star review because I wouldn't come give him a free estimate. That's it. Our phone conversation was less than 1 minute long. In that one fell swoop, he made the number of phone calls I get per week drop by about 30%. He had no business making a review. He didn't need the services of an arborist. He may as well have called a plumber, then gave a 1 star review that said, "he doesn't cut trees."

So yeah- you have to walk on egg shells a little. You have NO control over what people write and if I understand correctly, once it is written, it CANNOT be changed.

Yelp has analytics that do a pretty good job of knowing if a review is fake, and they filter those reviews out. I've heard (though it is unconfirmed) that if a facebook friend makes a review, it'll get blocked.

I worked at another company and they sent out an all-staff email that told us to go do a review for us. About a half-dozen people tried and they all got blocked because yelp knew they weren't legit reviews.

If yelp finds out you paid clients (or gave them a discount) in exchange for a good review, they'll yank your review, and I've heard that if it continues, they'll remove you from their site. They want the reviews to be genuine. I like to finish jobs by thanking my yelper clients for finding me on yelp as a way to just plant the seed- but I don't actually ask for a review.

So that's the curse. But honestly, a lot of my business comes from yelp. But I live in LA and my ideal client is new home (tree) owners that like to google for answers and it is through this that they find me. They respect my time and they are just not looking for cheapest price. They want things done right and in a way that they can corroborate is correct.

If you don't have those clients in your neighborhood, it might not help you as much as it helps me, but hey- it can't hurt!

love
nick
 
Ive got a page on yelp, and actually bit into the sales pitch to pay for advertising for a year. I gotta say, I am not seeing any benefits yet at all, and its been 4 months. Ive got only 3 reviews on yelp ( a fourth 5 star review, but they won't post it even tho its legit), and one of the reviews is a bogus review at 2 stars, the other two are 5 star.

Im confused how other people get so many reviews.. They say you absolutely do NOT ask customers to rate you on yelp, so I am totally lost on why I don't get reviews written up but others get upwards of 100. I know having more reviews would help. I am thinking of pulling my ad, which is $450 a month
 
NickfromWI said:
My yelp deal is $75 for $125. Now keep in mind that I don't do free estimates. I charge $125 for the initial consult which gets credited toward the cost of the work done if they hire TreeCareLA to do the work. If they buy the yelp deal, they get that consult for $75, of which I only get $56. They still get $125 taken off the final bill if they hire me.

southsound: the curse is this: Sometimes customers are CRAZY. Sometimes you need to tell them they are full of $#!+. sometimes you need to walk and sometimes you need to dump a load of chips in their driveway and drive off. But with yelp, you can't do that.

For example, if you look at my yelp listing (do a search for arborist in los angeles- we're usually the first to pop up) you'll see 13 5 star reviews. People on yelp love me. Yay.

But 2 or 3 weeks ago, some d-bag gave me a 1 star review because I wouldn't come give him a free estimate. That's it. Our phone conversation was less than 1 minute long. In that one fell swoop, he made the number of phone calls I get per week drop by about 30%. He had no business making a review. He didn't need the services of an arborist. He may as well have called a plumber, then gave a 1 star review that said, "he doesn't cut trees."

So yeah- you have to walk on egg shells a little. You have NO control over what people write and if I understand correctly, once it is written, it CANNOT be changed.

Yelp has analytics that do a pretty good job of knowing if a review is fake, and they filter those reviews out. I've heard (though it is unconfirmed) that if a facebook friend makes a review, it'll get blocked.

I worked at another company and they sent out an all-staff email that told us to go do a review for us. About a half-dozen people tried and they all got blocked because yelp knew they weren't legit reviews.

If yelp finds out you paid clients (or gave them a discount) in exchange for a good review, they'll yank your review, and I've heard that if it continues, they'll remove you from their site. They want the reviews to be genuine. I like to finish jobs by thanking my yelper clients for finding me on yelp as a way to just plant the seed- but I don't actually ask for a review.

So that's the curse. But honestly, a lot of my business comes from yelp. But I live in LA and my ideal client is new home (tree) owners that like to google for answers and it is through this that they find me. They respect my time and they are just not looking for cheapest price. They want things done right and in a way that they can corroborate is correct.

If you don't have those clients in your neighborhood, it might not help you as much as it helps me, but hey- it can't hurt!

love
nick
Click to expand...
Nick this is a great contribute. Your solution to the free estimate problem is very good, balancing expertise vs motivating the client to go with your work. I did want to mention a strategy that I use for my angieslist client review page that could work for the problem you mention with respect to the guy who only called you to get a free estimate and ended up damaging your reputation by giving a 1 star review. When this happens on my reviews--maybe 1 in 15 reviews or so--I reply to the review and politely explain why the reviewer hasn't a real right to review our work as he has not worked with us at all. Just replying to these reviews and putting a little heat back on a negative reviewer will tend to make would be negative nancies think twice about giving you a frivolous negative review (because they know they could be called out on it).
 
MTCInc said:
Ive got a page on yelp, and actually bit into the sales pitch to pay for advertising for a year. I gotta say, I am not seeing any benefits yet at all, and its been 4 months. Ive got only 3 reviews on yelp ( a fourth 5 star review, but they won't post it even tho its legit), and one of the reviews is a bogus review at 2 stars, the other two are 5 star.

Im confused how other people get so many reviews.. They say you absolutely do NOT ask customers to rate you on yelp, so I am totally lost on why I don't get reviews written up but others get upwards of 100. I know having more reviews would help. I am thinking of pulling my ad, which is $450 a month
Click to expand...

I would pull the ad for sure it's a waste of money if you ask me. Invest in something more tangible such as SEO or Adwords.
That way you at least have an idea of your return on investment. Also, those two will definitely have a better ROI. Oh, and don't listen to Yelp. You can ask your customers to review you on Yelp. Many businesses have decals that say that/ also ask that.
 
MTCInc said:
Ive got a page on yelp, and actually bit into the sales pitch to pay for advertising for a year. I gotta say, I am not seeing any benefits yet at all, and its been 4 months. Ive got only 3 reviews on yelp ( a fourth 5 star review, but they won't post it even tho its legit), and one of the reviews is a bogus review at 2 stars, the other two are 5 star.

Im confused how other people get so many reviews.. They say you absolutely do NOT ask customers to rate you on yelp, so I am totally lost on why I don't get reviews written up but others get upwards of 100. I know having more reviews would help. I am thinking of pulling my ad, which is $450 a month
Click to expand...

You said you bit into the sales pitch, so it sounds like you are going directly through yelp, not the part where business owners can set it up themselves. We did the self sign up option and it didn't work, I signed up with them and it's working pretty well.

Do you have the call to action button on your page? Do you have the yelp logo on your website or the bottom of your email or invoice? Reviews don't happen over night and every star you are missing on a review site has shown to reduce your gross sales by 10-20% according to a Harvard study. Make sure you reply to reviews on Yelp. The Yelp community wants to know the business checks their page and stays on top of reviews. We don't use Adwords on Google at all. Our competitors spend $1200 minimum on Google Adwords each month and our other avenues are more effective for us and cost less.
 
treehead32 said:
You said you bit into the sales pitch, so it sounds like you are going directly through yelp, not the part where business owners can set it up themselves. We did the self sign up option and it didn't work, I signed up with them and it's working pretty well.

Do you have the call to action button on your page? Do you have the yelp logo on your website or the bottom of your email or invoice? Reviews don't happen over night and every star you are missing on a review site has shown to reduce your gross sales by 10-20% according to a Harvard study. Make sure you reply to reviews on Yelp. The Yelp community wants to know the business checks their page and stays on top of reviews. We don't use Adwords on Google at all. Our competitors spend $1200 minimum on Google Adwords each month and our other avenues are more effective for us and cost less.
Click to expand...

Actually, I have had my page set up for quite a few years... I believe about 4? I recently paid to advertise, which just puts my page out there when people look for tree service.... Mine will pop up on top as a "sponsored" page. I just asked a client who was happy with our work to review us, and she did, so our reviews have gone up. Still not really seeing a drive up in business with this paid service.

I do have a call to action button up. I am considering a yelp deal to see if that may drive more customers... Not sure what I would offer. Nick has a good thing going, but I am not confident I can get away with charging for "estimates". There is a fine line between estimates and consultations. I am able to pick off the people who want an "estimate", but what they are really asking for is more of a consult. When I let them know I charge for that, I would say 1/2 decide not to have me out. Ive always used Nicks strategy with consults, saying I credit back some or all of it if they decide to work with us, but I don't think I can go the route of charging for estimates in the saturated market I am in. That would be the perfect set up for the yelp deal if I could get away with it
 
NickfromWI said:
My yelp deal is $75 for $125. Now keep in mind that I don't do free estimates. I charge $125 for the initial consult which gets credited toward the cost of the work done if they hire TreeCareLA to do the work. If they buy the yelp deal, they get that consult for $75, of which I only get $56. They still get $125 taken off the final bill if they hire me.

southsound: the curse is this: Sometimes customers are CRAZY. Sometimes you need to tell them they are full of $#!+. sometimes you need to walk and sometimes you need to dump a load of chips in their driveway and drive off. But with yelp, you can't do that.

For example, if you look at my yelp listing (do a search for arborist in los angeles- we're usually the first to pop up) you'll see 13 5 star reviews. People on yelp love me. Yay.

But 2 or 3 weeks ago, some d-bag gave me a 1 star review because I wouldn't come give him a free estimate. That's it. Our phone conversation was less than 1 minute long. In that one fell swoop, he made the number of phone calls I get per week drop by about 30%. He had no business making a review. He didn't need the services of an arborist. He may as well have called a plumber, then gave a 1 star review that said, "he doesn't cut trees."

So yeah- you have to walk on egg shells a little. You have NO control over what people write and if I understand correctly, once it is written, it CANNOT be changed.

Yelp has analytics that do a pretty good job of knowing if a review is fake, and they filter those reviews out. I've heard (though it is unconfirmed) that if a facebook friend makes a review, it'll get blocked.

I worked at another company and they sent out an all-staff email that told us to go do a review for us. About a half-dozen people tried and they all got blocked because yelp knew they weren't legit reviews.

If yelp finds out you paid clients (or gave them a discount) in exchange for a good review, they'll yank your review, and I've heard that if it continues, they'll remove you from their site. They want the reviews to be genuine. I like to finish jobs by thanking my yelper clients for finding me on yelp as a way to just plant the seed- but I don't actually ask for a review.

So that's the curse. But honestly, a lot of my business comes from yelp. But I live in LA and my ideal client is new home (tree) owners that like to google for answers and it is through this that they find me. They respect my time and they are just not looking for cheapest price. They want things done right and in a way that they can corroborate is correct.

If you don't have those clients in your neighborhood, it might not help you as much as it helps me, but hey- it can't hurt!

love
nick
Click to expand...
What do they say when you tell them either to dump a bogus 1 star review or you will dump them, plus let all the business owners on the social media outlet you use know if they do right of wrong by you?
 
southsoundtree01 said:
What do they say when you tell them either to dump a bogus 1 star review or you will dump them, plus let all the business owners on the social media outlet you use know if they do right of wrong by you?
Click to expand...
Yelp does not touch reviews unless they use inappropriate language and it is reported to yelp.

A yelp review can move from a recommended review to a not recommended review...vice versa, multiple times based on the activity level of the yelp user. We have multiple reviews from real customers that are on the not recommended/filtered review because their yelp account is not highly active. This is yelps way of filtering out the people that create "fake" accounts to either bash a competitor or do a fake positive review on their own company.
 
MTCInc said:
Actually, I have had my page set up for quite a few years... I believe about 4? I recently paid to advertise, which just puts my page out there when people look for tree service.... Mine will pop up on top as a "sponsored" page. I just asked a client who was happy with our work to review us, and she did, so our reviews have gone up. Still not really seeing a drive up in business with this paid service.

I do have a call to action button up. I am considering a yelp deal to see if that may drive more customers... Not sure what I would offer. Nick has a good thing going, but I am not confident I can get away with charging for "estimates". There is a fine line between estimates and consultations. I am able to pick off the people who want an "estimate", but what they are really asking for is more of a consult. When I let them know I charge for that, I would say 1/2 decide not to have me out. Ive always used Nicks strategy with consults, saying I credit back some or all of it if they decide to work with us, but I don't think I can go the route of charging for estimates in the saturated market I am in. That would be the perfect set up for the yelp deal if I could get away with it
Click to expand...

I found your yelp page and went through your competitors that have a lot of reviews. Here is what I noticed and some thoughts: your main picture that shows up is a picture of you on the ad. You've got some nice climbing photos of an arborist working in the tree, consider making that your main picture for your ad and on your yelp page. Your competitors also have arborists in the trees as their main picture. Consumers have a problem, you offer a solution. An immediate picture of how you offer the solution is clear. Most people don't scroll through the rest of the pictures. You have a lot of technical pictures, that's great for treebuzz, but the average consumer doesn't know the difference between an aspen and a maple.

You have a fantastic about the owner section. I love it! The spiel about what you offer says "fine pruning techniques." Tree pruning, tree removal, stump grinding, tree planting, cabling, do you offer phc? List your solutions to their problems.

Your website says you have workers compensation. Put that on your yelp page. Especially if your competition uses contractors. State that your arborist always has proof of coverage and license at the time of the estimate. Do you estimate and perform the work? That gives them peace of mind. Same arborist from start to finish.

San Fran is a huge tech city and if you have 8 months left on your contract with yelp, switch some stuff up. Have you looked at your report page that shows how many leads you have gotten? How many people have called? Like any other online advertising, if they click to call you and you don't answer...they go to the next business on yelp until someone answers. If the calls are coming and it's just reviews that are not being posted, give it time. A simple reminder like you did with the other woman "I'm glad you found us on yelp" ..plants a bug in their mind to leave a review at some point. Remember to respond to her post...?

When we signed up for yelp, our account manager shared what our competition were spending on yelp. Not sure if they were supposed to, but they did. Call your rep and see if they will. You may not be comparing apples to apples with reviews. They may be spending $700+ a month not the $450. If you aren't getting calls or leads at all, then ask the representative if they can up you to the next level for a month at no additional cost to you to see if that helps. "We are a small business, with a strict marketing budget. I've been prompt with yelp callers, I've switched up my page, it's just not working. Yelp is taking a lot of our budget. Are the other guys outspending my budget? Is it an option to try the next level of marketing for one month to see if that helps us push through? I'll obviously pay the $450, but I need more traffic." You never know...it's worth a shot!

Last but not least: you have a beautiful, well designed, informational website. It's better than mine! WAY better than your competitors. The biggest difference? They have the yelp logo on the top of their home page. Check out urban arborists website.

I hope it turns into your favor, otherwise I agree...you will have to move that budget to another avenue come renewal time.

Time to switch up our yelp page this weekend. Looking at those made me analyze ours from a consumers perspective too.

Good luck
 
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