I Wasted $605.20 On Yelp Ads So You Don't Have To
Over the past 20 years I have been contacted by Yelp numerous times to buy an ad - given my experience I was always highly skeptical that Yelp could drive meaningful local leads. It doesn't have an "SEO"-specific category for ad targeting. Most people in my area likely do not end up using Yelp to find an SEO agency. In fact, I have ranked #1 or #2 for "SEO agency" in Google in Pleasanton, CA for nearly two decades and the number of actual clients I have gotten from that I could probably count on my hand. And I am pretty sure I have always been on page one of Yelp for those queries.
But I must have been in a good mood or something when I got the following email in mid-July from a Yext sales rep:
Hi Andrew,
Call me back As soon as possible to get these New customers NOW!! Enormous Revenue! We're in the busiest time of year!!
Yelp is the First place customers go to find and do business with you, and they Are doing business....!!!
Yelp is the First place customers go to find and do business with you and You have just over 1,700 people searching Now in Pleasanton Not seeing you, and escalating daily and Yelp is adding $1,050 in additional ads NOW!! (EXPIRING and you make ALL money for ads Yelp is adding)!
No Startup Costs,No Term Agreements and within minutes have You Seen at the TOP Now, immediately removing Tri Valley Solutions, Audio Video Workshop, K Dode Technology And all of These Advertisers currently advertising on your page to Get You Seen NOW and these customers doing business with you Immediately, and making money ASAP!!
ALL of these businesses can Cancel at any time, They Are Not cancelling...they are making Enormous Money......!!
Yelp is Partnered with Apple. Everytime a customer searches on their IPhone Siri, in their Car...That's Yelp!!! And, with Yelp Connect ( Social Media on Yelp~ Total Game changer for your Business)
I knew this was way over the top sales BS, but I booked the call and heard the pitch. I told the rep I was skeptical about their numbers. If over 1,700 people were searching Yelp in Pleasanton each month, I've got to believe 99% of them are looking for a good cheeseburger, while exactly <1% are looking for a marketing agency, let alone an SEO agency.
But I was feeling optimistic, so figured I'd give it a shot. They threw on a bunch of "Boost" incentives so the value was insane! It literally was.
I am not going to go into the hour or two I spent optimizing my Yelp profile. Adding images and videos. Publishing some posts on Local SEO and AI to show I was a local thought-leader, etc. Let's just say I optimized the profile good enough - not perfect - but decent. I set the budget to $24/day which the rep thought was a good starting point. Then I waited.
In the first week, I actually got one lead and responded to it within 40 minutes - there was a glitch with my inbox setup or something. But the lead ghosted me.
Over the next month, I got a total of six "ad leads." That basically means someone clicked on the LSG Yelp profile and went to our website. Guess how many booked meetings I got from those six "leads?" You guessed it. Bupkis.
Guess how much Yelp charged me for the leads? $605.20, or $100+/lead.
In Yelp's defense:
- I probably wasn't spending enough to get enough volume through the campaign to do a true test. Then again, nothing about the quality of those few leads gave me any confidence that tripling the budget would yield anything.
- $100/lead isn't necessarily a bad CPL, if the leads are qualified. The few I got didn't fill out a contact form or message us in any way. It's possible we suck and they got that vibe from the site, but seems like these were very weak leads.
To be clear, I am not saying you shouldn't advertise on Yelp. That said, I sure won't ever again.
ICING ON THE CAKE UPDATE: When I canceled my Yelp Ads campaign it seems like they automatically enrolled me in the $180/month upgrade package that I had been getting for free with the Yelp Ads. Good thing I checked my email. I had to go in and cancel that manually.