How to Use Yelp for Business

As most know, Yelp is a platform that enables users to look up local businesses — from restaurants to barbershops. The app/site offers reviews, images, and pertinent data such as price range and hours. Consumers are flocking to Yelp to help them make decisions about where to go and what to buy when they’re there. As such, as a small business owner, you should be utilizing Yelp to your advantage — largely of course to gain more exposure for your brand. The key is to show up on the search results pages when consumers are looking for a specific niche or business type. But how do you do this exactly? In this article, we look at the steps required to help your business get found on Yelp!

Getting Started on Yelp

For a smaller local business, Yelp is an essential platform to be on to broaden your reach, attract more customers and make a name for yourself. Primarily for brick and mortar shops, Yelp is fast becoming the go-to tool for any shopper out there. They are looking for restaurant reviews and mouth-watering photos, for salon recommendations, for dog groomers; you name it, it can likely be found on Yelp. The question is, are you getting found on Yelp? It’s about more than just signing up and calling it a day. There are steps you must take to use Yelp wisely and thus make it work for you.

First, add your business.

Obviously, before using Yelp, you have to be on Yelp. So you are going to have to add your business to the site/app. It is crucial, to be found on Yelp for business owners, that you first sign up. The process is pretty easy. You go to the “Add your business” page. They will then prompt you for several details regarding your small business, from address to website to hours and business category, among other information you will need to supply. And that is all there is to it.

Be sure to claim your business.

Sometimes it so happens that a customer may put your business on Yelp on their own. In this case, you are going to want to claim your business listing. If your Yelp business listing already exists, simply claim it, and then you can create a business profile. You can go to “manage my free listing” and it will walk you through the steps from there. You want to claim your business on Yelp as letting it remain unclaimed could leave the door open for anyone to take over the listing and create a business owner’s account for it. This could be disastrous for your business.

Set up your business profile.

As is the case with any social media-related page, you can create a personalized business profile on Yelp as well. As noted, you will have likely already entered the key info on your business. At this point, you could also upload some photos representative of who you are and what you do. If you’re a restaurant owner, show off those delicious dishes. A hairstylist might post pics of some of their best client images. Get creative, but always keep it true and real in terms of what you do!

Start getting those reviews.

Yelp is all about the reviews. The more positive reviews, the better position you’ll be in when people do go to search for businesses within your niche. Did you know that even a one-star increase in your Yelp rating can boost revenue by as much as 8%? There is no harm in approaching satisfied customers and asking them politely to leave you a review on Yelp. Keep in mind, according to Yelp’s rules, you cannot pay customers to leave positive reviews, but again, there is nothing wrong with encouraging them to do so if they were happy with the service/product you provided.

That said, the best customer reviews are those that come without any prompting, simply because the person was blown away by their overall experience at your place of business. This means, that in this review-driven world in which we live, customer service is hugely important!

There are however a few other things you might try to help amp up those reviews:

• Make sure people know you are in fact on Yelp. How can someone leave a review if they are not even sure you’re on the site? Through your other social media pages, you could broadcast the fact that you are now on Yelp.
• You can get a Yelp sign to hang up somewhere in or outside your store location. Saying to people “We’re on Yelp!” via a sign is bound to make them curious enough to check you out.
• If customers have reviewed you in the past on other social media sites, you might reach out to them and ask if they will also review you on Yelp.

Be responsive to reviews.

If people do start reviewing your business on Yelp, you must respond where applicable. And you must respond to both positive and negative reviews. It is tempting sometimes to try and ignore the negative, however, letting a bad review go without offering an explanation (or apology if warranted) is critical to using Yelp in a way that advantages your business.

So for example, if a customer leaves a positive review, you should take the time to express your appreciation and say something personal about your commitment to their continued satisfaction. On the flip side, if you do happen to get a negative review, don’t panic; unfortunately, it happens and could happen more than once. The key here is not to attack. You do not want to go on the offensive. You might explain that you are attempting to improve whatever area of service they were frustrated by. It is also a good idea to private message the complaining customer and sees how you could potentially rectify the situation. While you may be in the right, engaging in a Yelp debate is only going to hurt you in the long run. Consumers will start to see you as belligerent and wonder why you are being so hostile. Always be tactful about how you approach any type of review situation you might encounter on Yelp regarding your business listing.

Offer promos and share news.

If something great is going on with your business, you could always use Yelp to help share the news. You can make such announcements on your business owner’s page. By the same token, you could also offer promos and deals on this page. Have a new product coming out? Spread the news on Yelp.

Yelp is a great place to offer incentives, discounts, and deals. For instance, maybe try a BOGO promo and broadcast what you are doing via your Yelp page.

Take advantage of your Yelp dashboard.

Yelp provides business owners with an insightful dashboard that can show them exactly how they are doing on the site at any given time. Taking advantage of these dashboard insights is hugely important when it comes to using Yelp for business. There are several key metrics that you can track via your personalized dashboard. From the traffic your profile gets to how your business shows up on search results to how users are ultimately engaging with your profile, utilizing these metrics can help you to make adjustments where needed. You want your Yelp listing to evolve as you need it to for your business to stay relevant on the platform.