Dominate Your Yelp Strategy With These 5 Steps

While we recently created a blog on how to boost your Google Business Profile, there are other local search channels your multi-location business should be focusing on, including Yelp. What is your multi-location business doing to stand out from the competition when it comes to Yelp? Is your Yelp strategy up to par? We’ll break down various tactics your multi-location business can use to dominate its Yelp strategy and win more customers within this blog. 

1. Include All of Your Essential Business Information 

One of the best ways your multi-location business can stand out on Yelp is by including as many details as possible for each location. With Yelp, it’s essential to fill out all of the basic information about your business, such as your local phone number, address, and email address. Still, there are additional opportunities for you to include more in-depth information about your business and its offerings. For instance, each local Yelp profile must be linked to specific categories so Yelp understands what type of services or products your business offers. You can link up to three categories with your Yelp profile. To give you a better idea of categories, the different category types can include but are not limited to things like food, financial services, education, entertainment, home services, and the list goes on. For a full list of category options, check out Yelp’s blog.  

When creating your local Yelp profiles, there is also a section to include local business information. In this section, you can add more context around your business, like how long it’s been around, who started it, or how you are the best in your industry. While this section is limited to 1,500 characters, it can help your business stand out from competitors if used correctly. 

2. Photos Are a Must 

We’ll keep this strategy short and sweet! Your local Yelp profiles aren’t entirely complete without photos. Including imagery in your local Yelp profiles is a must. When thinking about what type of imagery to leverage, consider including: 

• Photos of your store location (both inside and outside) 
• Images of local staff 
• Pictures from local events your business may have been a part of 
• Pictures of your products and services

Including detailed and localized images in your local Yelp profiles provide potential consumers with an idea of what to expect when visiting your business. The more that they’re able to picture themselves at your business, the more likely they’ll be to follow through and make a purchase. 

3. Consider Leveraging Yelp Badges 

Once your business has optimized its local Yelp pages, it’s time to consider how you can further improve your Yelp strategy. That’s where Yelp badges come in. For instance, your multi-location business can add a “Find Us On Yelp” badge on its local pages to encourage customers or prospective customers to visit your local Yelp page. You can also include a similar badge in your email signatures to encourage more people to visit your local Yelp profiles. 

There is also a Yelp Review Badge that your business can leverage to showcase all of the reviews your company has received on Yelp. Once this badge is placed on your website, it will automatically update with the latest reviews when a new consumer leaves one. Yelp badges are a great way to get more of your target audience to visit your local Yelp pages while encouraging previous customers to leave reviews without directly asking for them. 

4. Develop an Online Reputation Management Strategy 

A comprehensive Yelp profile can’t be complete without a strong online reputation management strategy. Ratings and reviews have become not only a top-ranking factor, but the number one factor in determining which company a customer chooses for businesses. If your multi-location business isn’t managing its online reputation on Yelp effectively, you could be missing out. So which efforts should your multi-location company focus on when it comes to reputation management? Data from our 2021 Localized Marketing Benchmark Report provides guidance. 

The report looked at leaders in localized marketing and found that businesses studied had 30 reviews per location, with an average star rating of 3.2 stars when it comes to Yelp. For review response rate, multi-location businesses responded to 13 percent of the reviews received, and the average response time was 81 days. As you can see, there’s a lot of room for improvement in a reputation management strategy on Yelp. If your business exceeds these standards, it will help differentiate you from the competition. 

One of the biggest reasons businesses don’t respond to more reviews is because they’re overwhelmed at managing reviews across 100s or even 1,000s of business locations. That’s where SOCi comes in. SOCi’s streamlined reputation management software is built for multi-location marketers. Through SOCi, users can view every action taken on reviews and monitor every activity on social media. Now, your local, regional, and corporate teams will always know which reviews and social engagements are addressed and which ones still require attention to ensure the prompt responses consumers expect, helping you level up your overall Yelp strategy. 

5. Determine Whether Yelp Advertising Is Right For Your Multi-Location Business 

There’s one final step your multi-location business can leverage to dominate your Yelp strategy – Yelp advertising. According to Yelp, Yelp Ads help you reach 3x more customers. With Yelp Ads, your business will be put to the top of Yelp search results and will also have the opportunity to be featured on competitors’ pages. Yelp Ads are easy to create and customize. Your multi-location business can create your ad goal, define your target audience, determine your ad spend, and Yelp does the rest for you. As a multi-location business, it’s important to consider how much of your target audience is on Yelp and if it makes sense to invest in Yelp advertising. Get more information on Yelp Ads to help you make your decision here. 

Now that you have all of the tools needed to create a winning Yelp strategy, there’s no excuse not to. As a multi-location marketer, we understand that you already have a lot on your plate, but SOCi is here to help. As previously mentioned, our streamlined reputation management software can help you manage your online reputation on Yelp, but we have other tools that can help you as well! For instance, SOCi Listings can help when it comes to including all of your essential business information. SOCi Listings empowers you to manage your business listings at scale and optimize your online presence and local search rankings effectively. From syncing, updating, and managing your local listings to custom audits and profile recommendations to the flexibility for local managers to make their own updates with corporate oversight, SOCi Listings covers every step of the process to propel your listings to the top of search results.

For more insight into how SOCi can help you crush your Yelp efforts and other aspects of your localized marketing strategy, request a demo today!