By Jonathan Barber
Should I Ignore Yelp?
I get it, you probably have a love hate relationship with Yelp that’s probably leaning more towards the hate side. As a small business owner I feel the same way. Why are my reviews getting filtered, and what’s up with the algorithm that does the filtering. These are all questions that I’m sure you’ve thought about at some point if you’ve given your marketing any sort of thought.
It’s helpful to remember that reviews are one of the most effective pieces of marketing you can do for your auto shop. Even if you rely off of word of mouth marketing, remember that your potential customers are still going to go online and check your reviews, and they may land on Yelp. So even if you hate Yelp, don’t ignore them, because if you ignore Yelp, you’re ignoring money every month. Just don’t pay for their advertising, it’s really expensive and your money will go to waste if you don’t have good reviews, or a dedicated landing page for prospects to land on.
“Even if you rely on word of mouth marketing, remember that your potential customers are still going to go online and check your rebiews”
Yelp’s algorithm hasn’t really been seen by anyone, but from what I’ve heard it seems to favor filtering positive reviews. If you speak with a Yelp rep, they’ll tell you that their algorithm filters out reviews from someone who has only written 1 review, or from someone who has no profile info or photo or link to Facebook. A strongly slanted positive or negative review will often be filtered, and short reviews lacking details will be filtered as well. Also if a review is from a location other than where the business is located often Yelp’s filter will catch it.
So what should I do about Yelp?
My suggestion is to not ignore it. You’ll get valuable traffic from Yelp, and if you put through enough reviews, some of them will stick. Volume is key here, use a review funnel to attract reviews that help to boost your reputation on Yelp and on other review websites.
If you’re interested in learning more, chat with an expert about how we can lay the foundation for your automotive business’ growth.