In the old days a restaurant critic would dine someplace then recount their experiences in a major newspaper. Those reviews were highly influential in a restaurant’s success or failure. Nowadays, the ubiquitous public is like the media critic that never leaves. They go to your place in droves and broadcast every little thing that goes right and wrong all over the Internet.
Now, more than ever, your entire team better be putting its best feet forward whenever the doors are open. At the same time, restaurant owners who manage their online businesses image on Yelp and other social media sites will be ahead of the marketing curve. Sticking your head in the sand and hoping Yelp will go away is not a smart response, especially if you own a restaurant.
The working paper, Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com, by Michael Luca of Harvard Business School, finds that Yelp is the most influential of the restaurant review sites by leaps and bounds. Yelp often appears on page one of major search engines, so people regularly come across these reviews when searching for restaurants to visit. A hungry searching person is very receptive to opinions and warnings when looking for a nice restaurant, and there is no lack of opinions on Yelp.
Social media marketing has turned the world of traditional advertising upside down. Previously,a business owner and ad exectutive would work together to craft a message that portrayed the image they wanted to impart to potential consumers. They exercised control over the impression that was communicated. That’s the old way of doing business.
When a customer had a bad experience and spread it around through word of mouth, at least their influence was limited to a small circle of the disgruntled patron’s associates. Message control is now in the hands of the unforgiving public. It’s word of mouth on steroids. Information shared about your establishment online can make or break you.
A Nine Percent Increase from a Yelp Star?
Consumer reviews are now driving demand. The more stars next to your business name the better, especially on a site as prevalent as Yelp. Doing good on Yelp can mean money in your pocket. Luca’s study correlates a one-star increase for restaurants on Yelp with roughly a 9 percent increase in revenue. But when the glass is half empty, you might loose a star and a tenth of your business. With 70 percent of restaurants
in Seattle reviewed on Yelp last year, chances are, if you own a restaurant, you won’t be able to dodge the bullet forever.
Since it appears that restaurant businesses will probably have to engage with Yelp eventually, the question arises of what to expect when dealing with the company. Yelp has an A Plus rating with the Better Business Bureau of San Francisco Bay Area and Northern Coastal California. BBB considers normal the 349 complaints lodged against them for a company of that size. That’s how many complaints were addressed,
and closed in the last 12 months. The BBB said Yelp made a good faith effort to address all the problems, but customers were not satisfied with the results in about half the cases. The unspecified problems were predominantly in the areas of Product/Service and Advertising/Sales issues.
Get Your Business Set Up on Yelp
So, how do you do business with Yelp? Setting up a business account on Yelp.com is free. It’s the first step to replying to reviews, advertising, announcing events, and tracking trends. Here are step-by-step instructions for getting your Yelp under control.
- Go to yelp.com and enter your business name and city in the search section at the top center of the page and select “search”. If your business is not listed, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “add a business,” and follow the prompts.
- Double-click on your listing. A page will appear with the business address and features. Underneath the features, look for: “Work here? Unlock this business page.” Click on that.
- Click on the arrow: “Go to step one.” Fill in the blanks with your contact info and password, then select: “continue.”
- Make sure you are by the phone used for your business and select the “call me now” button. You will be provided a security code to enter into the field in the sign up area.
- When the security check is done, click on “access free business owner account” at the bottom of the new page. Your account appears with access to all the features. You can now be proactive about managing your Yelp presence.
- Update contact information as needed.
- Create incentives to post reviews.
- Manage your reputation. If a customer expresses displeasure with your business, contact them to correct the problem.
- Monitor the Yelp reviews about your company and correct any erroneous information by posting a reply.
- Offer deals. You can avail yourself of Yelp business tools, such as Yelp deals, to promote your business online.
- Yelp logs more than 60 million visitors per quarter. The more active you are on your Yelp page, the more likely it will be to show up on a Google search. To be active you can thank clients for their business and for responding to coupons, and offer further incentives. Interact with your customers both publicly and privately to raise your standing in search engines.
- Apply the same search engine optimization and marketing techniques on Yelp that you would on any website. Post keyword rich articles and blogs that link back to content on Yelp.
- Refernces: Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com by Michael Luca. Sept. 16, 2011.
- How to Setup Yelp Business Accounts | eHow.com
- How to Make Yelp Reviews Show Up on Google | eHow.com
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