More than 92% of consumers who are looking for businesses on Yelp are going to make a purchase. The odds of being chosen increase with good reviews – but how do you get those? Even more important, how do you get positive feedback from the ones whose opinion counts the most – the so-called Yelp elite? Let’s find out.
Why you should be on Yelp
If you are not on Yelp, get on it – as soon as possible. Not only that 92% of consumers using Yelp make a purchase after visiting the platform, they are also the ones with deep pockets. More than half of Yelpers earn over $100,000 per year. So, Yelp is the place where you definitely want to be found.
There is also a catch – Yelp is a modern, digitalized form of word-of-mouth, and as you may know, this is one of the most powerful forms of marketing. However, it goes both ways – while positive reviews can launch your business into the stars, negative feedback can bury it forever. But don’t fret. Yelp’s statistics show that most people are there to recommend a business and leave a good feedback.
Yet, even for the best of businesses, negative reviews happen. Everyone makes mistakes, and so do you. So how do you manage to make the positive opinions stand out? Be wise. Yelp’s comment filtering algorithm is a bit of a mystery, but based on some experiments, it would be safe to say that Yelp elite squads’ reviews never get filtered and tend to stick out. So let’s see who these people are.
Who is the Yelp elite?
The Yelp Elite Squad are people who are highly active and productive on Yelp. Any user can nominate themselves to join the squad on this page. There is a number of factors that contribute to the reviewer’s Yelp elite squad potential. According to Yelp, some of the requirements are:
- Well written reviews
- High-quality tips
- Detailed personal profile
- Active voting and complimenting record
- High engagement with other Yelpers
- Being a role model on and off the site
You can recognize a member of the Yelp elite by a colorful Elite badge on their account profile. Yelp also gives gold and black Yelp elite badges for 5 and 10-year membership, respectively. This status, however, isn’t an ongoing privilege – it lasts for a year and it can only be renewed by going through the recertification process.
Yelp elite is not paid for reviewing and they are not allowed to receive discounts or freebies in exchange for feedback. Yeah, you read it right – there is not much actual incentive for becoming a Yelp elite, other than occasional get-togethers in nice restaurants where they get bites for free. For some – it’s quite enough. And now we’ll show you how to wow both existing and potential Yelp elite squad members. Let’s go through the basics first.
How to get on Yelp
This is a fairly simple process – if you’ve already been through it, just scroll down or jump to the next section in the content menu. If you want a detailed guide through creating a fantastic Yelp profile, click here and follow the steps.
First, check if your business is already on Yelp. You will do that by visiting Biz Yelp page. There you will find the search bar where you’ll enter the location and your business name.
If your business is already listed on Yelp (by a reviewer), you have an opportunity to claim it and create your business profile.
A free business account enables you to:
- Update business information
- Respond to reviews
- Track business analytics
- Upload photos
- Create a Yelp deal
- Create a Check-in offer
- Manage your Yelp presence from your phone
If your business isn’t already listed on Yelp, just click on the sign-up button in the upper right corner.
When you register, you will enter your business information – name, location, phone number, website address and working hours. Make sure this information is clear and correct. After that
List the categories and subcategories
Add everything that is relevant to your business. For example, Beauty and Spas is one category, while various services constitute subcategories – massage, manicure, pedicure, etc.
Upload photos
The more the better. When people are browsing for any, any kind of business, they want to be sure they won’t end up in some shoddy place. Start with yourself – are you more likely to make a reservation for a random restaurant with no pics, or a place where you can clearly see the interior, menu items or products?
Optimize the content of your Yelp profile
You can do it by spreading particular keywords throughout your profile. Think of the words customers may use when searching for you or the services you provide. If you need help or keyword suggestions, try using a keyword tool, such as Crazy Egg – here you’ll find a detailed guide on how to get the most of it.
Ask for reviews
People who discover you on Facebook, Google or walking down the street don’t think too much about reviews and Yelp. However, you can always use ads, CTA’s or creative reminders to ask them to leave feedback on Yelp.
Create a Yelp deal
You can incentivize visits to your business by offering customers a prepaid discount. These deals are free to set up and you only pay when customers purchase your deal. They only take a minute to create and go live on Yelp instantly.
Create a check-in offer
You can come up with the incentive that is unlocked once the customer checks in to your business, broadcasting their location to their friends.
As you can see, these are pretty cool things you can do to get people to try out your services and products. If you want to add some other features to your profile, you can upgrade to a paid plan. This enables you to advertise on Yelp and:
Use the CTA button
If you need convincing about the importance of prompting customers to immediate action, click here. Yelp page is another place where you want to nudge customers down the sales funnel.
Use geotargeting
With this feature, you can customize in which locations and regions your ads will show up. Furthermore, you can select a particularly positive review or write a message that will display as an ad.
Yep, this is all neat, but how do you get to those Yelp elite members?
How to engage Yelp elite
First, let’s get a few things out of the way.
Ground rules
1. Don’t be desperate
By desperate, I mean messaging hundreds of people, begging for a positive feedback or repeatedly messaging potential customers who did not reply. Yes, Yelp is great and positive reviews are fantastic, but there are plenty of channels for advertising and wowing your customers, and Yelp is only one of them. Your business won’t crumble into dust even if you don’t get more than 10 Yelp reviews.
2. Don’t try to bribe people
This is an extension of desperation, but it should be pointed out on its own. Don’t try to bribe people in exchange for positive feedback. It’s wrong, and if your service is bad, people are going to note the discrepancy between the reviews and reality.
3. Accept compliments and criticism
If you are responding to the reviews (which is advised), be kind and helpful. If there is an average or negative review, talk to people and ask how you can improve. Don’t argue with anyone. Here, you’ll find a detailed guide on how to deal with these things.
Now that we got this out of the way, we can talk about the ways to attract the Yelp elite to your business.
Finding Yelp elite
One of the great ways to find Yelp elite, who are basically micro-influencers, is to search for your competition. Micro-influencers are people who have between 1000 and 10.000 followers on social networks and have high organic engagement with them.
So, go to Yelp, find your business category and enter your location. When you get results, they should look like this.
The additional filters will enable you to narrow down your search – this time, I am looking for beauty salons. For example, I picked the East Village neighborhood.
If you want to narrow down your search further, look under the business name for subcategories – I picked Skin Care. Click on it, and you’ll find a list of skin care salons in the neighborhood you chose. As you browse reviews for your competitors, you will find a filter for reviews – if there are any reviews left by Yelp elite, they will show an additional filter option.
Yelp elite members have “Elite ‘18” written under their profile info. Collect as many Yelp elite profiles as you can.
Messaging Yelp elite
Before you message the reviewer, analyze each Yelp elite profile – you certainly don’t want to invite someone who goes around with the sole purpose of airing grievances against businesses. As I said before, your chances are good – most people come to Yelp to leave good reviews. This reviewer is obviously generous with compliments, thus someone you want to drop by.
Now the tricky part starts – how do you talk to these people? Well, I’ve said it right now – they are people, just like anyone else. They are likely to be outgoing, curious and willing to try new stuff – so don’t feel uncomfortable about offering them to give your business a shot. Here’s a tip – before you create a (personalized!) message, look at their profile and find out what they like.
For example, you won’t invite this person to the seafood restaurant to try the latest salmon specialties. But you definitely will invite her to the new bookstore or coffee shop. Even if you have a beauty salon or something not connected to these interests, you can entice them to visit your business by mentioning that you (for example) serve coffee to the customers during the treatments.
So how is this message going to look like? Follow these basic steps:
1. Introduce yourself
Tell them your name, what your business is about, how long you’ve been around and why you are reaching out.
2. Personalize your message
Try to entice the reviewer by pointing out that your business can offer them something they need or like.
3. Show the benefit
Tell them why trying out your business is something they shouldn’t skip. Remember, offering people discounts and freebies for a visit or review is against the Yelp guidelines.
4. Request
Don’t get too pushy here – ask them to visit, tell them the location and working hours and remind them that you’d appreciate honest feedback.
Now let’s see how this message would look like in practice!
Voila! Not that difficult, right? This is just an example. Although your ultimate goal is to sell (and both of you know that), try to be honest and straightforward. For example, Jacqueline Perry, the owner of Permanent Appeal beauty salon, described her experience in this interview for Yelp blog.
She was aiming at Instagram micro-influencers (and what I laid out here is a viable outreach strategy for any social network) and found a lot of success with an honest, straightforward approach.
“I honestly drafted a simple message and started sending mass amounts of Instagram DM’s. I figured “what’s the worst that can happen?” and wasn’t even sure if anyone would respond,” she said. “I was pleasantly surprised to get many responses! It reaffirmed my passion for women helping women. I was amazed at how many like-minded people were out there willing to support me. Some of these influencers had no clue what services I was offering, but were still 100% willing to help.”
So your product doesn’t have to be the main incentive for someone’s visit or purchase – sometimes, it can be a call for solidarity and support for new local businesses. Another advice from Perry is to track carefully where your business comes from – she created a spreadsheet to track where her clients found her. Guess what? A great amount of them came from word-of-mouth.
Gathering Yelp elite
Hosting parties and get-togethers for Yelp elite is also one of the ways businesses can get the squad to notice them or eventually go back and bring in other people (and reviews).
However, my suggestion is to move away from the regular meet-ups and try to bring some purpose to these meetings. For example, it could be a charity event, a quiz night, a movie night or a book club. All the info you need about the type of event that could draw in a lot of Yelp elite members is right there in their profiles.
If you want to try this strategy, message your local Yelp community manager on the bottom of this page.
Conclusion
Making sure that reviews for your business are good may seem like a lot of hassle, but it pays off. People love assurance – and reviews give it to them. You don’t have to have hundreds of reviews – even a couple of them are enough if they are positive, interesting and offer other customers a tip or recommendation.
Remember, Yelp and reviews are only one part of your larger marketing strategy – so I encourage you to use this tips to reach micro-influencer across all available social platforms.
