5 ways Yelp can help your multi-location business overcome common marketing challenges

Managing your digital presence across search engines, social media, and local directories has become increasingly complex and time-consuming for multi-location businesses. In today’s competitive landscape, it is crucial to address these challenges effectively.

Here are five ways Yelp can assist you in mastering these digital marketing challenges.

1. Claim and Optimize Your Local Listings

To enhance your online presence, it is essential to own and edit all your local listings on third-party sites. For smaller brands with fewer than 10 locations, you can easily claim your listings on Yelp for Business at biz.yelp.com.

If you have 10 or more locations, you can take a decentralized approach to claiming and give ownership to regional or store managers, work with one of our listings partners for bulk claiming and updates, or reap the benefits of being a paying client where Yelp will handle all the claiming and regular updates for you.

By claiming your Business Pages, you gain access to a suite of free tools and metrics, improving your chances of receiving more calls and website clicks.

2. Keep Your Local Listings Accurate and Engaging

Customers expect local business listings to include accurate and up-to-date information, such as hours, address, and contact details. Providing inaccurate information can result in a negative customer experience.

By claiming your Yelp Business Pages, you gain the ability to edit your listings at any time. Additionally, take advantage of Yelp’s free features to make your Business Pages stand out:

• Photos: Enhance customer engagement by adding photos to your Business Pages. Businesses with over 10 photos on their page typically receive 12 times more customer connections per month.
• Amenities: Highlight important details about your business, such as available services or features like “Offers Takeout.” Users can search for businesses based on specific amenities, helping them narrow down their options.

For paid customers, our account team will assist you in managing your listings in bulk, ensuring regular updates. They will also guide you in implementing best practices and optimizing your Business Pages to meet your marketing goals.

3. Track and Analyze Location-Specific Metrics

Understanding the performance of each individual location can be challenging for large or growing businesses. Are you generating sufficient awareness and leads for newly-opened locations? Do customer reviews indicate potential problems that require your attention? Yelp provides you with the necessary data to answer these questions and more.

Once you claim your Business Pages, you gain access to location-specific metrics, including user views, activity, leads, and more. As an advertiser, you can access aggregated metrics across all your locations. Additionally, advertisers are paired with a dedicated account team that serves as your strategic partner, delivering regular reporting and insights to inform your local marketing strategy and business decisions. They also act as our consultant, helping you choose the right attribution tools and partners for your business.

4. Schedule and Manage Localized Messaging

Consumers increasingly seek out local business content, browsing social media, searching for deals and discounts, reading reviews, and comparing options before making purchasing decisions. This presents a significant opportunity for your business, but it also introduces challenges in customizing and managing content across multiple locations.

To address this need for communication, Yelp offers a social marketing product, Spotlight, that allows you to publish content to your Business Pages. With Spotlight, you can highlight special events, new offerings, deals, and more. These posts are promoted on Yelp’s homepage in addition to your Business Pages. Your dedicated account team will handle the heavy lifting, while you focus on providing the content.

5. Manage Your Reviews Effectively

Online reviews have become a vital aspect of the purchasing process. Research shows that 76% of consumers regularly read online reviews for local businesses. It’s not only about what consumers say about your business but also about how you respond. In fact, 88% of consumers are likely to use a business if they can see the business responds to all types of reviews (compared to 60% when a business responds to only critical reviews), making your engagement crucial when consumers are deciding where to spend their money.

For multi-location businesses with hundreds or thousands of reviews, managing them effectively can be daunting. As a company built to showcase genuine consumer experiences, Yelp provides the tools and expertise to help you turn reviews into revenue. Here are our top tips:

• Respond to every review: Engage with your customers, even the positive ones. Responding shows appreciation for their support and can lead to stronger customer loyalty. It also impacts other prospective customers’ decisions to choose you, as 56% of review readers say a business replying to customers’ reviews would make them trust the business more.¹
  • Centralized review management: Your corporate team can manage all reviews through our aggregate review dashboard, allowing you to sort and respond to reviews across all locations efficiently.
  • Decentralized review management: Enable regional or store managers to handle reviews at the local level, ensuring prompt responses from individuals responsible for specific locations.
• Learn from negative reviews: Utilize negative reviews as an opportunity to improve. Respond to dissatisfied customers, identify and address issues, and provide a personalized solution. Research shows that users are more likely to upgrade their review if a business owner responds.

Whether you have 10 locations, 100 locations, or even thousands, prioritizing a local focus in your marketing efforts is crucial. Fortunately, Yelp offers a collection of sophisticated tools and a dedicated team of multi-location marketing experts for you to connect with, that will assist you in achieving success.