I love Yelp. I love Yelp. My name is Rebecca Bonner-Laspada. I'm co-owner of Direct Carpet Unlimited, and I advertise with Yelp.
My ROI with Yelp is stellar compared to some of my other advertising that I do. I see the benefit of that every single day. We get at least five phone calls from clients. We get people walking through the door. It’s something that’s tangible, which also helps my husband because online marketing is mysterious, and a lot of times you can’t actually track the ROI properly. Yelp has actually been the only piece of marketing that we put into play where we can see the return on a daily basis. And when we first started, it was sort of like, wow, that’s amazing. We know exactly where our dollars are going. We know exactly because I get real-time reporting, and once a week, I get my Yelp reports, and I can see how many people are going on. And the metrics are amazing. So I really appreciate that, especially when I have a small marketing budget. I want to make sure that my dollars are getting spent in the right places. I have a very small budget, by the way. I have a little teeny tiny budget.
So when we first started advertising with Yelp that first year, we really wanted to benchmark because every year I kind of look at our marketing dollars and exactly what we’re getting. And that first year was amazing. We had a 200% increase in just people going to our website, and then the mobile calls that were coming into our business increase by about 400%. I’d have to say that we had some really great traction with Yelp. I feel very comfortable with advertising on Yelp. I think the price structure is very fair, especially for a small business. If you want to get a lot of exposure and you have a small marketing budget, it’s the perfect way to start. So for the businesses that actually shy away from it, I’d say, listen, if you are a service-oriented business, don’t be afraid. Jump in with both feet. It has done nothing but grow our business for the last five years, and I couldn’t be happier.
