Advice on Advertising on Yelp vs Google Express

[shondarogers]

I have a small hotel client located in the Redwood City, CA area who is looking to increase their advertising budget and wondering where the most impact would be....yelp, google express (the maps/local advertising) or google adwords. I already manage their adwords so i know that is successful but i do not have experience in the other two. Just curious if anyone here has seen positive results from either Yelp or Google Express.

thanks!

Shonda

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Shonda,

Thanks for letting me move this from the Private Pro forum to public so you can get more opinions.

 

[Greg Schueler]

Hi Shonda,

When you are asking about Google Express, that is a local delivery type program from Google, so don't think that would apply to a hotel.

If you are referring to their Adwords Express, I don't think you would want to do that since you are already doing their Adwords. Adwords Express is just an easy way to get started with Adwords and let Google determine the keywords based on your category. Just keep doing the full Adwords and you will get better results.

Yelp advertising can be very good in some niches. I haven't had any clients in the Hotel niche, so can't say for sure, but in general I have seen good results.

Another thing you may consider is see which travel sites rank in the top of searches for your keywords and see about advertising on those sites (Ex: trip advisor, expedia...etc) and take advantage of their traffic.

Hope that helps.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I second the above suggestion of travel sites. TripAdvisor should probably be your #1, maybe even above Adwords.

 

[David]

Yo can't actually have an Express account if you have a full AdWords account as far as I know. It's one or the other.

Depending on what you mean when you say "they are successful". Are you tracking leads? Good ROI? If so I would do the following in this order;

1. Bing PPC
2. Facebook PPC (with an offer)
3. Google Display but as a branding campaign

And I hope you have installed a re-marketing pixel on their site from both Google & Facebook as this is extremely effective. (and free)

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Running remarketing on a existing adwords campaign is great - highly recommended. I haven't done much with Yelp advertising, but from what I've heard it's really hit or miss. Facebook might be your second best bet.