Yelp & AngiesList for Lead Gen

[pestmarketer]

What experiences have you all had working with Yelp & AngiesList for Lead Gen? I think we tried them both 5 years ago and they were promising us the sun and the moon with results, but when results came in it was something like $150 or more per lead when you did the math. It's been awhile, maybe they've improved (the sales reps like to say they have). Should we give them another shot?

 

[Contractor]

I’ve never paid either of those services. I get some free leads from Yelp myself.

Last week I was talking to an electrical contractor in a different state who I know from an online group, I trust this man and don’t think he would lie about business. This is what he said, a copy and paste from a text message:

So last year I advertised with Yelp and Angie’s List. My advertising costs were about about $20k. My income from advertising sources was $385,000. Referrals was about $120k. Organic or unknown was about $100k.

 

[PKLilikoi]

What experiences have you all had working with Yelp & AngiesList for Lead Gen? I think we tried them both 5 years ago and they were promising us the sun and the moon with results, but when results came in it was something like $150 or more per lead when you did the math. It's been awhile, maybe they've improved (the sales reps like to say they have). Should we give them another shot?

Depending on the business, Yelp is a hit or miss. The big thing to ask your Yelp rep is to see if they can provide some sort of information based upon who you are targeting and of course the keywords you are targeting. My yelp rep that I work with is truly amazing. She provides me just enough information for my clients to see if the spends are worth it.

I attached a small example of what she usually sends me before I begin a campaign with a certain client.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Here is my case study on Yelp ads. They did actually drive more customers but just at a higher cost per lead than Google. Are Yelp ads worth paying for? How to figure it out

 

[NexstarNickR]

Another thing to consider when doing Yelp / Angies List / Home Advisor is that if you are a service business, the type of client might be different. Sometimes the make or break point can be proper treatment of these leads, knowing that they are coming in through a more "discovery" funnel and not a "purchase intent" funnel.

 

[Tony Wang]

I've had drastically different experiences with Yelp, depending on the niche, so my current advice to clients is that you just have to try it out to know if it works. As Joy's article mentions, you really have to be careful about tracking leads in order to make a good decision, so it's tedious but possible.

btw, Yelp has been changing a lot of things over the past year, so each niche is different in terms of how the ads run, what kind of targeting you can do, etc. It's a lot better than it was 2 years ago, but one big problem, they still blend organic/ad performance reporting, so you have to be careful. Just like Google and every other platform, they want to help business owners, but REALLY want to help themselves

 

[pestmarketer]

Thanks everyone for your feedback and for the case study. From your input it sounds like my best course of action is to see if we can do a short duration test to determine performance and cost per lead, as yelp and angielist might provide a positive roi. So thanks for nudging me into giving these companies another shot.