Yelp Advertising Programs

In the past few months we have been receiving several questions about Yelp, specifically regarding their advertising programs. I wanted to address some of these questions and provide a clear understanding how they can work for you and how Yelp and other similar services interact with your Google AdWords program.

Track it!

First of all, If you are working with Yelp and incorporating their Paid Ads into your marketing campaigns, make sure you are able to track it. You should reach out to your PPC specialist and your SEO specialist so they can help you find the best solution for tracking the traffic and sales coming from those ads. While Yelp manages the program itself, we can work with you to setup tracking methods such as phone numbers and unique URLs to quantify your Yelp Ad spend.

To Yelp or not to Yelp

GravityFree has seen mixed results for Yelp advertising, and would like to be able to assist in making that work for your business. Please let us know if you have seen this type of marketing work in your area and we can look into ways to improve performance together. However, if you are not advertising on Yelp currently, do not fear! There are other ways to show up on their network through AdWords.

Google Display Network

More recently, we have been reaching out regarding the Google Display Network (GDN) and Re-Marketing Ads. As most of our Flower Manager clients know, Re-marketing and the GDN work hand in hand. The GDN is the place that the re-marketing ads are shown on. These ads can be text, image and video based. We love using them for branding, getting your name in front of a potential buyer that was previously on your site and placing that brand name in front of them when they are searching later. It is a great way to entice those previous shoppers to come back, especially if you create a special offer.

Targeting and Retargeting

AdWords allows us to choose a specific audience that has previously been on your site. Those lists can be customized to a specific category or page where we can retarget them with different ads or offers. There are also site specific placements. The Google Display Network (GDN) is expansive. It includes thousands of websites, blogs, and sites related to your keywords and content on your own website.

Dial it in…

The sites your ads could show on range from news sites to entertainment sites and anything in between. Some of the top sites we typically see are YouTube, Fox News, Yelp, Forbes, Food Network, and eBay. Through the placement settings in your AdWords campaign, you can select or exclude specific places you would like to display your ads, or specific topics and sites you would like to exclude from your campaigns. If you opt into re-marketing ads, there are also automatic placements that Google will choose for you based on the keywords included in your PPC campaign and site content.

Alternatives

When using Yelp as a specific example, we can target your display text ad to show on Yelp’s network. So while you are not paying Yelp to show your ad, your Google display budget pays for the click, which is typically a lower cost, and your Ad shows up in the right rail of the Yelp platform. We can specifically choose from multiple different targeting methods based on your end goals for this type of strategy.

We Can Help

If you are interested in learning more about the multiple advertising options or have further questions on how we can incorporate the Google Display network into your campaigns, please feel free to reach out to GravityFree or your PPC team for details.