Proof. If you pay yelp 300 a month you are just sponsoring your competitors 5 star reviews.

This is a case study /example of a recent client who was using three different companies for his local marketing. 

ASE certified master technician, Who despite his advertising. Grew a small 2 bay shop into a giant local business.

his new location occupies the showroom a former client of mine owned who turned out to be a bad guy. He left a lot of his vendors & customers high & dry. Including me. 

Anyway, this client has a small 2 bay garage north of Boston, and he quickly outgrew that space and Now needed someone to manage his marketing part time at very minimum between the two locations. 

I called on him around February because his website had two different phone numbers going to the one location. 

I called the GM & found out that second number goes to the second location. ?? 

Interesting. 

I schedule an appointment to learn more. 

Turns out his marketing agency told him to just add the New Phone number and business Address to his website to save money ?? ?? ?? 

This company manages his website & social media profiles posting awful content to his Facebook fan page like “happy Friday” and other pure nonsense That got zero engagement & was completely unrelated to automotive business at all. 

Besides giving detrimental business advice regarding the phone number & the second location, They also Sent a letter recently saying we are using copy-written material in our new website. Okay ?? 

They cited another clients website With The EXACT Terminology In the “bio”

So this “Marketing agency” apparently re-uses the SAME about us content for EVERY clients BIO section of the website they build and claim it’s “copy-written” material. 

Wow. 

Now I’m not sure if this agency is confused by the term copywriting and copywritten. 

You cannot “copywrite” “Ad Copy” On a website. But that’s the least of their sins. 

So here We have this this legal letter demanding that we Remove or change “our Bio” or face The wrath of their legal team. We changed it immediately. Not to avoid a legal battle. But because the thought another website out there using the exact same “AD COPY” word for word that my client is using is cringe enough. 

Little did we know that this micro dispute Was the tip of the iceberg & would be the least strange thing about this account. 

Website ? 

Next:

HIBU: This comlnY handled all their digital marketing & they had a contract for one year, the contract was Almost up and HIBU wanted him to renew for another year & add his second location.. Doubling his monthly AD spending for year. 

After analyzing the HiBu bill, I realized that $500 out of $800 a month going to “SEO” for his website, BUT the site has never been updated once in the last 8-9 months. They had broken links, big Empty Blocks of space where reviews and blog content were suppose to go. It was a mess but again, despite their just awful work, because the shop was in business for 30 years before he bought it, the address ranked really well on google. The other $300 a month hibu was charging was supposedly going towards banner ads in some email platform, But he never saw one. Not even a monthly report showing where his ads were running or what the ads said.. they got literally nothing except a bill every month 

And now HIBU wants him to re-up another year and double his ad spend on a second location. 

When we said “NO” they didn’t try to salvage the account. They Didn’t say “what did we do wrong” .“What could we have done to the to make this right?” Nope. Nada. Nothing. They just said “ok, So you owe us for another 30 days” And They just kinda put their hands up like “ok, you got me”.

 I swear this is their mentality. 

Not once did they mention building a new website or getting listed on Yelp or Google or anything like that because they look at Yelp & Google as competitors of theirs. 

Those sites are Not viewed as something that can help you. And I don’t even blame them honestly. That is their business model. 

But This is their mentality I promise you. They don’t want to you linkeded up to Yelp because that opens you up to sales calls from yelp, and heaven forbid they recommend something they don’t get paid from. That is just the nature of The kind of company that you dealing with. You can’t Really blame them. That’s the way the company they work for is set up. That is just how their commission is structured and it’s easier to get another client than to Solve Actual problems

Now in a perfect world, as consultants they should be able to tell you about everything there is about their competitor. I’m reality a true consultant doesn’t have any competitors. 

They should be able to tell you what service is going to help You and what is going to hurt based on your current situation. 

A consultant should you be able to explain their product front to back and sell against anyone even perceived to be a competitor of theirs regardless of how they are compensated. 

But that isn’t their fault. You are Using a corporate Company to be your local marketing Agency or consultant.. that’s like hiring McDonalds as your caterer or personal chef.. just look at their results.. It’s terrible. 

But if we are talking about marketing, it’s likely not your fault. You are busy running a business, getting and keeping customers happy & juggling 100 different things relating to keeping your lights on. You don’t have time to analyze every line item in Your marketing bill. . And in my opinion, Companies like Yelp Rely on that ignorance & name recognition with the public to exploit this relationship

Finally, And by far the most egregious of them all. Yelp.

Now Yelp is not here to consult With you.. They are here to absorb as much money as they can from you. I have case studies dating back to 2013 that prove this. 

They don’t care about reviews. Did you know Yelp is rated just 1.6 stars on their own yelp account. Did you know they have over 10,000 “filtered” reviews on their own page that they don’t want you to see. 

Yelp for the public is great for restaurant reviews. But the business Aspect of Yelp is not a good company. 

Business owners and the public have two very different ideas of what Yelp is. 

If you are spending money with yelp as an advertiser, I’d bet You $300 Yelp bucks that you do not understand how it works. 

It’s not your fault. 

The representative that sold you on it likely doesn’t understand how it works either. 

They have a phone script and it works probably 40% of the time. when they get a Business on the phone that thinks customers are coming in from yelp. They close 4 out of 10 people. And that is their business. 

They actually rely your ignorance of their platform as a selling tool, many of the new Yelp sales reps are so new, that they don’t fully understand how yelp works Themselves. I believe that is fully intentional. 

The way yelp works is there is There is an “AD inventory “ Based on how many searches occur in your area for that given keyword, In any given month. 

Let’s say your term is auto body And you are Located in Boston. 

If 10,000 searches or “impressions” occur each month under the keyword Automotive in Boston. When someone searches the term “Auto Body Boston” and clicks a listing to read the reviews, that is where Your “AD” Appears. Along with about a half dozen other tiny classified “ads” that all appear on the the same Customers Yelp page. 

So bottom line is, If you pay to be a Yelp advertiser, you are sponsoring your competitions 5 star review. 

That’s it. 

What you get in exchange for your money, is That whenever an “impression” occurs, a search, a view, that just cost you between $5.00-$6.00 bucks as well as every other advertisers You see on the page just paid That $5.00 each time an “ad” appears on a competitors yelp page. That’s it. 

That’s what your $5.00 buys you. 

An impression Of your classified ad on the review page of your competition. 

You are the inventory. 

Scenario: 

I’m looking for auto detailing in Boston. I click a business and read a few reviews. Your ad that displayed is a part of the ad “inventory” for Auto Boston. 

As an advertiser That Tiny classified ad impression cost YOU between $4.00 - $6.00 bucks every time that little classified ad shows up on a competitors page. The ad might be at the bottom of a page or at the top. It Doesn’t matter. No one clicks them. They don’t even display ad results Separate in the billing breakdown. They just count “leads” website click, calls & driving directions. 

But that is what you are paying for wh. You advertise with yelp 

Now you might say, “But thats crazy, no one would fall for that” 

the way they sell it is they show you the ads on YOUR page and they don’t explain anything abkut how yelp works and they sell you in the idea of “ NO ADS appearing on Your Yelp Page” which is a useless thing. But they SOLD it to you in a way that sounded important. 

?? . Ok. Are you with me ? 

So their ads would be great except no one pays attention to the Tiny little classified ads Stacked 7 deep anywhere. Especially when they are reading reviews from a company they are likely going to call anyway. 

???? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? 

If you Are unlucky enough to have an auto repair shop And a AD running in Boston, you are paying every time someone searches for auto body or auto detailing Or Even auto parts. 

Your Tiny little classified AD shows up when I’m reading your competitors 5 star reviews. And it just cost you $5.00 Every single time someone reads your competitors reviews and glances at a block of display ads. You Just financed that customers yelp experience. 

So You are sponsoring your competitors reviews but you are paying extra to keep your competitors ads off your page. and it’s costing you $6.00 every single time because someone see your little ad because Boston is a expensive keyword. 

Well That’s how it works. Anyway

This Particular client was spending $3,000.00 a month on yelp. 

For one location. they were averaging about 150- 200 “leads“ a month

A “lead” by Yelps standards is a click to your website, A phone call or a map request. 

We figured It cost him over $20.00 for every “lead” he got from Yelp in a year. I went back and read the messages he got that year. every single one of them was a picture of a tire and rim with someone asking “hey do you do wheel & rim repair”. Every single one. Btw. It one of them ever came in to the shop. 

Anyway, we determined that he didn’t need to spend that kind of money with Yelp. 

And just Like with hibu, they wanted him to double his spending because his yelp page was “doing so well”

Yelp didn’t tell him that by adding another yelp location would have been beneficial to BOTH of them and they could of justified doubling his ad spend if they Just did the right thing..  

They Either didn’t want to “rock the boat” and Tell the client what he needed to hear Or they didn’t realize that by spending more money on this service was just throwing it into a black hole. 

The fact that none of these marketing people didn’t see the blatantly obvious problem right in front of their face is alarming Frankly. 

Any one of these managers or sales reps could of saved this account and helped the client at any time. 

So I explained to him that spending another DIME on marketing right now it would be like Putting a brand new engine in a 1984 Plymouth K Car with 100k mikes. 

Now it took him a couple months to actually believe me. Even though I’ve done this for multiple other business.. understandably, it was a BIG Decision. 

imagine canceling all of the marketing that you relied on for years and trusting it all to some random guy that Cold called you out of the blue and Just showed up at your doorstep one day. 

Well. this Last week after looking at his NEW Yelp Page I found this One filtered 5 star review that looked familiar 

A 5 star review from a woman who found this client ON YELP.. on his new page, and her review was already filtered out and no longer visible on his yelp Page anymore. 

BUT...lucky for him, he hired ME & That review will live on forever on the homepage of his new website, because we have a system embedded into his New website that streams all his 5 star reviews from Yelp & Google etc.. and then we market that review as Video for YouTube, images for social a a half dozen other ways we market for him 

Now the funny part about this review was not thst is is filtered, or came in off the BRAND New yelp page we created along with his new website & Google page for his NEW Location.. 

No the interesting this is I noticed the new employees looked a little familiar so I asked her nickname, then I showed her Yelp. It turns out She found this business in yelp. She mentioned to the general manager that she was out of work because of the pandemic. and when she went to pick up her car The owner offered her a job, and she accepted it. 

So when I showed him that she found him on yelp, left him a review that was positive, and even though he is still a paying customer if yelp, that her 5 star yelp review she left was filtered out, even though she found him in yelp, uses the app to call and book an appointment even, but her review was deleted from the platform. And if he didn’t have my marketing services on his website, it would be lost and not visible forever. 

This is what I do for my clients. 

I manage their marketing from A-Z. I’ve been following Yelp for about 7 years now and award of their activities just as long and calling them out for it. 

If you need marketing advice. Website help. Explanation of what Yelp or HiBu Does, I’ll do a bill explanation for you. Book a 15 minute consultation with me. Calendly.com/justinjoparker This is an example of a recent client who was using three different companies for his local marketing for his main location in melrose. 

Because he is a ASE certified master technician, despit his advertising, his shop grew in 5 years so big he needed to buy another building. 

I met him because his new location occupies the showroom a former client of mine had who turned into a bad guy and left a lot of his vendors & customers high and dry. Including me. 

Anyway, this client who has a small 2 bay garage in melrose quickly outgrew that space in the last 5 years and needed someone to manage his marketing part time at very least between the two locations. 

When I called on him around February, it was based in the fact his website had two different phone numbers going to the one location. 

So I called him and found out, No thst second number goes to the second location. 

Interesting. I schedule an appointment to learn more. 

Turns out his marketing agency told him to just add the Phone number and Adress to his website to save money. 

This company who manages his website and social media pages like Facebook was post content to his Facebook page like “happy Friday” and other nonsense completely unrelated to automotive or this clients business at all. 

Besides giving detrimental advice regarding the phone number and second location, They also Sent a letter recently saying we are using cooywritten material in our new website. 

They cited another clients site With The EXACT Terminology 

So this “Marketing agency” re-uses the SAME abkut us bio- content for EVERY client and claim it’s “copy-written”. 

Now I’m not sure if this agency is confused by the term copywriting and copywritten. 

You cannot “copy-write” “Ad Copy” 

But we changed it immediately. Not to avoid a legal battle. But because the thought another website is out there using the exact same “AD COPY” word for word that we are. 

So we changed it. That was Just the experience the website company. 

Hibu handled all their digital marketing. Now they had a contract for one year, the contract was up and they wanted him to add his second location and double his monthly spending for another year. Af the r looking into the HiBu bill, I realized that $500 out of $800 a month was going to SEO for his website and the site has never been updated once in the last 6 months. They had broken links, big Empty spaces where reviews and blog content was suppose to go. It was a mess but again, despite their just awful work, because the shop was in business for 30 years before he bought it, the address ranked really well in google. The other $300 a month hibu was charging was supposedly going towards banner ads in some email platform, he never saw one. Not even a monthly report showing where his ads are running what the ads said.. literally nothing. 

And they just wanted him to re-up another year and double his ad spend on a second location. 

Not once did they mention building a new website and getting listed on Yelp or Google or anything like that because they look at Yelp & Google as competitors of theirs. Not ally’s if yours. 

That is their mentality I promise you. They don’t want to get you linkeded up to Yelp because that opens you up to sales calls from yelp, and heaven forbid if they recommend something they don’t get paid off. That is just the nature of dealing with that kind of company. You can’t blame your “consultant” or sales rep because that’s just the way it is. 

Now as consultants they should be willing to tell you about everything that is going to help you and explain why it’s going to help regardless of how they are compensated, but again it’s no their fault. It’s the business fault for being lazy and using a corporate Company to be your marketing consultant.. just look at their marketing. It’s terrible. 

Finally the third And by far the most egregious of them all. Yelp. 

 Now Yelp is not here to consult. They are here to absorb as much money as they can. 

They don’t care about review. Did you know Yelp is rated just 1.6 stars in their own yelp account. Did you know they have over 10,000 “filtered” reviews in their own page that they don’t want you to see. 

Yelp business is not a good company. Period. If you are spending money with yelp as an advertiser, I’d bet You $300 “free “ advertising credit thst you do not understand how it works. It’s not your fault. The representative that sold it you you likely doesn’t understand how it works either. They have a script and it works probably 40% of the time when they get a. Business that thinks customers are coming in from yelp. 

The way yelp works is there is an “inventory “ Of searches that occur in your area u see your keyword any given month. 

Let’s say yiur term in auto body. And you are in Boston. 

If 10,000 searches or “impressions” happen each month under auto body Boston. You ad just appears with a half dozen other tiny classified ads on the page there was an impression 

Scenario: 

I’m looking for auto detailing in Boston. I click a business and read a few reviews. That’s part of the ad “inventory” for Auto Boston. 

The impression cost me between $4.00 - $6.00 bucks every time my little classified ad shows up. There might be 3 above mine and 2 below it. And it might be at the bottom of the page. Doesn’t matter that is what you are paying for. 

AD Inventory. they sell it is they say that NO ADS Will appear on Your Yelp Page ever. 

But what you are doing is sponsoring your competitors reviews thst people are reading. 

Think about it. When was the last time you read a tiny little classified ad ? Now imagine you are reading reviews for yiur business. Good or bad. Would a tiny Classified ad displayed next to another Businesses review Ever be helpful to you Or anyone ? 

no one pays attention to Tiny classified ads except in the classified section of a newspaper. 

And if you Are unlucky enough to have an auto repair or auto body shop in Boston, yelp doesn’t distinguish Between the two, so every time someone searches for auto body or auto parts or auto detail... Your AD shows up. And it cost you about $5.00 Per impression because Boston is an expensive keyword. 

And $300 minimum to get the “ads” off your business page. 

That’s how it works. Anyway

This client was spending $3,000.00 a month on yelp. 

For one location. They were averaging about 150-200 leads a month. 

Well we tracked the last one year ad spend VS results. Each lead from Yelp (which is a click to their website, A phone call or a map request) 

it cost him over $20.00 for every “lead” (impression) that he got from Yelp. Then I went back and read the messages he got. They were all, every single one of the “Leads” Sent as a message was the same. A picture of a tire and someone asking “hey do you do wheel & rim repair” . Every single one said “do you do wheel & tire repair? Not one of them came in. We don’t do rim or tire repair. 

Anyway, we determined that he didn’t need to spend that kind of money with Yelp. 

But just Like hibu, they wanted him to double his spending because his yelp page was doing so well. 

They didn’t recommend building another yelp page.

they didn’t even bother telling him his entire set up was WRONG

They either didn’t want to rock boat. 

Or they just didn’t realize his set up was a mess. 

They just wanted to bill him Double and not have him look too closely at the results.

After realizing this, I Told him to immediately stop And don’t spend another DIME in marketing With anyone. 

I told him that spending money right now would be like Putting a brand new engine in a 1984 Plymouth K Car. 

Now it took him a couple months to actually believe me. Even though I’ve done this for multiple other businesses, it was still a BIG Decision for him to cancel all of his other marketing that he has relied on for years and put it all with some random guy who cold called him one day and Just showed up on his doorstep. 

Well Last week after looking at his NEW Yelp Page I found this. 

A 5 star review came in from a woman who found him ON YELP at his new location, and her review was Almost immediately filtered and is no longer visible in yelp anymore... BUT...

That review will live on forever on the homepage of his website, because his reputation marketing system we built into his new website that streams his best Reviews from Yelp To his website

Now the funny part about this Particular story was not that his review was filtered And we caught it or That his yelp page worked and people are coming in from it without any AD spend at all. No No No. 

No the interesting part about this yelp story was that I noticed that his new employees Name & it looked a little familiar so I asked her nickname. 

I then pulled up his Yelp page & It turns out she Found him on yelp & left him a 5 star review. 

When she was in the shop, She Happened to mention to the general manager that she was out of work because of the pandemic. when she went to pick up her car, The owner offered her a job. she accepted it. She Started last week. 

So when I showed him that she found him on yelp, left him a positive 5 ?? review and even though he is still a paying Yelp customer, that her 5 star review was already filtered out even though she found him on yelp & through the Yelp app. She even booked the appointment from the yelp app & her review was posted and deleted from the platform within days.. 

I showed him, that if he didn’t have my marketing services on his website, That her review would Of been Filtered out & lost Forever invisible on yelp forever. 

This is what I do for my clients. 

I manage their marketing from A-Z. I’ve been following Yelp for about 7+ years now and calling them out for their bullshit for years now. 

If you pay Yelp the minimum $300 a month to remove ads (that no one pays attention to anyway) 

It is basically costing you $5.00 bucks ?? ?? Per IMPRESSION Every time some one sees your competitors reviews page. 

Every-time you pay yelp To advertise your tiny classified Ad on your competitors page, Your Tiny Classified Ad is displayed on a page with a dozens other classified ads in a place that no one is there to read classifieds. 

You are basically paying to sponsor your next door neighbors Yelp reviews

It’s absolutely worthless. That’s exactly what you are paying for.

If you need real marketing advice... 

Website help. A thorough Explanation of what Yelp or HiBu Does, I’ll do a thorough bill explanation for you. 

Just Book a 15 minute consultation with me. Just go to www.Calendly.com/justinjoparker 

Well take a Holistic look at your Marketing set up and if you are paying any of the companies I mentioned above there is no question about it, you are overpaying. 

Just book an appointment. I can De-mystify your marketing for you and save you money while Implementing a far superior marketing program that ties your Reviews, your videos, your social media pages, your blog content & your website marketing all together In a very nice Way 

If you are a local business owner using any of these marketing agencies I mention above, Let’s talk.

reviews on website from around the web includes the yelp review this story is about

Review filtered on yelp

Review on website