Let Us Yelp You Out

Yelp.

Every industry has its misconceptions about it and as the owner of a resale business, you definitely know that there has been a long perpetuating stigma of buying used items.

However you all have persisted, New players like The Real Real, Thread Up, and Fashion File have entered the game and major brands like Macy’s, Dillard’s Tory Burch, and Patagonia now have their resale stores and programs.

So, let’s talk about Yelp in terms of misconceptions.

Yelp’s sales force is made up of commissioned salespeople who call on businesses. All. The. Time. They go to work, with the intention of signing up more businesses for Yelp because if there’s no signup, no paycheck.

Yelp’s technical team goes to work with a paycheck. However… the Technical Team is totally different than the Sales Team. Most of the Sales Reps. work from their home offices and if they need technical service, they have to complete a ticket.

Some of Yelp’s programmers work in an office but many also work from their home office.

The point I’m trying to make is that if a Sales Rep calls you and you decline to pay for ads with Yelp, they don’t submit a list of all the businesses that declined and then the programmers put out all kinds of competitor ads and bump you down the line-up.

What happens is that when the Sales Rep. sells advertising to your competitors, your competitors get to show up on your page – that’s one of the advertising perks with Yelp. So you said “no” but your competitor said “yes” so they get to be in the feeds and you don’t.

Let’s dive into that a little bit more.

You can advertise on Yelp for any amount of money that you want. However to get the maximum benefits you want to do their upgrade ad package which is $420/ mo. and when you do that for 6 months you then get the 7th month free.

The Yelp Ad stats are as good if not better in some cases than Google Ads and definitely better than FB Ads!!

When you do this premium package there are multiple ways you can promote on Yelp AND one of those ways is that you get to show up automatically on all of your competitors’ pages as long as they are not paying for the premium ad package themselves and you prevent them from showing up on your page when someone is searching for you.

What we have found is that most resale businesses are not taking advantage of Yelp. They probably are not a member of the Consignment Marketing FB Group where they can learn all of the competitive advantages, or they’re not a member of NARTS the National Association of Resale and Thrift Stores, They are probably just getting bombarded by Yelp Sales Reps. And thinking it’s a rip-off and turning them down or not returning their calls.

Here are all of the different opportunities you get with Yelp:

Business Highlights

This is exactly that, things like Family owned, Female Owned, Years in business, and Details that stand out about your business, You get to pick 4 highlights that show up at the top of your profile page.

3 Different Opportunities to Feature Photos & Graphics

Yelp Connect page which lets you post graphics with a headline and a description and you can put start and end dates on these, so you can promote a sale, your monthly FB & IG LIVE schedule and you can promote sales, amazing new arrivals, if you work with an Influencer you can promote that category.

Each graphic you post comes with a live link button so you can send your customers anywhere you want them to go on your website.

Portfolio

This is a section of lots of graphics that you can group together. For example, if you sell Prom Dresses you can have a Portfolio called Prom Dresses. If you sell Louis Vuitton, you can have a Portfolio called Louis Vuitton. Don’t worry if someone you have in your Portfolio has sold, you’re showing people real items that you do carry so they get an idea of what you have in your store.

You can show vignettes if you’re a furniture store. You can show categories of items like Jackets, Christmas Sweaters, Newborn Onesies, or Kate Spade. I think you get the idea.

You can have lots and lots of these little collections inside your Portfolio.

Photos & Videos

These are random photos and videos that show up in your Yelp feed. You can put them in order if you want to. You can do a freshly taken photo of store windows or customers or mannequins or you can also put graphics here for sales and promotions.

In reality, you can show one graphic for a sale in all three sections if you want to. We don’t do that but you could.

Call To Action Button

Some of our stores have their CTA button labeled New Arrivals. And when a customer clicks on it and goes to New Arrivals – within a couple of seconds the Register to Win a $50 Gift Card pops up so they get new sign-ups in their email database. Now all of our clients have the Customer Journeys in MailChimp so the customer receives a Welcome Email immediately as well. All from clicking the CTA button in Yelp.

Business Information

Store Hours, specials, history, about you, you get to choose 11 attributes that best describe your business. It’s a really nice built-out section about your business.

Reviews

This is where customers leave their reviews and also where you write your responses which as you know from last week over 80% of people say they read a business owner’s response to reviews. It helps them learn more about the business owner and the friendliness with which they conduct business so always respond to all reviews.

In-Box

Yelp has a little email system that gets used. I see all the time customers asking questions, so it’s another great way for people to communicate with you. You might think, “Oh no another place to check for comments” but in reality – why wouldn’t you want to communicate with more potential customers and consignors? You want to drive traffic to your website and your store, so you have to be readily available for people to want to interact with you.

Check-in Offer

The most common Check-in offer is 20% off when you spend $50 or more. You can also turn this into a dollar amount offer if you prefer. Check-in offers don’t have a high redemption, but they provide a feel-good factor.

Deals and Certificates

Another opportunity to offer gift cards for sale like “Buy a $50 gift card for $40” or some other kind of deal – similar to your check-in offer but this one goes through Yelp, so this one Yelp gets a little piece of the action. We don’t have anyone yet taking advantage of this but I am getting ready to try this out with a few businesses to see how well it works.

Interested to watch the brief summary? Click here.

For the complete training video, tap here. Be sure to join the Consignment Marketing FB Group to have access!