Is Yelp an effective lead generation and marketing tool for contractors?
Bruce from Genesis Construction Services IL, LLC weighs in.
Here's what he had to say: waste of money.... 2 reasons. 1) my business doesn't get foot traffic. People don't find contractors to renovate bathrooms there. 2) they charge by the click or phone call. I was charged for hundreds of calls or clicks during the time I had Yelp. I never once got a call and never booked an appointment on-line. I say they are fake. They did not offer any refund and held me to the 90 day contract or pay the fee to get out. I did the math.... they screwed me out of alot of money either way. DO NOT use Yelp."
What do you think about Yelp as a contractor? Do you agree with Bruce's view that Yelp is ineffective?
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60 Comments
Answers (41-50)
Yelp is not a service we would pay to use, nor as a consumer would I use Yelp to select a Contractor. They are just out to make money, they do not provide a real service.
We advertise by doing professional work at a reasonable rate and never leaving a customer unsatisfied. Rely on word of mouth and reputation. I have never used YELP but I would tend to agree with Bruce from Genesis Construction Services.
No luck with yelp
I’ve never gotten a lead through yelp.
We have given up completely on review and lead services.
Yelp can be effective for certain industries, if you are willing to play their game by their rules. It is a dangerous game to play, because one poor review from an unsatisfiable customer will outweigh several positive reviews. In the General contracting/construction industry, we totally agree that word of mouth and portfolio is king. Luckily, we have enough of our work coming from trusted referrals and previous customers that we do not feel the need to solicit for reviews other than for our website. Starting Yelp actually gives you less control over your web presence. Our plan moving forward is to make our website a really great landing page for potential customers to check out after the initial referral. We will only solicit for reviews after the project is complete, and the client has expressed complete satisfaction. I am not sure at this point that we will ever try and utilizing google, yelp, etc.. Though if we were I think google is quite a bit more beneficial to gather reviews on. My guess would be that having many positive google reviews would help SEO for your website. If you are not doing every possible free thing you can to increase your web presence (social media, free ad sites, etc..), I would say start there.
I agree . I think yelp is good if your a consumer looking for something but to use as a tool to get reviews . But, it should not never never used a solo digital marketing platform
I agree yelp is not a place to get leads for contractors.
Very expensive
No
yes I agree. To this date yelp has been of no help to our business