Blumenthals ran a piece last month chronicling the sometimes deceptive practices of sales reps at companies like Yelp, who in effect prey upon local, small business owners who don't know better, in order to lock them into bad deals that rival the Yellow Pages (read: 12 month contracts at hundreds of dollars per month).
Says the article:
Like the Yellow Pages, Yelp uses FUD (fear, uncertainty & doubt) and more than a little slight of hand to make their point.
When asked about ROI they respond that since your average selling price is $x then it will only take one sale to make this pay (yea right).
When asked about conversion tracking and analytics you are are told how good their dashboard showing impressions is.
When they are going for the close they point out that by taking out an ad you guarantee that your competitor’s ad will not show up on your listing. What SMB can refuse charging that red flag?
When asked if they had an offering that required less than a 12 month, the rep noted that yes but the best returns occur in month ten (hmm I wonder why that is?).
But the biggest slight of hand is their use of Google Trends to “prove” that they are the leading online business directory
That last one is the biggie: slight of hand becomes straight up deception. Using the Google Trends search, the Yelp! rep presented the author of the piece with very specific, selective searches in a limited field to "prove" that yelp was the most popular.
The problem is, most people don't even KNOW to search for things like citysearch.com, or even Yelp! They just go to their search engine (Google most likely) and look for a dentist or restaurant, and then are presented with what comes up in Google.
Dollars to pesos, I'd bet that the number of people googling "yelp" in Buffalo (from the example) is dwarfed by the number of people just searching in Google, since by their own estimates, nearly 1/5th of all of their traffic is a local search.
But most small business owners are so fully entrenched in doing what they already do to know any better. And so they get taken in. Repeatedly.
What's the solution? Every small business needs a dedicated marketing consultant who is on their side, with a vested stake in their company, to help them navigate the minefield of marketing and advertising opportunities, and use their limited resources as wisely as possible.
At the very least, you should sit down and perform a marketing audit to make sure your money isn't being wasted.
We can do that for you, and we offer that service free, as any marketing company worth their salt ought to do.
