Yelp is a great place for business owners, and customers, to find what they’re looking for online. Yelp provides business owners with different options for their services. You can opt to claim a free business profile, where customers can leave you reviews and upload photos of your work. Or you can pay for them to run ads for your business, as well as the previously mentioned benefits.

According to a recent study, business owners suggest that they see about an $8000 increase in revenue for the year, when they set up their free Yelp profile. In other words, is it a great idea for your to claim your Yelp profile and get your business’ information there? Yes. Yelp is another place that your business needs to be online (besides Facebook & Google).

Benefits of a free Yelp listing are:

1. The ability to add and update your business information
2. Upload photos of your work
3. Add a list of services you offer
4. Respond to reviews
5. Respond to appointment or quote requests

This is plenty for most small and local businesses. If you are running ads on Facebook, chances are you don’t need to run ads on Yelp, too. Most local businesses really just need to be found online, have their contact information out there, and receive reviews. All of this can be done with a free Yelp listing. If you need some help setting up your free Yelp profile, check out these tips.

However, there are some benefits of a paid subscription with Yelp. Now, is paying for a Yelp subscription and ads the right thing for growing your business? This question is important to know the answer to when you setup your free listing, because soon you’ll have a salesperson from Yelp contacting you. Here are the facts:

You can pay to upgrade and customize your Yelp page, and this includes:

1. Ability to add a call-to-action button, so customers can quickly press a button and contact you.
2. Remove competitor ads from your page.
3. Customize a photo slideshow- so you can choose which photos are on display.
4. Get access to Yelp customer support.

This option could be great if you live in an area with lots of competitors in your industry. This would make it so you can be sure their ads won’t show up on your page. This is also a great option if you feel that customers have uploaded photos to your page that you don’t like, and you’d like to hide them.

Of course, like Facebook and Google, there is an option to pay more and go a step further with Yelp. You can pay for Yelp advertising, if you feel that would benefit your business. This includes:

1. The ability to set your own budget.
2. Start and stop your campaign any time.
3. Customize your ad’s photo, text and more.
4. Get access to Yelp customer support.

As previously mentioned, if you’re not already running Facebook ads, this could be a good option for your business. However, Facebook and Google have many more users and if you’re running ads there, you likely don’t need to pay extra for Yelp advertising.

To sum it up, a free Yelp profile is a wonderful option for any and all business owners. The extra advertising, however, is not for everyone. If you’re interested, give it a try for a couple of months and see how it goes!

For more insights on marketing strategy that actually works for small business, subscribe to the FreshLime Newsletter here. Connect with Jay Bean, Founder of FreshLime and Small Business Marketing Expert on LinkedIn and Twitter. And last of all, if any of these tips have helped you or if you have anything to add please comment below. We’d love to hear from you!