What happens next?
As a business owner, you get a few things checked on your marketing to-do list as soon as you open up shop. You get your business listed online, get your social media profiles up and running, and employ more options to market your business online, using both traditional and digital methods. However, irrespective of whether you own a new or an established business, getting more customers to come to you and incentivizing customers to pick you over your competitors is a major concern.
One of the things that you can do in a scenario like this is give customers deals and discounts. This step-by-step guide will focus on how you can use
Yelp’s deals, gift certificates and check-in offers
to capture the interest of customers, and get them more interested in picking your business over others.
But before we get into that, let’s answer two questions that most business owners have.
Yelp deals are exclusive prepaid offers that customers can buy from a business’ Yelp profile. Yelp deals were introduced to incentivize customers browsing on the Yelp app or website to pick your business over others’.
Yelp has three different types of deals that businesses can offer their customers.
Yelp vouchers are prepaid deals that customers can purchase directly from your Yelp listing. These are the most straightforward kind of deals that one can find on Yelp, and they are usually deals that will give users a discount on their bill. For instance, users can buy a $75 coupon redeemable at for the price of $50 and save 33% on their purchase by doing this. Yelp takes 30% of the share when a user buys this deal, and gives you 70% of the share.
Gift certificates are very similar to Yelp Vouchers, with the only difference being the fact that, unlike a deal, they’re redeemed for the same price that they were bought. In a nutshell, they’re just gift vouchers that users can give to their friends. Unlike Yelp deals, Yelp takes only 10% of the cut from gift certificates, and gives the rest of the 90% back to you.
Yelp allows users to add friends on their profile as well. Just like Facebook, Yelp gives users a check-in button to a business on Yelp. When a user does a Yelp check-in, other users who are their friends can see this on their feed. A lot of people checking in to one business can stir an interest amongst other users, and to encourage users to do this, Yelp allows business owners to create check-in offers. When a user checks into a business that has check-in offers enabled on Yelp, a discount coupon/deal is immediately sent to the user’s phone app. This can later be redeemed at the restaurant.
(We are hearing reports that Yelp might have discontinued check-in offers in recent times. We will update this article as soon as we confirm it.)
Log in to your biz.yelp.com account.
You’ll find yourself on the Activity tab of the account by default. Click on the Deals & Gift Certificates button.
Click on the red ‘Get Started’ button to set up your first Yelp deal.
Click on either $50 for $100 or $100 for $150 under the “Price:” section to choose your preferred deal. If you want to go with a custom number, like $20 for $40, you can do that too.
You can also limit the number of deals that people can purchase in this section.
Make sure you click on the “I agree to the Merchant Terms” checkbox before you post the deal. Click on the red “Post this Deal” button to get it live on your page.
Once you’re done with that, you’ll be taken to a page where you can set up a gift certificate. If you want to post a gift certificate purchase option, you can choose one of the specified amounts. If not, you can skip this step.
Once you’re done posting your deal, it will appear on your business profile. Customers can buy it right off of your Yelp listing and redeem it when they visit your store.
To redeem money for the coupon that your customer purchased, all you need to do is come back to your Deals & Certificates tab in your Yelp account and enter the redeemable code.
Yelp will reimburse you on a monthly basis for the offers that were purchased from your account.
That’s all! You are now ready to create your first Yelp deal.
And, less time obsessing about your local presence