Your business is unique and you need marketing tools designed to match your goals. Advertising on Yelp continues to evolve to offer you more options and flexibility to suit your needs. So whether you’re considering a new Yelp Ads campaign for the first time or you’re a previous advertiser, keep reading to find out what’s new for 2019.

For starters, a quick refresher on how the website and mobile app work as a marketing tool for your business. Potential customers are on Yelp searching for food, products, and services. What makes the Yelp audience so valuable is the fact that they have a strong intent to buy. A Nielsen study found that 82% of Yelp users are there because they intend to buy a product or service. With that in mind, if someone is searching Yelp in your city for your type of business, you want them to know about you.

Here are the four things you need to know about advertising on Yelp in 2019.

You don’t have to sign a long term contract when you’re advertising on Yelp.

Gone are the days where you have to sign a 12 month agreement. We understand that businesses have different goals and different budgets depending on a number of factors. You need flexibility and control over an advertising campaign to make it worth it for you. That’s why you can set up a campaign at any time when you go to biz.yelp.com, go to the Yelp Ads section, and follow the simple steps. It takes about two minutes. From there you can run the ads in a way that makes the most sense for your marketing needs. So whether you want to “set it and forget it” or you prefer to stop and start your campaign throughout the year, the choice is yours.

You control your own Yelp Ads budget.

Maybe you have a large marketing budget and plan to dedicate a big chunk of that to online advertising this year or maybe you’re budget conscious. Whatever the case may be, you have options with Yelp.

How does $5 per day sound? That’s where you can choose to start your daily budget. You can add more options and customize from there. Combine flexible rates with no long-term commitment, and you can really begin to discover the value of advertising, one day at a time. The caveat here is that like any investment, you get what you put into it, so be sure you set a budget that puts you in a position to make the investment worth it. The Yelp Ads team can also help you with recommendations on where to set your budget.

You can customize your ads to highlight the best of your business.

With Yelp Ads, you have more customization options than ever before. In March we released Custom Ads — a tool designed to put you in the driver’s seat of your campaign. This new tool lets you set custom text to promote that new product or service you want to attract attention to and highlight which photos and review snippets potential customers see when they view your ad. You can test different combinations, or let Yelp’s machine-learning algorithm find what will be most impactful. In addition, Custom Ads lets you target the right people at the right time by mapping the area where you want your ads to be shown. It’s worth noting that the machine learning algorithm increased the rate that people click on ads by at least 15% compared to ad content selected at random.

You have to give it time.

Like all investments of value, a successful campaign takes time. Expect it to take several months to see consistently successful results. The longer you let the program work for you, the more success you’ll have. In conclusion, with Yelp Ads you’re in the driver’s seat. So if you’re still wondering if advertising on Yelp works the only way to find out is to get started by visiting biz.yelp.com.