How To Tell If A New Customer Is From Yelp

You just got a brand new customer from Yelp – congrats! All of the hard work you’ve been putting in both on and offline to grow your business has begun to pay off. Taking a step back, how are you measuring your efforts? How do you know what is working for you and what isn’t? With limited time and marketing resources, you want to be investing in tools that drive results.

Yelp is a really popular tool for consumers—there are over 104M mobile users on Yelp every month. With Yelp being so popular, how can you know that new customer actually came from Yelp? That’s why we’ve put together the following four tips to help you figure out where your customers are coming from.

1. Pay attention to how they contacted you and what they say

When calls and appointments are coming through from new customers, it’s easy to forget to pay attention to how new customers are contacting you. How they contact you can tell you how they found your business. Sometimes it’s easy to tell that a customer found you via Yelp, such as when you get a direct message or quote request through your Yelp business page.

How they reach out is as important as what they say. Did they ask about a specific offer you’re promoting on one platform, such as your Yelp Check-in Offer or a Yelp Deal? Are they mentioning something from a photo or in a review? Knowing your Yelp page inside and out will help you track your leads. It’s just another way to help you match a new customer to Yelp.

2. Don’t be afraid to ask

When you get a new customer, remembering to ask, “How did you hear about us?” or, “How did you find out about our business?” can go a long way. Here’s a few different ways you can go about doing this:

• Once they’ve booked with you, simply ask! It’s become common place so a lot of consumers expect it. If they say “online”, follow-up. There are so many ways they could have found out about your online.
• Ask as you’re greeting people in person. An example might be, “How’s your day going? Is this your first time in? Welcome! How did you hear about us?”.
• Ask on your intake forms. Best practice is to list out all the different lead sources and say check all that apply. Be sure to include common channels like Google, Yelp, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, website, referral, other (and make sure to leave a blank line so they can write in what “other” means).

3. Keep tabs on your Yelp metrics

Your business owner’s account has great stats like user views and leads. Leads are essential to your tracking because they show you how many people have done things like call your business, map directions, or click to your website. Those are the next steps that lead to someone converting into a customer. People don’t map directions for fun, right?

Paying attention to your metrics helps validate your other tracking. It helps you connect the dots between someone finding you on Yelp and walking through your door. If you look at call times in the Activity Feed of your business account you can see when someone calls from the mobile app or site. This goes for clicks over to your website as well!

If you have a Yelp Ads program, you have even more metrics at your disposal. Don’t forget to measure the success of your ads program.

4. Create platform-specific deals and promotions

With all of the various places people can find you online, setting up unique promotions specific to each channel can also help you track your success. If someone brings up that they’d like to use your Yelp Check-in Offer, it’s likely they found you on Yelp.

If they mention the free appetizer highlighted on your Call to Action, you guessed it, it’s likely they found you on Yelp! Just be sure that your offers between your platforms are unique and of similar value. That way you’re less likely to skew your results.

Now that you’re equipped to maximize the tools available to you in order to find out if customers are finding you on Yelp, make sure to subscribe to the small business newsletter and keep your page up to date at biz.yelp.com!