• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 11, 2021

Yelp on Tuesday announced several features, from ad copy guidance to budget recommendations, to help businesses take greater control over their Yelp page and ads. The features also allows advertisers to measure the ads' effectiveness.

Some of the features announced Tuesday provide self-service options, explains Alon Shiran, vice president of local product at Yelp. Guidance on ad text simplifies the process for advertisers and provides examples to help guide business owners through the process of writing compelling, engaging and effective ad copy.

“Prior to this update, we didn’t offer much guidance to advertisers when it came to the text in their ads,” Shiran said. “Business owners are juggling a lot, especially throughout the pandemic, and they can't be expected to be advertising copywriters as well.”

In an effort to help business owners get as much value from their ads as possible, Yelp now offers suggested copy that will enable them to create engaging and effective advertising content.

Yelp also offers an explanation of what goes into creating relevant and engaging content.

“A couple of years ago, we released a feature where if a business has one or more reviews, we’ll also recommend using a specific review snippet as advertising copy to leverage firsthand, authentic experiences,” said Shiran.

There is also a redesigned Mobile Ad Dashboard app that gives business owners a detailed overview of ads' performance, previously only available on the web.

During the past couple of years, Yelp has transitioned to prioritize building products for local businesses vs. sales team, which ultimately led to the growth of its self-service channel.

Announced during Yelp’s earnings call last week, revenue growth from its self-serve channel accelerated to approximately 30% year-over-year in the first quarter. T

he company continues to find ways to improve the self-serve experience for business owners with a focus on product innovation. More self-service features can be expected in the coming months, Shiran said.

Improvements in its ad platform also focus on ad targeting. Custom Location Targeting enables business owners to select key ZIP codes, counties and towns where they want their advertisements to serve up.

“This is important for services businesses, since they often service areas outside of their immediate physical location,” Shiran wrote in an email to Search & Performance Marketing Daily. “Prior to this release, advertisers were only able to run their ads in a radius around their business location.”

Yelp discovered that many services businesses preferred to run ads in the geographic locations where they do their business, rather than around their actual physical location. Custom Location Targeting enables businesses to reach more relevant customers and to be better able to better convert these leads. Prior to this update, businesses were sometimes reaching consumers outside of their actual service area. Now they are reaching even more relevant customers, resulting in higher conversion rates for business owners. 

Last fall, Yelp announced keywords, which enable advertisers to block their ad from appearing on searches they are not interested in. For instance, a painter who only does interior painting can ensure their ads don’t appear in 'exterior painter' searches.

The keywords feature gives business owners much greater control over how their information is surfaced in search results.