Yelp made a move this week that deepens its relationships with national brands – an area of development housed in its Yelp for Brands division. Specifically, it launched a toolkit for consumer-facing brands to more effectively market themselves in location-relevant ways, including local flair & flavors
That last part is an important element in product marketing as national brands can gain the trust and affinities of audiences when they speak their language. A classic example is Dunkin’s ability to capture the cultural idiosyncrasies of blue-collar New England (which happen to be the roots of this analyst).
The way that this plays out for brands that work with Yelp is something it’s calling Local Co-branded Showcase ads. Among other things, the program helps national brands spotlight local businesses that carry their products. By doing so, they promote both the product and their local partners.
The way this works in practical terms is that national brands can highlighting those local shops in Yelp search results within relevant categories, locales, and service areas. The format itself will match Yelp’s existing Sponsored Collection, which include photo or video ads about a given local business.
The end result is that brands gain a marketing vehicle that’s locally relevant and resonates due to the above “local flair and flavors” principle. Brands also buy some goodwill in being big players that support the little guy. And the “little guy” in that analogy goes along for the ride with free marketing.
Local Eats
Stepping back, an important distinction is that we’re not talking about a common segment of the local marketing universe: multi-location businesses. Rather than the McDonald’s and Subways of the world, these are brands that don’t have their own local stores. They’re brands that are sold locally by others.
For example, Pepsi was an early trial partner of this program. It devised a “Local Eats” campaign, which brought Pepsi ads to Yelp search results, co-branded with its local restaurant partners. These ads were placed programmatically, including variations in creative, and typical geo-targeting triggers.
Pepsi also reported that it saw a 25 percent drop in cost-per-lead for restaurant partners and a tangible (though unquantified) lift in visits. The cost-per-lead decline was presumably due to the fact that restaurant partners received free leads from this mechanism, thus lowering their overall/average CPL.
Another early partner was restaurant loyalty player Bilt. During the first two months of its pilot, it drove 300,000 diners to its 7000 partner restaurants throughout New York. During the same period, those partners also achieved a 5.5 percent average increase in page views on their Yelp business pages.
Altogether, this is a strong move for Yelp. In addition to the benefits noted above for brands and local shops, Yelp itself unlocks a revenue growth opportunity. That could include everything from CPGs to financial services to auto makers. As Yelp saturates the SMB market, these are its next growth avenues.
