Yelps Ads - Gutter Company advice

This article is going to be brutally honest. Yelp is great for specific geographic gutter markets, it's has some great features, but has a lot of pitfalls that you need to avoid to make sure that your Yelp Ads actually produce paying customers. Let's dig in.

Yelp Platform Stats you need to know:

• 32-42 million people or more use Yelp every month but 45% of local homeowners look at your Yelp Reviews before calling you.
• 531,000 companies are paying for Yelp Ads across America right now.
• They are a review heavy algorithm and with over 287 million reviews, if you pay for ads and don't have reviews, your leads will be less.
• Yelp is a hiring advertising platform, it's meant to get a homeowner or business to hire a local tradesman or tradeswoman.
• 75% of Gen Z (younger crowds) have never written a Yelp review
• You can be de-platformed (your profile removed) if you ask for reviews.
• Yelp's top 5 categories are food, movie, travel, music, politics, then home services at #6.
  

Yelp Ad Benefits

free additional ad spend

Just like with Google ads, Yelp offers $300 to $900 in free ad spend if you commit to 1-6 months of paid ads. This can really give your campaign a boost, especially if you’re working with a small budget. For example, starting with a $400 budget means you could have $700 or more in ad spend for the first 30 days. However, be cautious—after that initial burst, the number of leads you see may drop off or be cut in half once the free spend is used up.

fast and easy ad setup

Setting up a Yelp ad for your gutter business is a breeze. If you’ve already got your SEO keywords, company content, and a solid set of images ready, you can have your ad 95% complete in 5-10 minutes. The remaining 5% is where you’ll want to invest in creating a custom image to showcase your gutter installation or gutter guard expertise, which we’ll cover later.

no fake reviews

Yelp takes reviews seriously, which is great news for your gutter company. Unlike Google, where fake reviews can sometimes slip through the cracks, Yelp ensures that the reviews are authentic. This levels the playing field, particularly for newer companies, and ensures that those paying for ads aren’t overshadowed by businesses with fake reviews.

yelp portfolio and picture tagging

If you have a strong set of images, your Yelp ads can really take off. Upload your pictures, add SEO-optimized descriptions, and organize them into a portfolio that highlights specific types of gutter services. For example, you could create separate portfolios for shingle roof gutter services, metal roof gutter installations, and tile roof gutter work. We’ve seen this approach help lower a client’s cost-per-click (CPC) by nearly 30% in just 90 days.



hide competitor ads on your profile

Yelp offers the option to hide competitor ads on your profile for an extra fee, and it’s worth it. By hiding those ads, you reduce the chance that potential customers will click away to a competitor. This feature ensures that when they see your profile, they’re more likely to message or call you directly—a feature Google ads won’t offer.

Yelp Ads and Keywords

If you're already working with us on your monthly marketing, we’ve got your back when it comes to identifying the local keywords with the highest search volume. Keep in mind that Yelp operates on a smaller scale than Google, so it's crucial to focus on the most impactful and relevant keywords. Also, it’s important to ensure that each month, your Yelp campaign is dedicated to just one specific gutter service. Here's an example of the keywords we use to help our gutter company clients achieve up to 50% lower cost-per-click:

• gutters
• gutter company
• gutter contractor
• gutter installation
• gutter installation company
• rain gutters
• rain gutter installation
• rain gutter contractor
• seamless gutters
• seamless gutter company
• new gutters
• aluminum gutters
• aluminum gutter company
• copper gutters
• copper gutter company

We generally stick to 10-15 keywords to avoid burning through your ad budget too quickly. You can even narrow it down to 5-7 keywords if you want to manage your daily spending more effectively.

adding negative keywords

Don’t forget to add negative keywords alongside your target terms. For example, exclude keywords like gutter cleaning and gutter repairs to avoid paying $18 - $30 per click on jobs that typically bring in $300-$500. This helps ensure your ad spend is going toward higher-value jobs and services.

How to Choose the Right Gutter Cities for Ads

Setting up your location may seem easy, but don't just choose the round 5 - 25 mile radius quite yet. The key to effective marketing on any ad platform is to choose the cities with the highest home incomes, closest to your business, and the highest overall population. We run a specific audit on this for every client. Here's what it looks like.

What your Ad should look like to Yelp users

You need to make sure that your Gutter Yelp Ad has the right features listed and a full portfolio. In the image below you will see there is a well designed and put together paid advertisement on Yelp for "Gutter." The Verified License is a stand-out feature, so make sure that you go into your "business settings" and the "ad settings" and prove that you have a license. This features alone can increase your click through rate for leads by 5% or more. People may be a little cheaper on Yelp but they want professionals coming in to their home.

Yelp Portfolio

You always want to have an active portfolio with every Yelp Ad campaign for your gutter services. Below is one we created for our client, AD Green Gutters and Screens. This style of portfolio created to perfection produced 120 monthly leads during a four month span.

Yelp Ad Messaging Tips

For gutter companies, Yelp is truly beneficial if you take on both big and small projects. It's platform doesn't focus specific on gutter installation or gutter services, but rather a key category is gutter cleaning. So right away, you need to know, that Yelp Ads are best for small and medium sized gutter companies.

respond to messages and questions as the gutter expert

You must be able to qualify a gutter repair compared to a gutter replacement. Repairs are handyman work and you should never accept that call unless your lights are about to go out. You want the $1,000 to $10,000 gutter jobs. They are on Yelp, but they are fewer and farther in between than the small repair jobs. So put together a set of questions or follow ours here:

Qualifying Questions

• Hi ______________ (name of person), I'd like to know more about your roofing project needs. Want to make sure the time needed fits an open slot we have in the next days.
• You can answer these questions or call me directly at (AAA) BBB-CCCC.
• What type of roof do you have?
• How many stories?
• How old is the roof?
• How big is the section needing repairing?
• Are you looking at a full roof replacement?
• Is it leaking? If so how big is the puddle?
• What color is the roof? Need to make sure we have that in stock.
• Great, so without looking at it in person its hard to to give you a full estimate. Our fees are $AAA.00 to come out and give you a full quote. If you like our final quote, we'll apply the estimate invoice amount as a discount to the total. Fair enough?
• Great, I have openings at _________ on ____________.
• Can I get your email and address and direct phone line.
• Great, see you then.

Response Times and Activating the Client Phone Number Que

Yelp states that any messages should be responded to within one business hour, but that's a load of crap. You need to respond within 10 minutes during business hours to a deal. Here's the reality... they are messaging not just you but 2-4 other gutter companies at a time. The first person to respond with a decent quote gets the job. Now if you see the blue phone icon above their message, click it call them directly. You will close 200% more clients talking to them on the phone compared to messaging.

How do we know...?

We drove 125 leads one month for a gutter client, 80 were messages, with 45 calls, and only 3 of the 80 messages turned into clients, while 15 of the calls led to won deals. Just look at all the messages below where people needed a gutter service but ghosted our client. This same month he closed 5 clients on the phone, a cool $20,000, but not one of 47 messages in 60 days turned into a client.