Google Ads vs Yelp Ads – which wins out

In today’s online-centered economy, businesses need to be careful when deciding where they want to advertise. The right choice of platform can expand their reach and let them get in touch with new customers. Likewise, advertising on underdeveloped platforms can cause businesses to fall behind their competition. To help you make the right choice, we are going to be comparing Google Ads vs Yelp Ads – which wins out.

The importance of online advertising for service-based businesses

Although there are many ways to promote your brand, service-based businesses face specific challenges. Depending on the type of service you are offering, you may not be able to rely on repeat business. Some services are just rarely needed. In those cases, customers usually choose to do research immediately prior to making a purchase decision. This means that you will have very little time to build a relationship with prospective customers. For this reason, we suggest hiring a PPC agency NYC, since Pay Per Click advertising can directly target users who are in need of your services. PPC ads have a good return on investment, and they let you directly control how much you are spending.

However, you will need to do a bit of planning before you run your marketing campaign. Just deciding that you want to run PPC ads and setting your budget isn’t going to cut it. If you want your marketing to be effective you will need to determine where to run your ads. You can ask for help from top digital marketing agencies in New York. They can create a complete marketing plan and do all of the research required.

How to choose between Google Ads vs Yelp Ads

Now that we have determined that PPC advertising is one of the best options for service businesses, we also need to find a way to choose the best platform. When it comes to advertising, both Google and Yelp are mainly PPC platforms. They can both help you reach a larger base of customers, improve traffic to your site, and boost your sales. Although there are many similarities, there are several important things to keep in mind:

#1: You can advertise on both.

There is no reason why you have to choose one over the other. It is entirely possible to advertise on both Google and Yelp at the same time. You should be aware that maintaining active profiles on several networks or platforms can be time-consuming. If you have enough resources, we recommend branching out to social media platforms as well. Many online users have started using social networks as a directory when they need to search for businesses.

Hire a social media marketing agency New York to craft specialized ads for those platforms. Ideally, the ads you run on each social network should be suited to the strengths of that network and the needs of the users who spend time there.

#2: Know where your competition is advertising

Do research into your direct competitors and find out where they are advertising. Chances are that you are competing over the same audience. Use their choice of platform to direct your own research. Monitor how their ads are performing and try to learn from their mistakes.

#3: Customer behavior and demographics

Which platforms are your customers using when they need to look up a business? This is probably one of the most impactful factors which will help you determine where to advertise Google Ads vs Yelp Ads. If most of your audience looks up services on one, then advertising on the other platform doesn’t make much sense. This can vary from business to business; however, even for one company, there could be differences in customer behavior based on demographics. Therefore, you should divide your customer base into segments and advertised based on who you want to target.

#4: Location

Depending on where your business is based, one of these platforms could be more popular in your local area. Obviously, Google has more global users, but in certain parts of the world Yelp actually has more searches. Yelp is the dominant platform on the West Coast of the United States. If you have a business in that region of the U.S. we strongly suggest setting up a Yelp profile.

Google Ads pros and cons

There is no question that Google is one of the most popular advertising platforms, and they also have the most used search engine. Unfortunately, this also means that you will face stiff competition if you decide to advertise on Google. Due to the large number of businesses that choose to advertise there, you can expect to wait for a few days if you need to get a response. This makes resolving complaints and issues a bit of a hassle. As we mentioned previously, Google is also facing competition from Facebook ads and other social media platforms. Nowadays, although Google is massive, it’s far from the only choice for running PPC ads.

Google will let you advertise based on keywords, so you can micromanage the targeting options. Actually, you have a fine level of control for most of the features of your campaign, such as what your ad says, as well as the exact location targeting options. There is also no minimum price for advertising, which makes Google great for testing various copies of ads.

Yelp Ads pros and cons

When it comes to controlling your options for advertising on Yelp, you will immediately notice that you have far fewer choices. The Yelp Business portal will only let you do basic customization, but your ad needs to fit the platform outline. However, that doesn’t necessarily need to be a bad thing, since, after the initial setup, Yelp ads run themselves. Ads are displayed to both mobile and desktop users, and Yelp claims that 97% of users make a purchase. We have to mention that if your business is located in California, or anywhere in the West Coast – Yelp is a must-have.

The bottom line

From our outline of Google Ads vs Yelp Ads – which wins out isn’t always obvious. For some businesses, the decision will be easy to make based on their location. However, we always recommend doing a case study to find the best solution for your business.