When you think about where you advertise your communities, do you think Yelp?  We all have heard of Yelp but my guess is that you're probably not taking full advantage of this free ad.  Yelp isn't known for being a common destination for apartment seekers, however, I'm going to make a strong argument that Yelp is the most under-utilized ad source in multifamily.  Yeah, I said it.  Listen up...

First things first...can you tell me if your community has a listing page on Yelp?  I can tell you from experience monitoring community's online presence that a large majority of communities don't bother, including your competition. Yelp certainly isn't the newest  tool on the block but it's becoming increasingly valuable in the multifamily industry and you'll want to re-familiarize yourself with the platform if necessary.

Now that you've been formally re-introduced, you've probably identified a weak spot in your current approach.  Don't worry just yet.  We're going to button-up your marketing strategy piece-by-piece and further detail why Yelp is more important to that strategy than you think.  Let's dive into five reasons you should be using this often-overlooked ad source for your apartment community.

1. Reach

Yelp's reach continues to expand, collecting more and more users each year.  Over the last three years, Yelp has experienced 80% growth.  Their website has seen a nice boost as well as users are staying on the page 150% longer than previously.  According to Quantcast, in the last month alone 117 million unique visitors accessed Yelp via its website or mobile app.  That's an enormous amount of people using the platform!  You can ill-afford to miss out on this kind of audience reach.

2. Play in the SEO sandbox

First things first...add your community to Yelp & claim your Yelp listing

With infinite options for consumers and competition for businesses, being found online is something every business values.  It turns out Yelp has some sex appeal when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) and can help give your community some face time.  From an SEO perspective, Google takes into account a business’ presence on Yelp and in most cases, indexes it in the top-half of the first page in search results.  Since we know that academic research indicates that 91% of searchers do not go past page 1 of the search results and over 50% do not go past the first 3 results on page 1, Yelp suddenly looks like a no-brainer.

As you can see from the picture above, Yelp is landing as the fifth result on the first page for a direct property search.  This will vary slightly from community to community but it will likely always fall in the top half of the page.  Considering the visibility, it's vital for us to optimize our community listing so that it not only ranks high in placement but also looks like a beautiful, credible place to call home when potential residents come across it.

3. Add a Free Digital Brochure (Ad)

Every ad source should be looked at as an opportunity to display a digital brochure to renters looking for a place to live; Yelp is no different.  In order to display our community at its best and appeal to potential customers online, we must optimize our ad listing.

Optimize Your Community's Yelp Page Profile

• Name, address, phone number (NAP)

• Business categoryWebsite Link

• Business HoursAbout Your Business

  • be sure to update if your community hours change

• "Important Info"

• Photos (include captions and alt-text)

  • adding your own gives you the potential to force feed exposure to better pictures in contrast to underwhelming ones your customers/residents may have uploaded)

As you can see by the example above, all the community info relevant to the customer is completed.  To reap maximum SEO benefits, fill your community's profile out to completion.

4. Reviews Sell Your Community

It's impossible to stress the importance of reviews enough when it comes to online consumer behavior.  By now, we've all read reviews prior to making a buying decision online.  Yelp is a review-based platform that crawls extremely well with search engines (Bing and Google...more on Bing in a minute...).  As we identified above, that leads to page listings showing up on the first page of search engine results.  An often overlooked attribute of that is the star-rating associated with the listing itself.  Google will crawl the Yelp page, displaying the business's current online sentiment on its page.  As you know, this rating can land between 1 to 5 stars.  You may be thinking, "So what?".  Well, these small starred indicators play a big part in whether your community is viewed as a great place to live.

Do all potential residents read reviews?

A study was conducted earlier this year by a property management software company in which they surveyed over 2,000 renters nationwide.  According to their findings, 94% of those surveyed referenced online reviews in their apartment search, with most (68%) reading close to 10 reviews total.

Impact of Ratings on Apartment Consideration

Digesting the numbers, it's easy to conclude that online reviews  factor heavily into renters’ decisions.  Additionally, the survey asked those being surveyed to identify what average rating would be "too low" for them to consider renting at an apartment community.  The results?   43% said an average of "3 out of 5” stars would eliminate a community from consideration.  That's right, having three stars on a review platform (not just Yelp) automatically eliminated half of would be prospects.  Furthermore,  a “2 out of 5” average was the deal breaker for another 41% of respondents.

Bottom Line

Reviews and your community's online reputation are no small matter.  In fact, your property's online presence and reputation is where you should be spending more of your time when it comes to your community's marketing efforts.  In relation to this topic, make sure once you have a Yelp listing, you are doing everything you can to proactively manage it.  Get in front of your reviews by proactively asking for them.  Run contests with your employees and your residents.  Get your staff talking about reviews on a consistent basis and utilizing them at key times (community gatherings, upon lease signing, after a maintenance request, etc.).  Make reviews part of every process you have when it comes to your community and its customer service efforts, and your occupancy will thank you later.

5. Bing and Apple Integration

Bing

When Yelp partnered on a local content deal with Bing, they received a significant boost.  If users search on Bing, relevant Yelp reviews associated with the business will display on the right side of the screen (as pictured below).

Bing directly imports relevant reviews and photos of the business.  Having claimed your listing ad on Yelp will assist with double-checking reviews have been responded to and photos appearing on your page are the ones you want to display (although to re-order and organize photos by choice, you will need to advertise with Yelp).  With Yelp's integration with Bing and surging credibility with Google, the platform is impossible to ignore regardless of industry.

Apple

Since iOS 6, Yelp has gotten marquee placement and promotion. When using Siri and Apple Maps, business locations will present Yelp pages and reviews front-and-center.  When doing a general search for "apartments" using Siri & Apple Maps, this is what displayed.

The only apartments with reviews in this example is the top result.  Even then, the reviews aren't great.  Could you imagine if your community was included in this list but had a 4 or 5-star rating?  How much more do you think your community would stand out among this crowd?  Another function of Apple Maps is typing in the address or community name.  That community's Yelp ad listing will integrate into the display, showing current review sentiment along with the drive time.

Indeed, claiming one’s Yelp listing now becomes a “must-do” for those in the property management industry.