Has anyone used Yelp and had success with them?
Ive seen some home inspector profiles on yelp, and some inspectors seem to be generating leads.
I would same the same for Thumbtack, which I’ve had some success with.
Id like to hear your opinions, successes, failures.
How is success determined?
IMO, Unless you “pay to play” Yelp is pretty much a joke. I have a free listing with them, but you can’t really do much with it. The notifications I get regarding leads always go to my email Spam folder, not sure why exactly. Those notifications aren’t very timely either and you cannot reach out to the potential client directly.
Who uses Yelp?
What marketing/lead generation source would you recommend?
Success is getting enough inspections to justify the cost of generating leads
I may have sounded snarky, but that was not my intent. Seriously, is Yelp thriving? I never use it, and I do not know anyone who does.
If I were just starting out or short on work, I would go with Google Local Service Ads. Note, this is different from regular Google Ads. Much more focused and less prone to false clicks and false leads.
I tried it when I started out and don’t recall any success from it.
There are many other threads on this topic archived in this forum. From memory I believe the general consensus was that yelp (and other similar sites) no bueno. There may be some isolated opinions that differ.
How do you calculate that?
Say you paid $500 and you got a lead for a $700 inspection. Did you make money?
I would say you did not.
You did an inspection for $700, paid $500 for leads, and have $200 in your pocket. After overhead expenses are considered, you lost money on that inspection and are out an afternoon of your time. Maybe you got 2 leads. You got $900 ($1400 minus $500 for leads) before expenses and did a lot of inspecting to end up with a couple hundred net. No Thanks.
The middleman doling out leads is making money by getting between you and your customer. They offer no value.
My listing on Googoo and “word of mouth” have worked best for me personally.
I’ve tried the pay to play gig using a couple of sources and the ROI wasn’t worth it what so ever.
Agreed 100%
Right after I’m done on MySpace.
No worries. What marketing or lead generation source do you use?
So, im currently using Thumbtack, im paying about $80-100 a week and get 2 closed leads which lead to an inspection. $100 paid and about 500 earned, but this isnt enough to build a business around.
What lead generation sources do you use?
I spend zero dollars on marketing. I have built up enough satisfied customers that all I do now is answer the phone and book jobs. It took years to get to this point, but things are going amazingly right now.
When I started out inspecting and wanted more jobs I tried lead generation and it was awful. they sent leads to three (or more) inspectors and charged each one about $30 and only one inspector would get the job. I got more than 1/3 of those jobs but I was only charging about average rates at the time. When I raised my prices it did not make any sense to use lead generation because I would not get those jobs.
Building a business is hard work. Hang in there, it gets better every year as you build up.
Used Yelp. Had many leads.
Be vey cautious if you join for free or paid.
Read all disclaimers. Double edged sword.
Any marketing helps.
Learn how to spread your company name around with and without realtor referrals.