Yelp wants to get on the action of the discounted deals and has started offering Yelp Deals to businesses here in Portland, Oregon. A few weeks ago, they announced this in their newsletter, so I logged in to check it out.  I thought I might try it out for my web hosting plans, but hesitated until I got a chance to write this blog post and research it more.

Here’s the scoop:

• *Yelp will retain 30% of the discounted price from each deal sold.
• *Yelp will pay you monthly, you Yelp Deal will appear on your Yelp page immediately after you sign and create it.

*The Deals are showcased on the top of each business’ Yelp page. The regular price and discounted percentage will also be listed so your customers know what deal they are getting. The Deal will also be highlighted in your search results and a dedicated Deals section of yelp.

*All of Deals are accessible via iPhone and Androids, just like Groupon and LivingSocial. The app allows you to see which deals are offered at nearby restaurants, etc. This is a direct competitor for Groupon Now, a mobile app wanting to accomplish the same thing.

The one advantage Yelp has is that its apps are already popular and used by over 4.5 million people a month. Groupon is still struggling to find that audience with Groupon Now. Slight differences in Yelp Deals approach is announcing deals 1-2x a week, not daily and a slow roll-out. The Deals are only available in 12 cities right now, with new ones being added.

I’ve decided to wait and see how my colleagues do with Yelp Deals, I want to be sure to offer something I don’t mind discounting, especially if there is a payoff through marketing and getting the word out.

It’s gonna be interesting to see which company races along to offer the most deals. Will this trend continue on how we do business day to day? Will customer always expect deals from small businesses, even when we are out of the recession?

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Yelp has been a breakthrough in reviewing businesses online. Never before could you look up restaurants or dentists in your home town and see how others had experience with them.

There are some ups and downs that come with this responsibility of reviews, especially on the business owner’s end. Yelp is set up so that anyone can sign up for a yelp account and review different businesses. On the business end, a business can either create an account and encourage clients/customers to write reviews – or – a business can claim it’s account if Yelpers (yelp users) have already start reviewing on their own.

[caption id="attachment_323" align="alignright" width="213" caption="Pink Sherbet Photography"][/caption]

Here’s when things get tricky. Let’s say you own a restaurant and you have an account on Yelp and over the past few months, you’ve gotten some reviews. Most of them are 3 and 4 stars, but you also got some one or two 2 star reviews. At first, you might feel defensive and reactive about how the customer reviewed your establishment and want to react. I’ve read business owner’s reaction to low ratings and it can go either way.

Some business owner choose to use this opportunity as a frustration outlet and lash out at the customer, blaming them and accusing them of behaving badly, ordering the wrong food, having too high of expectations and overall, being defensive. This defeats the whole point of a site like Yelp. On the flip side, I’ve seen some business owners react openly to negative reviews, responding to the customer and asking them to give them feedback to improve the experience. It simply could have been a bad day or night for the business or the staff and it came through to the customer. That happens, but I think it’s so important for the business owner to see how they can be a part of this communication process and turn the corner. Often times,  once the reviewer has communicated with the business owner, they will update their review.

The message is simply – don’t lose out on gaining a customer for life. Bad reviews happen but business owners have the power to turn them around. Your customers are huge part of the new wave of advertising, there’s nothing more powerful than hearing a recommendation from a friend to a friend. It’s magical and it can spread like wildfire.

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There’s been a lot of excitement about cupcakes the past few years and Portlanders love to indulge in heavenly desserts.

One of the cupcake businesses in town, Cupcake Jones, has done an impressive job with their online marketing. Here’s just a highlight of what they’ve been up to.

1) Every Tuesday is “Benefit Day” – a way they can give back 5% of their sales to a cause. Cupcake Jones is great about announcing the different causes each week on Twitter and Facebook.

2) If you go to their Facebook Fan page, they have their most current menu and lots of great photos of their customers eating cupcakes and of weddings they’ve catered. They are also on the ball and reply to messages on their wall quickly

3) They are pretty active on Twitter and have a nice, warm vibe to their tweets. One thing that was stood out to me is they shared photos of some of the trick-or-treaters that came to their shop, that’s pretty cute.

4) I was so impressed how many reviews they have on Yelp and how they averaged to be very positive. It sounds like they’ve made a lot of folks happy.

Overall – Cupcake Jones has built up a league of fans through promoting, being genuine, and communicating on a regular basis through social networking tools. I hope they keep up the good work!

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