Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
There are lots of businesses that experience the dogged persistence of Yelp sales people calling them. Float On has done both buying Yelp ad space and living without it and Graham and Ashkahn break down exactly what that experience was like.
They also go into exactly what Yelp ads mean and how it impacts your float center (or doesn’t, as the case may be) as well as how well Yelp stacks up in comparison to other ad sources.
Show Resources
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Today’s question is: “I have a lot of contacts coming in from Yelp. Should I pay for Yelp ads?”
Ashkahn: A lot of contacts coming in, like a lot of customers coming in from Yelp? I think.
Graham: Oh, I guess it’s unclear. I assume they meant Yelp contacting them, but either way, I think we can answer this one.
Ashkahn: I definitely can relate to lots of Yelp contacting you. They’re pretty relentless. Like I feel like it’s Christmas morning, I’m like, “Oh, who’s calling me?”, and I pick up, it’s like, “Yeah, it’s Greg from Yelp here.”
Graham: “Merry Christmas.”
Ashkahn: “Just wanted to connect, you know, see if you’re maybe interested in some Yelp ads.”
Graham: And I guess the other side of that is we do actually get a lot of contacts, at least going to Yelp to look us up and look at the reviews and hitting our website from there, so they do direct a fair amount of contacts our way too. But they do that without paying them for advertising as well.
Ashkahn: Yeah, I mean, that’s just Yelp’s platform. I mean it’s a big, Yelp is a big thing that I think a lot of people look at, especially if they’re something kind of strange like going through a float center and they’re like, “Is this gonna be weird? Is it gonna be kind of expensive?” Stuff like that. At least here in the US, or maybe US and Canada, Yelp seems to be much less important other places, or when I travel to other countries, there’s way less activity going on in Yelp.
Graham: For sure. Shockingly so if you’re actually used to using that as one of your review sites. When you’re here in the States, people are just totally confused when you mention it, you find one business in the entire city that’s on there. So we don’t actually use the Yelp ads. We used it for a very brief period of three months accidentally. I’m responsible for that. I think they called us in the middle of another conference call, I’m like, “Yeah, whatever, I got it. I gotta go,” and I think I accidentally signed us up, and then didn’t realize it.
Ashkahn: “Yeah, we got em!”
Graham: They were billing us, so we do actually have a little bit of experience paying for Yelp ads, although not the most pre planned marketing strategy there, and we didn’t personally see results coming in that were higher or more significant or big upturn in customers, or in reviews or anything like that coming in as a result of our personal Yelp ads over a few months.
Ashkahn: When people are paying for ads, that’s just when you do a search result… ’cause you see them in there. If you’re searching for something, then usually, the first, the top two things are sometimes, it’s like, peppered in, the kind of top 10 list.
Graham: Yep, and they’ll also actually put you on competitor’s things too, so if when someone’s going to look at the Float Shoppe reviews on Yelp, they can see a little Float On the ad, on the Float Shoppe page with one of our, usually one of our positive reviews. So to be like, “Oh, and Float On got five stars! Look at this!”
Ashkahn: It would be a little weird if there was just, “Don’t go to this other place.”
Graham: That’s pretty much, well, you know, it’s not entirely what the ads are, but that is one factor.
Ashkahn: I mean, if you put on a bad review for our place as an advertisement.
Graham: Oh, I think they only use positive reviews.
Ashkahn: I’d imagine they’d have to have some sort of algorithm, making sure.
Graham: Otherwise that’s super awkward! What are you paying for? So we’ve also talked to other float centers, and the general consensus is that a lot of places have not gotten a ton out of their time with Yelp ads.
Ashkahn: I think, can’t you, doesn’t paying get you a few things like you can upload certain photos to your Yelp page and stuff like that?
Graham: Yeah, and I think you can control the order of the photos as they appear on Yelp. You get a little more control over how you appear to the public on just your Yelp listing, is what I’ve been told. When I was trying to figure out how to change our default profile image on there, that’s what they said is “Pay for ads, and we’ll talk about it,” kind of thing. So you know, the overall response that we’ve heard has not been great. That’s not to say that there aren’t centers out there somewhere that are advertising with Yelp who are loving it and are doing a great job, and if you’re out there and just killing it with Yelp ads, let us know, and let us know if there’s some special features you’re turning on or something like that, but so far, at least with my experience doing consulting on marketing, it hasn’t been one of the things that people say, and in fact, if you look at the 2017 Industry Report, Yelp is not one of the platforms that’s on there that’s worked most effectively for anyone, even as a write-in.
Ashkahn: Yeah. And it might just be, really what you’re trying to do is get people to realize floating exists, come in, try it, stuff like that, just like taking float customers away from someone who’s considering looking at other float centers, maybe not like the biggest thing that’s gonna move the needle for you.
Graham: Yeah, you know, and without knowing too many details about exactly who their target audience is or what businesses they work really well for, my instinct is that they do better for restaurants or something where there’s just hundreds of this type of business in a city, and we’re really deciding on, “Hey, I’m gonna go to dinner tonight. What restaurant should I hit up, or even what Thai food restaurant should I hit up?” as opposed to a float tank which is something you don’t need to do three times a day. There are certain activities that are so-
Ashkahn: If you type in “float, or “float tank”, or “float center” into Yelp, there in the listing, t’s probably gonna be every float center around you.
Graham: Right, you’re not gonna get to page two, unless you’re in Vancouver BC or something. So you know, it could just be, again, that we’re not that type of business that works really well with Yelp ads, and that’s why centers haven’t been seeing as much of an uptick as a result. I would say your advertising money, if you’re looking for an online platform to throw money into, is best spent with Facebook, and the industry report seems to back that up, conversations with other float centers seem to back that up, it seems just the ROI, the return on value for every dollar you put into Facebook is better in terms of online advertising than other platforms that people are using. By a significant amount too.
Ashkahn: But if you’re lonely and you’re looking for somebody to talk to, then I’d say get on Yelp’s radar, and they’ll probably call you everyday, and you’ll have someone to talk to for a little bit.
Graham: Yeah, so maybe the question should be “how do I stop Yelp salespeople from calling me?” Which you know, good luck.
Ashkahn: Move, change your phone number.
Graham: Yeah, change your telephone number.
Ashkahn: The witness protection program.
Graham: ‘Cause we haven’t found out how to stop them, that’s for sure. So good luck, and again, if you’re out there and you are using Yelp ads, let us know, let us know how it’s going. We’re curious. Don’t do like I did and try to get them off the phone by accidentally signing up. It’s not always the best strategy, I guess. And if you have other questions about online advertising or anything at all, really, go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.
Resources:
Industry Report
Recent Podcast Episodes
Why Do Float Centers use Child Sized Earplugs? – DSP 245
When shopping around for earplugs for float tanks, there’s only a few that actually work well in the float solution. One of these is the Mack’s wax earplugs, basically the standard for swimmers as well. But why do so many float centers buy the child sized ones when stocking their float center?
Ashkahn “Big Ears” Jahromi let’s all of us know what he thinks is going on and that many people may be using these earplugs incorrectly. Graham “Normal Ears” Talley, backs him up with some facts and important reminders.
What Causes that Float Tank Twitch? – DSP 244
Graham and Ashkahn discuss what causes that mysterious twitch people sometimes experience in the float tank, called the hypnic jerk (AKA hypnagogic jerk, sleep start, sleep twitch, myoclonic jerk, or night start ). While the guys offer up some interesting theories, there’s not a lot of research that’s been done on what causes these, so we’re left with theories, more or less.
Ashkahn thinks it has to do with pancakes.
Does floating impact the Parasympathetic Nervous System? – DSP 243
The Parasympathetic Nervous System is the part of your body that gets really excited when the rest of your body is winding down. Taking care of the digestive and rest systems are an important part of human health and physiology. How do float tanks affect this system?
Many of the studies on floating have demonstrated an impact on the parasympathetic nervous system. Graham and Ashkahn talk about the information that’s been studied so far.
Getting Salty With Speakers – Professor Hu – DSP 242
Dr. Peicheng Hu is a researcher from China that studies floatation therapy over there. He’s speaking at the Float Conference this year so Ashkahn decided to take the opportunity to talk to him about the Chinese float industry and some of the differences in the practice as well as the type of research being done out there.
Are Google Ads Important – DSP 241
When looking at online marketing, Google Ads seem like an obvious choice, but are as relevant for Float Centers as they are for other businesses? The most useful thing these ads do is boost search result placement, but if the ads are to boost the ranking of a float center that is the only center in town, it’s not going to affect search results much.
Derek and Graham dissect the platform and really focus in on the uses (or lack thereof) of Google Ads for float centers and provide tools and tips for online marketing and how to make it as effective as possible.
Latest Blog Posts
Fancy Acronyms for your Business Plan: TAM, SAM, and SOM
In this post, we’ll be looking at those enigmatic acronyms: TAM, SAM, and SOM, which are the backbone for the market analysis section of your written plan. We’ve helped a couple hundred float centers to develop their business plans, and we’ve found that this one area generates the most questions, and seems to generally be the most difficult to wrap your head around.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #9
The Float Tour makes a stop in Tulsa, OK to visit Dr. Justin Feinstein’s Float Clinic and Research Center at the Laureate Institute of Brain Research (LIBR).
Rather than following the usual path of incremental progress with its research, LIBR is tasked with pursuing alternative treatments that have a chance of “shooting the moon” and making potentially large leaps in medical progress. Float tanks are just the kind of technology they’re looking to explore.
Float Tank Centers for Sale
On our journey we found at least three owners who are actively looking to sell their float tank centers, and in all three cases the centers are doing well. Life often calls us in different directions than we expect.
In case you’re in the market for a pre-established business, without all the trials and tribulations of starting from scratch, here’s information on two centers that are, for the moment, available to swoop in on…
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #8
The desert is vast and the sun is harsh, but it doesn’t deter floating. We’re officially off the beaten path. From here, the float centers have become a bit more spread out. Everywhere we go, however, the people continue to be kind and eager to see us.
Everything in between Arizona and Texas is nestled in between some of the major manufacturers in the United States, providing some resources that other areas just don’t have. Areas that might find building out a center prohibitively expensive due to additional shipping costs, not to mention that real estate is cheaper than in major metropolitan areas, can save a bit of money when planning their buildout.
