Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

image credit: tanakawho

We told you about how one restaurant used customer feedback on Yelp to better their product and service. Well, now Yelp is making it official. They're allowing restaurants to respond directly to customer comments.

Previously, Yelp had limited small businesses' voice on the site to paid advertisements. But in the past year, Yelp has been taking steps to foster their relationships with these local businesses starting with allowing them to update their own business profile and contact reviewers privately.

This is great news for smaller local restaurants like Zumba just outside of Detroit, whom I first wrote about emailing customers to encourage them to write Yelp reviews. They then followed up by letting customers know that they indeed acted upon those requests.

Yelp doesn't screen comments, but users can flag inappropriate ones. Until now, this has been cumbersome for businesses who simply want to publicly rectify their name. Other reviewer sites like TripAdvisor have been allowing businesses to post responses for some time, though Yelp still remains a favorite among locals. Yelp has been accused of bias towards some restaurants in certain communities. So is this Yelp's way of rectifying itself?

Yelp has created a Business Owner's Guide to help restaurants like Zumba (and other businesses) that want to address their customer's comments.

As a marketer, this is could really help dispel myths and maintain branding. However from a consumer perspective, I'm a little skeptical. If I could be sure every restaurant would take action like Zumba, I'd trust the business responses I read. But honestly, I'm more likely to believe people who are more like me.

And according to research, I'm not the only one. Just look at these statistics:

- Online users value consumer reviews, 53%, over expert reviews, 40%, and traditional advertising, 11%. (JupiterResearch / Bazaar Voice Survey, Online Consumer Opinions/Use of User Generated Content, January 2008)

- Online social network users were three times more likely to trust their peers' opinions over advertising when making purchase decisions. ("Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape," JupiterResearch, March 2007)

- "Person like themselves" still most trusted source for information about a company and, therefore, products. (Edelman Trust Barometer, November 2007)

So if all the evidence says consumers won't listen to businesses' posts, will Yelp's new policies really work?

Sarah Jo Sautter