1. Executive Summary for Yelp
Yelp’s Mission Statement: to connect people to great local businesses.
Yelp has been in business since 2004 & had net revenue of $102.5 Million in Q3 of 2014, a 67% increase from a year earlier.
Yelp serves 3 key constituents:
Contributors that review
Consumers that read the reviews
Local businesses
Key Marketing Objectives
- Grow the Yelp brand globally (currently selling in 8 countries).
- Better connect with local businesses and attract new small business accounts.
- Continue to improve mobile technology and make it easier for consumers and business to utilize the Yelp platform.
Executive Summary for Yelp
This executive summary is an extremely important element of our Marketing Plan. With this summary, we can answer a few of the most important questions a company needs to ask themselves when preparing the Marketing plan.
Where are we now? This slide shows Yelp’s net revenue through the most recent quarter end and also addresses who the key constituents are to the company
Where do we want to go? This slide addresses some the the key marketing objectives that lay the ground work for the future direction of the business
How are we going to get there? There are essentially three key objectives that Yelp needs to focus on in order to continue growing market share; expanding globally, closing the loop on small business accounts and continuing to improve their mobile technology platform to make it easier to use Yelp.
How will we know if we are making progress? The slide also indicates the year over year growth in net revenues, which is a great indicator that businesses use to gauge their progress towards growth.
Value of Yelp
“Yelp ratings affect both customer flows and the profitability of booking a reservation” for restaurants.
Yelp can be a valuable tool for businesses looking to increase their revenue.
The best strategy to build a strong reputation and take advantage of a great rating starts in the offline world with greater customer service, allowing reviews to build on Yelp organically.
Yelp’s position is that review sites are too cluttered with span to be truly useful.
A focus on long-form reviews and user interaction will help create the kind of rich review content users are looking for.
Yelp is notorious for long-form reviews, snarky reviewers and they Yelp Review Filter.
With the review filter, Yelp’s intentions are good.
Darnell. New study reinforces the value of yelp for businesses [Web log message]. Retrieved from
Scott, W. (n.d.). Yelp review filter. Retrieved from
They also seem to think that a focus on long-form reviews and user interaction will help create the kind of rich review content users are looking for.
Yelp is notorious for long-form reviews, snarky reviewrs and they Yelp Review Filter.
With the review filter, Yelp’s intentions are good. Like many of their efforts the rhetoric and execution are not a perfect fit
A recent study by two UC Berkeley professor found that “Yelp ratings affect both customer flows and the profitability of booking a reservation” for restaurants.
Independent research reinforces an important fact: Yelp can be a valuable tool for businesses looking to increase their revenue.
According to a Berkeley paper reviewed by professor Michael Luca- for businesses. The best strategy to build a strong reputation and take advantage of a great rating starts in the offline world with greater customer service, allowing reviews to build on Yelp organically.
Positioning and value of the Yelp brand are extremely important to the industry. Yelp is just one of many social review sites and faces fierce competition in an industry that has relatively low barriers to entry. Thus, they need to be able to clearly show what makes them different and what their competitive advantages are in the industry. The ultimate goal of Yelp is to create a global brand and have “Yelpers” across the globe that are loyal to the brand. This slide highlights a couple of positioning ideas and the value of yelp. We also discuss some strategies and why it is valuable for local businesses to use in order to increase their revenues. Now that businesses are being rated by “yelpers” they are creating a higher standard for customer service and more accountability falls on these businesses to make sure they are highly rated on Yelp. It is also important to note here that businesses cannot pay for better ratings, that is a myth of their business model.

2. Market Demand & Growth
Yelp continues to see international growth opportunities and users of Yelp are growing both in the number of reviews written by international “Yelpers” as well as by unique visitors. For cumulative reviews outside of the US, Yelp grew from 3.6 Million reviews through Q3 of 2013 to 7 Million just 1 year later, a 97% increase! What’s more is that the number of unique visitors over the same time frame jumped from 21 Million to 30 Million, a 40% increase through the most recent quarter end, respectively. Yelp sees the growth and appetite for their platform outside of the US and are aggressively trying to grow their brand beyond the 29 countries they currently service.
References
Yelp Inc, (2014). Yelp. Yelp Announces Third Quarter 2014 Financial Results, Retrieved from
Himelson, Jeffrey . (Jul. 21, 2014 ). Seeking Alpha. Yelp Investors Will Soon Be Calling For Help, Retrieved from
This slide is very important to our marketing plan because it can again help us identify opportunities to grow our market share and gives visuals and numbers to validate the growth. The top of the chart is a comparison of international review growth from Q through Q and we see that the reviews grew by 97% in just one year. In addition, Yelp has seen international visitors grow substantially year over year by over 40%, showing that the demand exists outside of the US and thus is a focus for the company to grow their reach and brand.
We believe this slide is also important because it discusses the primary drivers of revenue for Yelp. If we can identify what the drivers of revenue are, we can better identify as a company where we need to be spending time and resources, clearly local advertising is the main driver of revenue for Yelp and represents significant opportunities.
-Yelp’s international reviews grew by 97% from Q3 of to Q3 of 2014.
-Yelp saw a 40% increase in unique international visitors over that same time- frame.

3. Drivers of Revenue
The industry is highly competitive with low barriers of entry. The industry’s revenue drivers include:
Local Advertising
Brand Advertising
Other
85%
Local Advertising is the main driver of revenue.
10%
Second Largest Driver of Revenue 5%
Gift Certificates and other initiatives.
This slide is very important to our marketing plan because it can again help us identify opportunities to grow our market share and gives visuals and numbers to validate the growth. The top of the chart is a comparison of international review growth from Q through Q and we see that the reviews grew by 97% in just one year. In addition, Yelp has seen international visitors grow substantially year over year by over 40%, showing that the demand exists outside of the US and thus is a focus for the company to grow their reach and brand.
We believe this slide is also important because it discusses the primary drivers of revenue for Yelp. If we can identify what the drivers of revenue are, we can better identify as a company where we need to be spending time and resources, clearly local advertising is the main driver of revenue for Yelp and represents significant opportunities.

4. Industry Attractiveness
High
Segment C Businesses that are seeking low-cost, easy to use, and effective advertising solutions to target a large number on intent-driven consumers.
Segment A: large geographcal and diverse consumers who use ratings and reviews sites to search for local businesses.
Profit Potential
Segment B: Customers who are new in town or travel-oriented community.
Yelp’s net profit margin of 3.54% significantly follows the industry average.
References
Brandt, Courtney. (2 October 2012). Prezi. Search Engine Industry Analysis, Retrieved from 
Sterling, Greg. (July 18, 2014).Search Engine Land.  Yahoo Search Share Falls Below 10 Percent For “All-Time Low”, Retrieved from 
McGee, Matt. (January 15, 2014). Search Engine Land. Bing Ends 2013 With All-Time High In US Market Share, But Google Also Up [comScore] Retrieved from  market-share-but-google-also-up-comscore
Unknown. ( 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012). Wikinvest. YELP » Gross Margin, Retrieved from 
Unknown. ( 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012). Wikinvest. Google » Gross Margin, Retrieved from  
Unknown. ( 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012). Wikinvest. Yahoo » Gross Margin, Retrieved from
Mitra's, Sramana . (Thursday, Nov 13th 2014). One Million by One Million Blog. Yelp Counting on International Growth, Retrieved from
Unknown. ( 2014). Hoover’s Inc. Citysearch Sales Preparation, Retrieved from 
Unknown. ( 2014). Hoover’s Inc. Craigslist, Inc. Sales Preparation, Retrieved from 
Unknown. ( 2014). Hoover’s Inc. GOOGLE INC. Sales Preparation, Retrieved from 
The industry attractiveness diagram is important for Yelp to understand because we need to understand the industry landscape and who the users of our platform are. The better we can understand the industry segments, the more company time and resources can be used to attract these consumers. In our executive summary, we suggested that there are 3 key constituents for Yelp. Small businesses, those consumers that write reviews and those that read the reviews. This graphic helps show where each constituent falls in terms of attractiveness. We can see that each is very important to the overall vision Yelp has to become an industry leader in social review sites. It helps when businesses have a diversified business and is able to connect with more than just one segment. Yelp is doing a great job of attracting small businesses to it’s platform, growing consumer loyalty by attracting multiple reviewers as well as making connections with travel-oriented consumers and those that are new in town and looking for a resource to help them connect to the local businesses.
Low
Industry Attractiveness
Low
High

5. S.W.O.T. Analysis STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES OPPORTUNITIES THREATS
Yelp is user friendly and convenient.
Yelp offers a platform for users to share information.
High Growth Rates and Profitability
Too many investments in research and development.
Yelp is not a global web application.
Negative reviews given by customers. This effects business relationship in a negative way.
Small business units.
Global Markets
New Acquisitions
New Products & Services
Considering the popularity of Yelp, the crowd of consumers will attract more consumers.
Competitors within the social review industry such as Google.
Yelp services can easily be imitated,
External Business Risks
Financial Capacity
Government Regulations
Increasing Costs
Liu, C. (2013, 03 14). Swot analysis of yelp [Web log message]. Retrieved from
The SWOT analysis is extremely important to any business. This slide discusses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to Yelp’s business. It is important to understand the industry landscape and be able to identify many factors in each sleeve of this analysis. This slide “ties” it all together and helps the reader of the marketing plan to quickly assess the attractiveness of the industry and the business model. From Yelp’s perspective, this slide can and will continue to evolve as the industry changes around them but it is always a helpful exercise to be acutely aware of the industry and your company. Many companies will use this to assess their business on an ongoing basis and to update the variables. The goal would be to minimize the weaknesses and be able to measure the business vs this analysis. It is a great way to answer the question, how will we know if we are making any progress? We can turn those weaknesses into strengths, identify new opportunities and threats to our business or take opportunities and threats off the board if they are no longer valid. We also want our strengths to remain strengths and this exercise is a great way to practice self awareness and see if what we perceive are our strengths are seen as strengths by others in the organization, other competitors and our target consumers and businesses.
OPPORTUNITIES
THREATS

6. Strategic Market Plans (Direction)
Improve Overall Market Share.
Grow Small Business Account Relationships.
Geographic expansion & Increased emphasis on Mobile technology.
Like any great business, Yelp’s primary goal is to protect their existing place in the market and continue to grow market share. They have determined a couple of strategic initiatives that they are supremely focused on in 2015.
Growing their Small Business Account Relationships. They currently own 86,200 of what they have identified as 67 Million local businesses that live in the countries they currently serve. Obviously, a big opportunity to grow market share with these local companies.
Geographic expansion and Increased emphasis on mobile technology. Yelp is currently only generating local ad revenue in 8 countries across the globe, their goal is to significantly penetrate more countries in 2015 & beyond. In addition Yelp saw mobile visitors grow by 46% year over year through Q3 2014, so they will continue to show a strong focus on growing the mobile platform for users, reviewers & local businesses
When deciding the desired level of where the business wants to go, managers use strategic thinking. This slide is valuable to the market plan because it creates performance objectives to help develop marketing strategies.
Market Attractiveness- Huge opportunities here and abroad.
Competitive Position- Yelp is one of a few firm’s stealing market share here in the US.

7. Positioning and Pricing Strategy
Area of Performance
Advantage
Low Cost Content Supply
Enables Yelp to have a higher gross profit margin.
Traffic to desktop and mobile devices.
46% Increase in brand advertising to grow revenue.
Yelp is well positioned with its food delivery services and other value added services. Additionally, Yelp can offer goods at a lower price than its competitors by packaging value-added services with other key products.
Yelp can also gain a prominent position in the market by engaging in partnerships with top companies. This will allow Yelp to continue to expand internationally.
Yelp’s high gross margin should lead to profitable business.
By increasing desktop and mobile devices traffic, Yelp will increase its brand advertising portion of revenue. This will also diversify their revenue as needed.
Meola, A. (2014, 11 3). Yelp (yelp) stock rises after barclays raises 2015 and 2016 estimates. Retrieved from
Yelp is well positioned with its food delivery services and other value added services. Additionally, Yelp can offer goods at a lower price than its competitors by packaging value-added services with other key products.
Yelp can also gain a prominent position in the market by engaging in partnerships with top companies. This will allow Yelp to continue to expand internationally.
The competitive positioning slide is valuable because it reflects the impact on customer value and the advantages it provides with their delivered benefits. It also shows how the company can gain position.

8. Search Media Strategy Benefits:
Customer Needs
Retail TouchPoints (RTP): Today’s consumer are empowered by the amount of liberation and resources they have access to via the web and mobile devices.
Search Media Strategy Benefits:
Create open up-to-date communication channel with audience to better understand customer needs.
Build infrastructure to react promptly and courteously.
Gain more visibility and increase traffic to your website through- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SMO.
Learn tools to instantly promote and launch new products and specials, last minute and web only deals.
Stay connected with customer 24 hours a day and have the tools to spread your message around the globe.
Facebook, twitter & yelp social media strategies. (n.d.). Retrieved from
 The customer needs slide is important because the business has to develop customer awareness. Always adapt to the business environment looking for innovative capabilities that would be attractive to the customer. Being aware of customer needs enables the business to create a competitive advantage, providing a product or service that no one else can offer.

9. Marketing & Sales Budget 2013 & 2014
Through Q 3
2013
2014
Net Revenue
$162.3m
$267.6m
Marketing & Sales Expense
$93.123m
$ m
Marketing & Sales Expense as % of Revenues
57%
55%
Investor Relations. (2014, November 19). Retrieved November 23, 2014, fromhttp://
Yelp’s net revenue grew by 65% year over year through Q3 of 2014, yet their proportionate dollars that went to marketing & sales dropped by roughly 2%. As a firm, we want Yelp to keep improving their brand awareness and need to spend money on marketing and sales and these expenses should keep up with the amount of money the firm is bringing in. It is an encouraging sign that revenue increased and proportionate dollars out on marketing and sales declined. This makes sense to a certain extent since Yelp is primarily a social review site and word of mouth can help sell Yelp for Yelp, reducing the dollars they need to spend on marketing.
It is important to have a marketing budget in place in order to develop a plan, monitor the financial performance and then determine whether the plan is successful. If the plan does not provide the desired result then it can be reevaluated. Without the allocation of appropriate resources the marketing strategies cannot succeed.
Net Revenues grew by 65% from Q3 of 2013 through Q3 of while proportionate dollars spent on Marketing & Sales declined by 2%.

10. Marketing Profitability
User generated reviews give Yelp a network overtime it should get established in many more markets; in doing this, it will be able to sell its advertising to local businesses profitably.
Yelp’s Network Effect- breadth & depth of customer reviews.
Impressive Year-Over-Year Growth in Several Key Metrics
Reviews
64%
Unique Monthly Visitors
67%
Claimed Local Businesses
97%
Active Local Advertisers
118%
Yelp’s profitability is said to have network effects that create its advantage and profitability.
If the network effect does work, revenues will follow user adoption.
A network effect is what happens when a service or product becomes more valuable when more people use it.
Yelp’s explosive growth in user adoption over the past year would be indicative of strong future revenue growth.
In its more established market, Yelp is the dominant local reviews site.
Marketing Profitability is important as the marketing plan measures whether the plan is having a positive or negative impact to the net marketing contribution. It also helps identify business functional expenses, assigns functional expenses, and prepares a profit-loss for each marketing entity.

11. “Plus/Delta “ Analysis
Marketing Planning Process/Outcomes:
In terms of working together well, we did a good job of splitting up the work equally and communicating with each other every step of the way.
We also made a point to verify the differences in the marketing planning process. Some components of the marketing strategy were very similar to one another. We made a point to make sure the differences were clearly seen from the very beginning.
Visuals were held in a high level of importance, and I think we worked well together in choosing the appropriate graphs or charts in illustrating this.
Working together as a team can be difficult in an online class, but in my opinion, I believe we did a great job in compiling significant information and presenting our parts in a cohesive and well designed manner. All of this shows in the outcome in every step of our marketing plan.
In terms of things that we would probably have done differently next time:
Chosen a different industry, in order to gather more information for our power points.
Give more time to review over our work before it is submitted. I only say this because even though our work submitted for every part of the project has received good feedback; as a group we would feel more confident submitting an assignment after revising it several times.