Scorpion Expands Its Toolbox with Yelp Partnership
The digital marketing services provider Scorpion announced a new partnership with Yelp this morning, in a move that demonstrates just how important Yelp’s advertising platform has become to the local ecosystem. Scorpion clients will have access to Yelp tools like zip code targeting, campaign goals, negative keywords, and other pilot programs that take a granular and customized approach to ad delivery. They will also be able to optimize their Yelp presence and unlock new profile optimizations that weren’t previously available.
Scorpion Chief Growth Officer Jamie Adams says becoming a Yelp Advertising Partner means Scorpion customers can manage advertising campaigns much more efficiently and take advantage of other profile features that wouldn’t otherwise be available.
With tens of millions of users on Yelp, Adams says local businesses these days can’t afford not to participate on the platform.
“Amongst our clients, we’ve noticed that the pandemic dramatically accelerated the embrace of digital marketing and other tools at the local level,” Adams says. “Small businesses and local service providers have turned to digital advertising and customer feedback channels as a streamlined and effective form of communication.”
This morning’s announcement comes on the heels of other recent partnerships between Scorpion and major industry players. Most recently, the company became the first fully managed marketing partner to integrate directly with Google’s Local Services Ads booking feature for its home services customers. That partnership was designed to ensure Scorpion home services customers could offer seamless online booking options for customers directly through Local Services Ads. Scorpion’s Scorpion One advertising platform is also integrated with a number of publishers that are important to the local ecosystem, including Bing/Yahoo, Facebook, and Instagram.
“Scorpion One takes a business’ advertising budget, distributes that budget across a number of publishers, then optimizes the campaign to achieve optimal KPIs, which are typically CPL or CPA,” Adams explains.
Extending Yelp’s Reach
Yelp’s decision to partner with digital marketing firms like Scorpion is a relatively recent one. Until the past few years, the company acquired most of its advertisers through direct sales and marketing channels. However, Adams says industry changes have led Yelp to start working with more third-party companies as a way to extend its reach with local business customers.
In developing the new partnership, Adams says Yelp worked closely with Scorpion’s engineering team to come up with a set of APIs that enable Scorpion One to integrate directly with Yelp advertising products. Engineers were also able to leverage Scorpion’s automation to optimize its customers’ Yelp campaign budgets.
“We want to help local businesses attract and acquire new customers through as many channels as possible,” Adams says. “Yelp is a trusted publisher of local business information for consumers, and most local businesses need a strategy for reaching new customers there. We’re constantly pushing to provide the very best tools and advertising solutions for our customers so they can more effectively reach and serve their clients.”
Going forward, Adams says Scorpion will continue to introduce new solutions to help local businesses take advantage of the digital marketing space, with additional plans to make accretive acquisitions when the right opportunities come along.
“We are going to continue to introduce solutions that help local businesses attract, get to know, and win new customers,” Adams says. “We want to do this in a way that’s measurable and gives our customers visibility into what’s working, so they can make more informed decisions about where they should spend their marketing and advertising budgets.”
Stephanie Miles is a senior editor at Street Fight.
