How Ken-Mar Rescue uses Yelp for lead referrals and business credibility

Martie: We’ve rescued about 1,200 dogs. What that means to me is not only the dogs that we’ve saved but also the families that we’ve touched and the happiness that we’ve brought into homes.

My name is Martie, and I am co-founder of Ken-Mar Rescue. We rescue, rehab, and rehome small dogs in the LA area. We started Ken-Mar Rescue because we felt that there was something that we could give back to the community. There are a lot of misperceptions about rescues out there.

For us, it’s always been about word-of-mouth referral. That’s all of our adopters giving their own personal experiences. Yelp really does ground us as being reputable and reliable. Yelp tells me how many people are looking at our website or our Yelp Page. It’ll also tell me if I need to bump up the activity a little bit on our website or on social media. Someone will say, “Oh, that dog was adopted. I really wanted that dog, but now I’m on your website and now I’ve seen a different dog. Can I set an application for that dog?”

There’s a lot of activity that gets generated. It’s a ripple effect. Yelp has been invaluable to us, not only for lead referral but also for validation [and] credibility. It does give me a nice view of the whole organization all at once, and it points me in the direction of where I need to focus.

If you want your business to succeed, then you gotta put in the effort. Once you start seeing the payoffs and the insight that you get, there is no way that you’re going to go back. I’ve been using Yelp for years. All you have to do is go to business.yelp.com, sign up. It’s free marketing. Wouldn’t you want free credibility? Well, it cost us a little bit of our time. I would say that’s a really good investment. My time is now freed up to help find forever homes for our orphans.