Digital marketing nowadays is a multi-billion dollar industry that spans many other industries and corporations. Not only that, but it also spans across small companies worldwide. It’s so accessible for everyone that you’ll only need a little funding and a group of people to do it.
Because of its global outreach, the market has been very competitive lately, with many adverts being shown around multiple platforms. Unfortunately, because of its accessibility and almost a 100% success rate in increasing your profits, the industry nowadays is plagued by more fraudulent activities.
These so-called digital marketing experts have techniques and strategies to lure businesses into getting deals with them, only to acquire the most out of them and run away, never to be seen again. To help your awareness with these scams, we listed down the most common ones that you can see every fraudulent digital marketing agency do. Here are some of them.
Promises of Major Directory Listings
For most industries looking to make it big nowadays, online directories are a source of exposure and value for their businesses.
That said, companies can only gain value and boost their brand awareness if they create accounts on directories relevant to their company. Along with platforms specific to your company’s niche, there are websites on the internet that cover multiple industries like Yelp, Angie’s List, BBB, etc.
With that in mind, one of the most common digital marketing scams is promising your top-quality business listings for a high price. What they do is they create listings to a hundred useless directories, resulting in you paying a lot of money but with almost no result. Moreover, you can also ruin your brand by listing your company in useless directories.
To ensure that a digital marketing agency isn’t running this scam, you can have them submit monthly reports on the directories they created listings in. You can then visit these links yourself, and you can ask for the reasons why they created a listing of your company to a specific website.
Buying Followers
If you’re big on social media marketing, you know that follower count is a valued metric in terms of marketing. The more people your products and services are exposed to, the more sales and profit you will earn both in the short and long term. However, having a lot of followers isn’t necessarily a good thing, especially if they are the wrong audience.
What good is having a massive following when nobody is buying the products or services that you offer? That said, fake marketers run their business by promising you a ton of following in exchange for a price based on how many followers you want. However, those followers aren’t necessarily interested in your business.
Not only that, they sometimes even make fake accounts to follow your business. To avoid that, look for a marketer that will focus on finding you the right audience for exposure. With the right exposure, the engagement will rise, and your sales will have a massive increase.
Black Hat Marketing
You can see many celebrities pulling off successful black hat marketing because of their massive following. However, you might want to steer clear from those because not only are they mostly illegal, they can also ruin your company’s reputation and result in you losing your business.
If a digital marketing agency is promising you a simple trick or hack that can get you the most coveted top spot in Google, then it’s likely a black hat marketing scheme. Of course, this is not necessarily always the case, but it’s 80% of the time. As a business owner, you can’t run the risk of Google blacklisting your business because of these hacks and tricks.
That said, only work with companies that use white hat SEO tactics to ensure that your business is safe from Google’s wrath. Remember, being the top spot in Google is a long and hard process. It takes time and hard work, and there are no shortcuts. And most importantly, there are no hacks or tricks that can give you an easy path to that top search result.
Outsourcing for Bad Content
If they’re offering articles at very low prices, the chances are that they are trying to outsource content from non-native English speakers. Of course, this isn’t always the case. There are a lot of excellent and legitimate companies out there that you can outsource good content from, but most of the time, they are expensive; they are hiring professionals, after all.
Also, there isn’t anything wrong with hiring overseas. Big corporations do it all the time, and it is also a key to their success. Not only that, there are a lot of great digital marketing agencies nowadays, so it’s important to find a legitimate one, no matter where they’re stationed.
So if you’re looking for good and trustworthy digital marketing services, one that can adapt to your business’ niche, contact Gorilla 360.
Final Words
Digital marketing has come a long way throughout the last decade. However, scams are also getting more common. Knowing these fraudulent practices is only half the battle, so looking out for them is your best bet in keeping your company safe.