We hate to be the ones to bare bad news but unfortunately there are many digital marketing scams from people or companies who are looking to make fast, easy money. They will stop at nothing to deceive you take your hard earned money and run for the hills faster than you can say “I got scammed”
In this article by the Cindtoro team we are going to review some of the most important digital marketing scams you need to know to protect yourself and your business.
Fast Guaranteed SEO
Search engine optimization is a challenging task to happen fast. It can be done but it is very hard to do and only if the conditions are right (which is almost never)
The result of this digital marketing strategy is not in the hands of professional SEO companies to guarantee. While a company can perform excellent work it is ultimately up to Google’s algorithm whether or not your website receives a first page placement. Any company that guarantees SEO is going directly against Google’s guidelines and should be looked at as a scam.
For SEO optimization to work on Google there needs to be a right mix of on and off page optimization efforts to take place over a period of months. Just so we are clear here: on average SEO takes 3 to 6 months before it STARTS working however it can also take longer depending on the keyword difficulty, the level of competition, seasonality factors and the ever so frequent Google Algorithm updates which take place 100s of times per year.
It is the job of an SEO professional to understand these factors and create a strategy to yield the best results for your business website. At the end of the day you are looking for the search engine look at your website and say “they do these things and they do them really well”
Buying Followers
Buying followers is another marketing scam that business owners need to be aware of. It is great to be popular on social media for marketing purposes but if the majority of social media followers are fake bots then the benefits you could see from social media are canceled.
Social proof is an important concept especially if you want people to go with your product over others. But you should never buy followers as a cheap easy way to gain that social proof because in the long run it does not pay off. Yes, marketing your business on social media will take a long time, but it is also the best way to do it.
Here is how to tell if a company or person bought followers
Step one
Look at the number of followers in relation to the number of comments and likes the user or business gets. If their profile has 100k followers but they only get 50 likes and 10 comments that is a pretty good indicator their followers are fake.
Step two
Scroll down the list of who is following the business or person in question. Take a look into who their followers are. If you see images that look a bit “off”, the account has a strange username, or there is no profile photo for a user then that is another indicator they are likely fake.
Step 3 – Final Step
After you have done step one, and step two the final step is to review a few of the profiles that you have identified as potential bots. (there may be 100s or thousand of these ) but you’ll only need to do a few. Go to the questionable profile and repeat steps one and two for these as well. If you find a pattern ( which you will) then you know a person or company bought followers.
Cheap Website
Let me just say this as simply as I can. There is no such thing as a cheap website. Especially if you want that website to do anything remotely useful. The amount of hours and specialization required to make a website perform at its absolute best is significant, often requiring 100s if not thousands of hours to perfect.
The average quality website cost $5,000 at the minimum. Of course a website’s cost will be determined by the number of pages. If you have a very simple website and only want a few pages the price will be lower. The issue of cheap website scams happens when you ask for a website to do numerous things like special effects, look a certain way or have a ton of pages and you want it at the lowest cost possible.
Let’s explain the reasons why websites cost as much as they do. First, many people do not know but when you build a website on average it takes about 6 hours per page AND you have to build it three different times for three different devices.
Here is the breakdown of those 6 hours per page: 3.5 hours for desktop design then once approval has been gained from the client, 1 hour for tablet design, and 1.5 hours mobile design. Another important thing to note is this is done all WITHOUT website content. If a website does not have content then that should be included in a final cost as well which will increase the price.
AI Generated Content
Speaking of content… because Artificial intelligence (AI) is such a new endeavor many people or companies have used its power to make fast money out of people’s ignorance. Delivering massive pieces of content which at surface level looks really good but sadly does not perform this is because there is nothing unique about the content. Despite Google’s stance on AI content stating that it is “perfectly fine” to use. our company knows for a fact that AI content does not rank well on search engines.
In fact we created a website that used 100% AI content down to every conceivable element (images, authors, and text.) The only thing we did not AI generate in our experiment was the custom web design and layout created by our professional designers. We ran this experiment for 3 months with hundreds of articles published every day. It worked for a short period of time until Google discovered the content was nothing but spin offs of other people’s content. This is what AI does to produce content – predicting the next words that will be in a sentence. This is also why AI content sounds so fake.
Real high quality content marketing is a digital marketing tactic that requires an investment of time and money. Because of this it is not something you can produce with the push of a button and expect see great results. We wish it worked like that but it does not. On average our team about 20 hours to produce one piece of high quality content.
Prices that are too low
Digital marketing can be costly. If the company that you are using is the cheapest on the market you may want to consider getting a new firm. Their prices are cheap for a reason and it most likely because their services do not work very well.
We think everyone can agree that saving money is important but when it comes to something as important as your business’s marketing you should be willing to spend any amount of money to grow your business.
Proper marketing requires planning, optimization, testing, data analysis and an understanding of a company’s product or service to market it effectively. While a cheap marketing company will save you money in the short term it will cost you much more in the long run.
Think of some of the biggest business names you recognize in the United States. Do you think they went with a cheap company to fuel their business endeavors? A great example of someone who knows how to spend money on advertising is John Morgan spending over 130 million dollars a year.
Ways To Stay Safe
With new knowledge some of these digital marketing scams it is equally important you know how to stay safe. The next few sections of this article will give you some helpful tips you can use to protect yourself.
Ask the right questions
No matter what type of marketing service you are looking to use it is important to ask the right questions. Here are a few of them you should be asking.
- how long have you been in business for?
- Do you have some KPIs you can list to track?
- What does success look like working together?
- How does your reporting look? is it sent – monthly, weekly?
- What major marketing mistakes have you made?
- How has google algorithm updates impacted your website or others you have worked on?
Answers to questions like these will help you understand if the professional you are looking at working with is knowledgeable in SEO as they claim to be. These questions will help you understand both their business experience and if they can operate in situations less then ideal when the time comes.
Ask if the company uses any AI
If the company uses any type of AI then it is important to see how they use it so you can make sure you do not get harmed here are a few questions to ask
- do you use AI and if so how?
- Have you ever had a negative experience with AI?
- What role does AI play in marketing my business?
Look for testimonials
Finally you should look for some type of social proof. Seeing if a business has social proof will allow you to see if they are really are what they claim to be about. The quality of the testimonial will also allow you to see how much effort the business is willing to put in to achieve a successful result for their clients
Work With Cindtoro
If you have been looking for a reputable marketing agency to work on your business our team would love to assist your needs. We have been in business since 2019 and have experience working with with various different types of industries. Our company has specialist in every department from SEO, PPC, web design and much more. Learn more about us and our services
