Business is all about making smart investments, but what happens when you are blindsided by scam artists claiming to be the best marketing agency in Brisbane?

Here at Oyo Studio, we want to protect and build the reputation of our clients and help them scale their businesses through professional digital marketing. So, let us help you with some tips on identifying a digital marketing scam so you can protect your business from loss.

Don’t Get Hustled

Digital advertising fraud is a real thing, and many unbeknown companies have fallen for the get rich quick schemes these agencies have on offer. Unfortunately, it is only downhill once you sign your name on the dotted line.

These fraudulent agencies look like every other agency you’ve come across, except everything they claim is completely falsified. The only way to avoid being a victim is to crank up your knowledge on identifying it before it’s too late.

Remember these important traits of imitative digital marketing agencies and save your business from being ruined:

• Promises of major directory listings – you know how when you spread chocolate too thin, it breaks? Well, that is exactly what scam agencies do to your business. They promise volumes of visibility on high-traffic business directories, and you make large payments for these services, only for them to list your business on hundreds of listings completely irrelevant to your niche. As a result, your business brand and reputation are damaged from being on low-quality directories, and you have essentially paid big money to have your business dragged through the dirt.

So, when a digital marketing agency offers you high-quality listings, be sure to request monthly reports with explanations on how the listings benefit your business.

• Using performance issues against you to broker deals – if you look hard enough, you will most likely find an issue with every website. And, since a website is an integral part of lead generation, fraudulent agencies use these “issues” to justify their expertise with quick fixes. Besides paying a hefty amount for these useless services, you potentially risk the integrity of your website by allowing inexperienced people to mess around with it.

We encourage you to seek second opinions from either another marketing agency or from your in-house marketing team. There are probably straightforward answers for the ‘issues’ the false marketers raised awareness for.

• Falsified portfolios of expertise and previous clients – seeking proof of expertise when hiring a digital marketing agency is key to solidifying trust, so misrepresenting agencies use this to their advantage. These marketers resolve to fabricate marketing campaigns to demonstrate their past work and instil a sense of experience.

Before agreeing to sign them on, take the time to properly vet them and their experience. Use online reviews and ratings and thoroughly read through their ‘marketing campaigns’. Even if you are not facing a scam, you still wouldn’t want to hire an amateur agency with no experience. Furthermore, if the agency has no website to showcase its track records of success, consider it a red flag.

• Larger than life promises of Google rankings – guarantees are an absolute no in digital marketing. Since Google continuously updates algorithms, digital marketing agencies are always one step behind catching up to the new trends. So, if you’re faced with an agency promising endless leads, high conversion rates, and endless organic traffic and ROI, stop right there.

Instead, find a digital marketing agency that can explain its tactics and offer predictions on the impact it can make on your business. Digital marketing is no quick fix, or one size fits all. An agency that offers consistent monitoring and optimisation to encourage high performance is far more valuable than collecting false promises.

We know all too well how unknowing businesses that are desperate to pick up the pace may overlook these details when hiring a digital marketing agency, and the promises don’t make it any easier when your business is hanging by a thread. But, with these few tips on how to recognise fraudulent marketers, you can invest in agencies that have your best interests at heart.

Oyo studio is a reputable and experienced digital marketing agency in Brisbane, so give us a call today to give your business the best.