Fraudsters can create entire websites that look identical to your own. They even set up social media accounts claiming to be the voice of your brand . The worst part? If they do it right, consumers won’t know the difference at all.
These pages and profiles make your customers believe that they are interacting with you. In the worst case, they may even buy from such a page and think that they have made a deal with you.
Fake social media accounts impersonating you can cause significant damage. 54% of customers surveyed said they use social media as a tool to help them make purchasing decisions. They essentially look to social media for validation that they are making the right choice.
But what if customers raise a concern or problem on one of “your” sites and receive a response that lowers their trust in you? Maybe they’ll read some negative reviews left by paid reviewers on such a site and decide against you. Sure, websites like Fakespot help you figure out how many reviews are fake, but most customers probably won’t bother checking back with you.
For a retail business that relies entirely on trust and loyalty, that’s scary, right?
What is brand equity for online businesses?
There are four core areas that represent your brand equity online: brand communication, web design, provider characteristics, and product/service characteristics. In other words, when consumers associate a site with an existing brand, thailand email list they look for four attributes:
- What is the language, tone and style of communication on the site?
- What is the look and feel of the site and how similar is it to the brand site?
- How similar are the interactions with the provider to the original brand?
- How closely does the product or service correspond to the original brand?
In many cases, consumers buy from a particular brand because it triggers an emotional response in them. Perhaps they went to a café on a particularly bad day and had the best coffee of their life. Or they remember shopping at an online store that offered great discounts and very unique products just as they were preparing for a financially strained Christmas.
Their brain remembers the interaction they had with your brand and how it made them feel. That’s what keeps customers coming back.
In this context, it’s easy to see why brand protection and web security are so important. Since consumers react emotionally to shopping with you, it’s up to you to elicit that reaction every time.
Why should trolls be interested in you?
To be clear, trolls don’t care about you or your business. They could be competitors, for example, who use questionable means to get attention. In most cases, learn what this tool is and how to apply it in your corporate strategies trolls simply live off of you, your brand, its value and its revenue.
Why do they do this?
When someone misuses your identity, it negatively impacts the fragile relationship of trust you share with your customers. And angry customers have several ways to express their displeasure online. And that can damage your brand’s identity in many people’s minds in one fell swoop.
How fraudsters harm your brand
There are numerous ways trolls and scammers can harm your brand online: from redirecting your traffic to damaging your reputation to actually stealing your sales, china phone numbers the list of scams is long.
Attempted redirection of your traffic
One way scammers can target you is by trying to redirect your traffic. If they use your brand name as a keyword on their own site, web pages that are in no way connected to your brand may appear in search engine results pages (SERPs). For example, someone could launch a new website called “Leggo” with an extra “g” and do business with it. When customers search for Lego to buy their products, they may come across this result. However, customers don’t know this or notice the difference. They click on the first result they see and are directed to a page that sells counterfeit goods or, worse, steals their personal information.
Additionally, when other people use your brand name in their marketing, it dilutes your own keywords, which in turn hurts your marketing ROI.
SEO manipulation
SEO manipulation is when scammers insert your brand name, logo, or slogan into their own header, meta tags, or hidden in their page’s HTML code. As a result, complete strangers posing as your company could actually rank higher than you for a particular keyword!
cybersquatting and typosquatting
Cybersquatting and typosquatting are very simple, yet significant threats to your brand. A fraudulent site could intentionally misspell your brand’s name or slogan (to avoid trademark issues) and still rank higher than it should. Likewise, someone could “squat” a domain name that should ideally belong to you. For example, you may have registered the .de and .org domains for your business, but not the .com or .uk. In such cases, someone else could buy those first and ask you to pay a certain amount to acquire the domain. To protect yourself, you can secure these variations of your domain in advance.
In one high-profile case, fashion designer Tory Burch LLC won a $164 million lawsuit and was able to force 41 cybersquatters to shut down domains like toryburchoutletshop.com. As an extension of this scam, scammers may also create social media pages and profiles that have the same look and feel as your original brand page. In some cases, these pages might even have a larger following than your brand page. This gives them an advantage in influencing customer opinion.
Counterfeits and sales on the “gray market”
Selling counterfeit goods is as old as retail itself. Under various names such as “first copies”, “refurbished” and “rebuilt”, retailers who are not affiliated with you can sell duplicates of your product. These may look the same but function poorly. According to the European Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), the damage caused by product piracy in the European Union amounts to up to €16 billion annually. For customers who do not recognize the counterfeit, this represents a lack of quality in your product or service. Amazon’s new brand registration system is intended to help combat the sale of counterfeit products on the platform.
If you think knockoffs are limited to goods, you’re sadly mistaken. Entire brands can be replicated. For example, since 2016, there have been knockoff retail stores of very well-known brands like Apple, Starbucks, and McDonald’s all over Southeast Asia. They have even built brand loyalty, albeit in a questionable way. If you have a business with a global presence, both online and offline, you should check to see if any retail or web stores have popped up in your area using your name.
Grey market products are extremely difficult to detect. Often these products are obtained through theft or repaired after damage and sold as new. In such cases, the sellers do not disclose that the product is not under warranty. This leads to inconvenience for customers when repairs are required.