Many Canadians are familiar with telemarketing scams. Almost everyone has taken a call claiming to be from the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) that demand immediate payment of back-taxes or face jail time. To this day, we still receive this call multiple times a week at the office. Thankfully, the majority of Canadians ignore these calls. However, there are a few telemarketing scams that target small business owners with pushy sales tactics.
In the past year, we’ve protected our clients from a number of these different types of scams.
Domain Expiry
Recently, we fielded a call from a company that had first contacted one of our clients. They wanted access to our client’s domain so that they could renew it before it expired. In this type of scam, a company trolls WHOIS (domain registration) to find sites that will soon expire and then scare business owners into signing expensive renewal contracts with them.
These scammers know that most domains will auto-renew, but are banking on the fact that a few of the business owners will scare easily enough to sign at an inflated price with them to keep their website working.
Google My Business (GMB) Scam
In this swindle, a call is made to warn business owners that their GMB listing is about to expire, or there is some other problem with the listing. In this scam, business owners are advised to pay a large sum immediately to keep their reviews and content online. Remember that GMB is a free service and Google will not call you about it.
When you own your own business, you’re likely bombarded with daily cold-calls from a variety of different companies and it can be hard to sort the valid business inquiries from the ever-increasing unscrupulous companies simply looking for an easy payday.
To help protect your business, make sure that you’re partnering with a reputable marketing firm that can help you navigate and deal with these telemarketing scams.
Contact one of our marketing specialists today!
idig Marketing is a full-service digital strategy and development firm that generates meaningful website traffic and drives high-value leads to your organization. By optimizing organic content with paid advertising our custom methodology is adapted to meet your requirements and to exceed your objectives.
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