Spot the Small Business Scammers

The Ocean Associates Marketing inbox has been busier than usual recently. We’ve had emails from overseas influencer marketing agencies requesting my copywriting skills to support their latest project. And a well-known US clothing brand is desperate to expand their brand into the UK market and needs my agency’s help.

These are unwanted emails. Most likely stemming from a data breach from some ticket company I used pre-pandemic… who have, to be fair, followed their GDPR guidelines to the letter regarding the comms they’ve sent out. But my personal info is now at loose, and within days the phishing started.

It’s possible for small agencies like mine to come a cropper if we aren’t vigilant to these attempts. Even if your data isn’t stolen like mine was, we market ourselves to give visibility and, hopefully, meaningful business leads. But we mustn’t forget that the criminal world is watching us too.

If we were to get duped into believing we’re dealing with a genuine customer when we’re not, we are opening our businesses up to financial ruin. It could be unforeseen costs that we need to pay to fulfil a project (none of our own invoices would get paid of course.) Or maybe their IT person needs to install some crucial software so we can collaborate resulting in ransomware, hacked email accounts… and that’s probably just the tip of the iceberg.

So, can I offer any pointers that can help small businesses spot the scammers? I can indeed.

🕷️ Ask yourself, where this lead could have come from and why do they want you? You know where you market yourself and what kinds of segments you target. If this person isn’t your usual type of client – your ‘spidey senses’ should be tingling.
✍ Spelling. Why do scammers always seem to ruin their best efforts with a stupid typo!?
📧 The email address of the contact. If they say they are from a genuine business, check out the business’ website by Googling it (DO NOT click on any links in the message). Note the domain and compare it to the contact’s email address – is the spelling *exactly* the same? Has .com maybe become .net… If your spot-the-difference reveals anything…red flag.
📞 If you believe the business they say they are from is genuine, you can contact the business via an official channel to check. DO NOT reply to the email. The business should want to know if someone is pretending to be them anyway.
🖇️ Have a nose around LinkedIn and engage with the community if need be – it could be a known scam (one of mine certainly was).
🖥️ Have IT help. Even if you are tiny – to ensure your networks, website… are robust and recoverable. I work with a couple of affordable businesses who help keep my agency safe and some of my clients’ businesses – happy to recommend them.

Eyes and ears everyone 👀👂