Beware of Digital Marketing Scams

Obinna Ekezie, co-founder and CEO of the African travel agency Wakanow.com, warns his fellow entrepreneurs in Forbes about the growing problem of digital marketing scams.

He hired one marketing agency after another before finding one that delivers results without ripping him off.

Before I hired my current service provider, I dealt with a few that claimed to provide a quality product at a cheap price. A few were outsourced to countries that are known for the proverbial “snake oil.”

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It’s like an SEO company guaranteeing the number one position on Google. This is an impossible guarantee, as are the quality guarantees of $5 hourly web developers and 50,000 Instagram friends for $100 (fake friends, of course).

He offers some good advice, starting with the fact that you must research an agency before signing a contract. It’s always a good idea to Google the name of a company you’re unfamiliar with along with words like “scam,” “fraud,” and “rip off.”

Just as important—and this is something Ekezie didn’t mention—take a look at the agency’s clients. Professional agencies have professional clients. If an agency you’re vetting is cagey about who else they’re working with, run away.

If you’re in the tech industry, look for agencies with clients like Adobe, Microsoft and Amazon. If you’re in the travel business, your best bet is an agency that partners with Travelocity, Kayak, and Hotels.com.

The last thing you should want is one that charges five dollars an hour. That’s barely half the minimum wage in the United States. There is no chance—none—that you will find competent marketing professionals anywhere in the world willing to work for so little.

Would you hire a lawyer for five dollars an hour? Would you buy a car for 50 dollars? How about a house for 1,000?

It’s a cliché to say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but it’s a cliché for a reason. It’s true. Likewise, there’s no such thing as high quality work for what amounts to slave labor wages. We can promise you that anyone who agrees to work for basically nothing is either incompetent, a scammer, or both no matter which country they live in.

Likewise, be very careful if you hire someone on freelancer websites like Upwork. Some quality freelancers use these sites, to be sure, but so do rank amateurs. Anyone who charges anything in the same time zone as minimum wage will do a terrible job. They may not be fraudsters, but trust us: professionals cringe when we see writers, editors, graphic designers, and marketing “experts” willing to work for so little. We don’t cringe because the amateurs undercut us. Talented folks will always be able to find work. We cringe for the people who think it’s a good idea to hire these amateurs.

You get what you pay for. There is no getting around this. If you want quality work in any field, it’s going to cost you the market rate.