I have a lot of pet peeves. But honestly, almost all of them come down to people being underhanded and dishonest, especially in their business dealings. And especially when they’re giving marketing professionals a bad name.
Another one of those types of pet peeves has been coming up a lot recently. It’s so-called “marketing pros” who use website contact forms to try to trick small businesses into buying unnecessary services.
I see it in both areas where I offer my website design and digital marketing services, Bradenton, Florida and Banner Elk, North Carolina.
Whether or not you’re a client of mine, I don’t want small businesses to fall for these contact form spammers.
Here’s what you should know about self-proclaimed “digital experts” who spam you with scare tactics through your website contact form.
Who are “Marketing Pro” Contact Form Spammers?
Spam is annoying in any form. A lot of it comes from bots and auto-emailers. As an experienced and professional web designer, I have a lot of ways to safeguard your small business website from these automated nuisances.
But in this case we’re focusing on real-live humans who are spamming small businesses and calling themselves “marketing pros.”
These liars can be harder to stop because they’re not robots. But they are sending misleading or just plain false messages all the same.
These are people who do offer real small-business marketing services right here in Bradenton and Elk Park. But they can’t even do for themselves what they’re claiming they can do for you.
If they could boost their own SEO or operate a legitimate marketing company, they wouldn’t need to spam your website, would they.
What Do Marketing Spam Messages Say?
Contact form spam messages from these companies usually make one of three claims.
- They say that your website’s SEO needs to be higher, and they claim that they can do it.
- They say that your website is broken, and they claim that they can fix it.
- They say that your website is vulnerable to security issues, and that they can make it safe.
It can be disconcerting to get these kinds of messages through your website. It feels personal. It feels legitimate.
It’s not.
They’re playing into your fears.
Why Do Marketing Spammers Use Website Contact Forms?
Because they don’t want you to see how unprofessional they are.
Spammers who use your website contact form—instead of emailing—are trying to bypass your email spam filters.
They send out so many of these nuisance claims that if they used their own email address to send them, it would be flagged as spam by most email providers.
So instead they copy and paste their spam into website contact forms. And lately they’ve specifically targeting small business websites in my neck of the woods. In some cases, they’re even spamming my own clients. So yeah, I take that personally.
Brian’s Bottom Line on Contact Form Spam
So if you’re a small business in Bradenton or western North Carolina, take note. Spam messages from your website telling you that you need to hire an “SEO specialist” or a “digital expert” are probably total crap.
If you want to know, or you’re really curious about expanding your digital marketing services in Bradenton or North Carolina, give me a call instead.
