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Scam marketing: what is it and how to protect your brand

branddi · Published on June 10, 2025 · Updated on April 10, 2026

Scam marketing is the misappropriation of your credibility, materialized in misleading advertisements, websites and fake profiles that exploit the trust you have worked so hard to build.

In other words, every scam applied in your name is not just a fraud, but a direct attack on your most valuable asset: your brand's reputation.

At Branddi, we understand this threat in its entirety. After all, dealing with marketing scams is our specialty, and we know exactly how they can dilute your market value and undermine your customers' trust.

We invite you to continue reading to discover how this tactic operates and what are the effective actions to shield your business.

What can we understand by scam marketing?

Directly, scam marketing is the use of digital marketing tactics for fraudulent purposes. Therefore, it hijacks the identity and credibility of a legitimate brand to apply scams, create false promotions and divert customers through channels that appear official, such as advertisements, websites and profiles on social networks.

In other words, this is not an isolated threat, but an industry in full expansion. To get an idea of the scale, a study by Juniper Research points out that the global digital fraud market, including scam marketing, generated losses of approximately $40 billion in 2023 alone.

But what boosted this popularization? The answer lies in the democratization of technology. Artificial intelligence and automation tools, which allow the creation of mass content, have empowered fraudsters.

In this way, today, they can generate hundreds of fake websites, convincing advertisements and profiles on social networks in an automated way, with a scale and sophistication that make manual defense practically impossible.

And the preferred target of scam marketing are precisely brands with a good reputation. After all, it is your credibility that the fraudster "borrows" to give the scam an air of legitimacy.

Remember: the stronger and more trustworthy your brand is, the more attractive it becomes for these practices. And understanding this is the first step to creating an effective protection barrier!

What are the main types of scam marketing?

To continue conceptualizing the problem, it is worth highlighting: scam marketing is not a single tactic, but an ecosystem of fraudulent strategies that adapt to exploit different vulnerabilities.

Knowing the main modalities is essential to identify attacks against your brand and understand the extent of the risk.

Below, we detail the most common ways that fraudsters use to appropriate your market value.

Phishing

Phishing is perhaps the oldest and most effective impersonation tactic. It consists of sending fraudulent communications, mainly via email, that appear to come from a trusted source — such as your brand.

The objective is to trick the recipient into clicking on a malicious link or providing information.

In the context of scam marketing, phishing uses your brand as bait. A report by Check Point Software warns that 90% of attacks on companies start with a phishing email, and global brands like Microsoft are the most imitated targets.

When a customer receives a fake email from "SuaMarca" asking to update a registration or confirm a purchase, the trust placed in you is used against them. In other words, the damage goes beyond the individual: your brand becomes the face of fraud.

False promotions and sweepstakes

This modality exploits a powerful trigger: the opportunity for a good deal. Fraudsters create ads and profiles on social networks promoting irresistible offers, such as "90% off" or "Buy 1 Get 2", using your brand's logo and images.

These campaigns are designed to create a sense of urgency, leading customers to act on impulse.

When they click, they are directed to fake pages that may capture data or simply fail to deliver the product some.

The result is customer frustration, the devaluation of your pricing strategy and a trail of complaints associated with your name.

Fake products and services

One step beyond false promotion, here scammers create e-commerces and entire catalogs to sell products that do not exist, are counterfeit or of very poor quality. bottom.

To do this, they copy the design of your website, the descriptions of your products and use your visual identity to give the operation an air of legitimacy.

Thus, each sale made through these sites represents direct revenue lost to you. Even worse, the customer who receives a counterfeit product (or receives nothing at all) associates the terrible experience with your brand, generating negative reviews and a crisis of trust that can be difficult to reverse.

Clickbait and false advertising

Clickbait is the art of creating sensational headlines and ads for the sole purpose of generating clicks. In scam marketing, your brand's name is used as bait in headlines like "The secret [Your Brand] doesn't want you to know" or "Leaked! New line from [Your Brand] with 80% off".

These links are the gateway to more complex frauds. Although clickbait seems harmless, it directs the user to the epicenter of fraud, be it a phishing page or a fake store.

The scale of this threat in Brazil is alarming. According to the Serasa Experian indicator, the country registered more of 1.1 million fraud attempts in a single month in 2025, which equates to one attempt every 2.2 seconds. fraudulent, scammers often fabricate dozens of positive reviews and testimonials. To do this, they create a false perception of "social proof", making the fraud seem like a legitimate and trustworthy business.

This tactic deceives the consumer and creates unfair competition with their real offer.

So, while you invest to build an authentic reputation, the fraudster simulates it with a few clicks, making the digital environment more confusing and undermining the public's trust in online reviews.

Scam Domains

Fake domains are the central infrastructure of almost all scam marketing. These are website addresses that imitate a brand's official domain, usually with small variations (e.g. suamarca-oferta.com or promocaosuamarca.net).

The effectiveness of this tactic is detailed in KnowBe4.

The study reveals that fraudsters create landing pages that impersonate trusted global brands to steal credentials, with Microsoft, LinkedIn and Google were the three most successfully imitated.

The report also highlights that 68.6% of the phishing attacks analyzed involved domain spoofing. data-rt-align="fullwidth" data-rt-max-width="1580px">In practice, this means that a fraudster can use your name in an email to take the customer to a fake Google page, for example, using your credibility to execute the scam.

Remember: each fake domain is a digital trap that confuses customers and unduly capitalizes on yours brand.

How do scam marketing actions impact brands?

The true cost of scam marketing is not in the isolated fraud, but in the domino effect it causes throughout the business. This is because the consequences unfold in a cascade of damage, often silent, that undermines reputation, revenue and its position in the market. In other words, your brand, previously synonymous with quality, becomes linked to scams and frustrations.

This erosion of trust is cumulative. Each false advertisement or dubious profile tarnishes your public image, transforming your most valuable asset — your reputation — into a source of distrust. After all, a customer who is deceived or who simply feels insecure will not buy again.

Remember: if the consumer cannot distinguish your official channel from a scam, loyalty is broken. He stops interacting and looks for safer alternatives, resulting in the loss of valuable customers.

Direct financial impacts

The losses are immediate and measurable. Firstly, there is a direct loss of revenue, with sales being diverted to fake websites or competitors who practice brand bidding. Additionally, your marketing costs increase.

Additionally, unfair competition in sponsored links inflates your Cost Per Click (CPC), forcing you to pay more to reach your own audience. You spend more to get less return, while fraudsters profit from your brand-building investment.

Increased operational costs

Fraud overwhelms your internal teams. As a result, your customer service team is inundated with complaints from scam victims, consuming time and resources to manage a crisis your company did not create. business.

Loss of competitive advantage

While you fight fraud, your competitors advance. In other words, your competitive advantage, built on innovation and quality, is overshadowed by the perception of risk. Thus, when consumers seek security, they migrate to more reliable alternatives. Combating scam marketing requires a change in posture: from reactive to proactive.

Effective protection is not based on isolated actions, but on an intelligent and continuous protection ecosystem.

At Branddi, our experience shows that the most successful brands are those that implement a layered defense.

Below, we present the essential strategies that form the basis of fraud protection. robust brand and ensure that your results are not hijacked by fraudsters.

Perform defensive domain registration

The first line of defense is proactive. Fraudsters need an infrastructure to operate, and the main asset of that infrastructure is a domain that looks like yours. id="">This includes common typos (typosquatting), different endings (.net, .online, .shop), and combinations with keywords like "offer" or "promo". So, by controlling these assets, you prevent the creation of convincing fake websites.

Focus on responding quickly to incidents

When fraud is identified, speed of response is everything. Every minute that a fake website or advertisement is up puts more customers at risk and more damage to your reputation.

Having a quick incident response plan is essential. This means having clear processes to quickly and assertively identify, document and report violations. style="max-width:1580px" data-rt-type="image" data-rt-align="fullwidth" data-rt-max-width="1580px">You can't fight what you don't see and the digital universe is too vast for manual checks. and automated, which scans search engines, social networks and marketplaces 24/7, can detect threats in real time. A critical example is in email authentication. adequately protect their domains, putting customers at risk of scams.

This shows that even official channels need technical vigilance to avoid being exploited.

Don't let scam marketing hurt your brand: count on Branddi!

Fighting scam marketing alone is a reactive and exhausting battle. For this reason, true protection is proactive and integrated — and that is exactly where Branddi acts as your strategic partner. our clients in advertising costs.

Protecting your biggest asset is a strategic investment in your revenue and reputation and fighting a technological threat with manual processes is ineffective: you need to have superior technology on your side.

And that's where Branddi comes in: as the ideal solution to protect your business with the right tools. Are you interested? Visit our website, talk to one of our online experts right now and get to know our shielding marketing!

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