Is Your Brand At Risk Of Abuse?

If you’ve worked tirelessly to build your brand, you will no doubt have a sense of pride in your work. Seeing your company name out there in the world, getting the recognition that it deserves can be very rewarding. And reaping the profits from this can be a relief, especially after spending a lot of time and money on the venture. 

But, what if someone was to steal all of that away from? There are scammers out there that seek to trade off your hard work and good name, taking advantage of your customers and jeopardizing your reputation and sales. 

Having the knowledge and understanding of the risks to your business from scammers will help you make sure you don’t fall victim, or that if you do, you know how to get help dealing with it. 

Counterfeiting

One of the major areas where you will need brand protection will be in the fight against counterfeiters. If your product or brand name is copied by others, without your permission, this is counterfeiting. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry and can be hard to prevent. 

There are some measures that you can take to protect yourself against counterfeiters. Firstly, before you release a product, make sure that you have registered trademarks, copyright, and patents surrounding it. You will need to look at international patents too, especially if you are looking at selling your products in global markets. 

Counterfeiting not only takes away from potential sales that you could have made, but it can also damage your reputation. If a fake item that is believed to be from your business is faulty, or poor quality, then it will reflect poorly on you. 

Website Cloning And Cybersquatting

A common way that scammers seek to trade off your name, and dupe customers into visiting fake websites that look just like yours. Usually, there will be a minor difference in the spelling of the domain name. Once there, these scammers can take your customers bank details, or login details. 

Again, a poor experience with a fake website with your company name can hurt you. Although you have nothing to do with the scam, the fact that your name is involved can taint customers perception of your brand.

Social Media Impersonation

A growing trend in recent years has been for scammers to impersonate brands on social media. Fake profiles are designed to lure in unsuspecting consumers into clicking through to fake websites or providing personal details. 

If you find yourself being imitated online, you will need to report the page to the social media site who will have the page removed.  

How To Protect Yourself

It is possible to hire the services of a brand protection company who can look for imitations of your products and services available online. Having someone help identify areas where you are under threat will allow you to respond quickly.

Using keyword and image recognition software, it is possible to identify any instances of brand abuse wherever it is taking place.