If we look at how businesses used to market their products, and how they do it now, we can see a clear difference. In fact, strategies like online marketing have become the heart of creating a successful brand today.
The fact that 51% of businesses have a well-defined, digital marketing strategy is a reflection of how things have changed over the last few years. And, the remaining 49% are doing digital marketing, but with no strategy.
How does click fraud come into the picture?
As we all know, companies spend huge amounts of money every year on their marketing campaigns. As a result, online activities have also attracted scammers who are here to eat up your marketing budget with fraudulent clicks. These people might try to sell you fake clicks, which means that you think you’re getting real human traffic to your website, while the truth is that it’s only automated bot visits.
You might be shocked to know that, in 2016 alone, marketers lost $7.2 billion to digital ad fraud. And, the loss is growing at a rate of 50% per year.
This is why click fraud is a major concern for marketers and business owners. You might think your marketing campaigns are working, because they bring in traffic, but in reality, all you get is fake clicks!
So, how can you identify click fraud?
Well, here are some of the most common red lights that should worry you and have you wonder about the quality of the clicks you’re getting:
- Repeated clicks coming from similar IPs
- Large search costs with extremely low conversions
- Anomalies in Google Analytics or other traffic data for no reason
If you’re facing any of these issues, then your marketing efforts might be compromised by click fraud.
Now, the question that arises is “How can you eliminate click fraud?” Is there a way to battle traffic scammers? Yes, there are… more than one! Let’s look at them:
1. Keep an eye on any anomalies
As already stated, if you find some weird numbers in your ad marketing statistics it could be the first signs of your marketing budget going in the wrong direction.
As a matter of fact, one of the first things you need to do in order to minimize the impact of click fraud and reduce it to minimum is by keeping track of everything that’s happening in your marketing campaigns.
Once identified, you can eventually take some strong steps to prevent the click fraud which we are going to discuss in the next few points.
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2. Plan your advertising campaigns better
Where are you marketing your business? This one thing matters a lot!
Are you using Google advertisements? If yes, and you are not getting results, an intelligent trick that you can employ to fight the click-fraud elements is being smart in planning your ad-campaigns.
One of the many ways you can choose to plan it better is by setting different prices of the bid for different targeted sites. For instance, limit your posting to only relevant sites rather than just going on any website.
Or perhaps you can limit your ad campaigns to only reliable websites like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn based on your niche and target audience availability.
3. Don’t let your competitors do the damage
As annoying as it might sound, the fact of the matter is that the majority of businesses are not shy of employing this dirty tactic to destroy their competitor’s marketing budget. Therefore you cannot even think of ignoring your competition.
It has been found that many businesses are taking advantage of this strategy to damage their competitors by eating up their marketing budget.
A shocking statistic that might capture your interest here is that Methbot, one of the click fraud operations out there in the market, manages to generate $3 to $5 million in fraudulent revenue every single day!
So, can you check analytics data to figure out how many clicks are coming from your competitor’s IDs? If there is something that seems fishy, then you can take the required steps to reduce the damage done.
4. Turn to IP exclusions
The best way to identify and bring down these click frauds is to track the IP addresses. Once you have identified various addresses where you can see some notoriety happening, you can take this simple action – block them!
Reduce the chances of wasting your money on click fraud is by turning to IP restriction – it’s as simple as that!
This is something that does not require any technical expertise or any investment of any sort. All it requires is a little conscious effort on your end, plus a little situation-awareness, and you can easily end up saving quite a lot!
5. Stay updated with the latest technology
The best bet to keep your business safe is by befriending technology.
There is quite a number of software and tools available out on the market that can help you detect click frauds and save your business from overspending your marketing budget.
In fact, such software provides you a detailed report of the notorious elements that can come in handy in case you have to prove your case to the competitor firms or search engines.
All the major search engines are doing something against click fraud as well!
The good news for businesses is that looking at the seriousness of the issue, all the major search engines have started their mission to root out this problem.
For instance, Google plans to come up with its own campaign to fight click frauds. Google’s Ad Traffic Quality team has also planned to conduct manual as well as offline analysis of the clicks to ensure that advertisers don’t get robbed of their marketing budget due to these fraudulent click elements.
Keep calm and stay cautious!
But until there is something concrete to root it out, it becomes your responsibility to show awareness and keep your guard high against these fraud-clicking notorious elements.
On a concluding note, all we have left to say here is that the safety of your business and the success of your marketing campaign lies in your hands. More importantly, it lies in the awareness you show against fighting something like click-fraud.
So, are you up for it? Are you ready for some action and to start this battle against fraud-clicks for the betterment of your business?