Here at Apex Digital Media we keep a close eye on our rankings. We are an SEO firm after all. So it’s not surprising that once we started to achieve some stellar rankings for keywords like “local SEO” or “Social Media Management” people were going to copy us. Enter Apex Digital Marketing .au – probably the most visible offender as far as “brand thievery” and SEO coat tail riding go.
Imitation is the greatest form of flattery no doubt, but some people take it a little TOO far. To the point where it becomes fraudulent.
The most visible examples of this for us is Apex Digital Marketing in Australia.
They got the “apex digital” part of our name ranking to piggyback on, but these guys took it a step further. They even connected themselves to us in LinkedIn – and were listed on our page as an employee of our firm. This despite the fact that they are out of network for us.
Maybe they are a great firm who produces great results, I’m not here to judge that. What does concern me is someone pretending to be our brand – Apex Digital Media because if they are scam artists or engaging in shady business practices they are visibly trying hard to associate themselves with our company… The Linked In listing is proof of that.
That aside, I don’t own the name “Apex Digital Marketing” – I’m not here to say that people who are using that name can’t use it – just that they can’t pretend to be us. There are thousands upon thousands of businesses using the word “apex” in their name – so it’s really more about making your brand actually mean something to people other than yourself.
There is another “Apex” brand in New Zealand too. A quick search for the term “Apex digital marketing” will turn us up along with 2 other businesses in Australia.
Here are the other two brands that are most visible for this result:
Building a brand is something we’ve worked hard to do over the past 3 years so when someone comes in and tries to co-opt that for their own benefit it’s something we are going to take a serious look at. For now these seem like mostly harmless associations, but this is something we look at frequently.
At the very least we hope the people who are riding on our coat tails are doing high quality work!
– Team Apex