The influencer wasn't real. Your website is.
Shoppers are being warned that the friendly expert recommending a product on social media may not exist. The advice they're getting is to leave the app and check the business directly. For small businesses that sell through social media, that check now lands on your website.
The presenter is warm, confident and very convincing. She says she’s a nurse, or a vet, or a financial adviser, or just a customer who couldn’t believe the difference this product made. She is talking to camera in a bright, tidy room.
She may not exist.
In August, the Better Business Bureau in the US warned shoppers that AI is now being used to create fake celebrities, fake experts, fake customers, product images and whole personal stories for social media promotions. In its words, the person speaking may not exist, and the aim may be to sell a questionable product — or to take someone’s payment details.
The scale behind that warning is hard to ignore: around 100,000 online purchase scams reported across the US in two years, and nearly half of online purchase reports involving social media.
The trust problem lands on everyone
It would be comforting to think this only hurts the scammers’ victims. It doesn’t.
Small businesses rely more on social media than almost anyone. The bakery’s reels, the potter’s videos, the salon’s before-and-afters, a local creator saying nice things about your café. That is how many small brands get found at all.
Every fake expert and fake customer makes all of it a little less believable. When a shopper has been told — rightly — that the person in the video might be generated, a genuine video about a genuine business gets a little more of the same suspicion.
What shoppers are being told to do
This is the part small businesses should read closely. The BBB’s advice to consumers is simple:
- Verify the person outside social media — a big following proves nothing.
- Look for transparency — paid content should be clearly marked as an ad, sponsored or a paid partnership.
- Research the business independently — leave the app, search for the company yourself, and check its contact information, its refund policy, complaints and customer feedback.
- Pay safely — be wary of anyone who asks for gift cards, crypto or bank transfers.
Read the third point again. The recommended response to fake AI endorsements is to leave the app and look the business up.
Which means the most important page in a small business’s social media marketing now isn’t on social media at all. It’s the website that a careful customer lands on when they go and check.
What happens when they check
A cautious shopper sees your product in a video. They leave the app, search for your name, and look for exactly the things they’ve been told to look for.
If they find a clear website — who you are, where you are, how to contact a person, what it costs, what happens if something goes wrong, and what real customers have said — they come back and buy.
If they find nothing, or a page with no address, no refund policy and no way to reach anyone, they’ve just failed the check they were told to run. Through no fault of your own, you look exactly like the thing they were warned about.
Don’t become the thing being warned about
A word on the other side, because the temptation is real.
It’s now cheap to generate a glossy presenter, a “customer” with a heartfelt story, or an expert in a white coat to front your product. Don’t. That is precisely what the warnings describe, and the price of being caught is your reputation. If you pay creators or send them free products, make sure their posts say so clearly, and work only with real people who have actually used what you sell.
The fair question
devkoi doesn’t run social media, check influencers or place ads. It builds the page people land on when they leave the app to check you’re real.
That page is where you can answer every question the BBB tells shoppers to ask: contact details, refund policy, how to pay, and real feedback from real customers — on your own address, kept up to date by sending a message.
What to do this week
1. Search for yourself the way a cautious customer would. Leave the app, search your business name, and see what comes up. If your website isn’t there, or doesn’t answer the obvious questions, that’s the first thing to fix.
2. Put the checklist answers on your website. Contact details, where you are or trade from, how to pay, and a plain-words refund policy.
“Add a refunds and returns page in plain English, and put our phone number and address in the footer of every page.”
3. Link your social profiles to your site — both ways. Every profile should point to your website, and your website should list your real profiles, so a careful shopper can tell the genuine accounts from copies.
“Add links to our real social media accounts at the bottom of every page.”
4. Show real customer feedback. Named, specific, with permission — the sort of thing no generated persona can copy.
5. Label any paid or gifted posts clearly. If a creator got paid or got free products, the post should say so. Ask them to.
6. Never ask customers to pay in ways the warnings flag. Card payments, clear invoices. No gift cards, crypto or “just send it to this account”.
7. If someone fakes an endorsement using your name, say so on your site. A short, dated note: “We’re aware of fake videos using our name; our only accounts are listed below.”
(General information, not legal advice. Advertising and endorsement rules differ by country.)
The fake presenter in the bright, tidy room will keep getting more convincing. That’s not something a small business can fix.
What you can fix is what happens next — when a sensible customer, doing exactly what they’ve been told to do, goes looking for you. Make sure they find someone real.