After registering a URL for a family member’s business, I received over 20 calls within about 10 days from numbers across the country, and some of the calls came from blocked numbers. This is a real world experience that mimics the experience of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with marketing sales reps.

Borrell recently released a study on the number of sales calls SMBs receive from marketing providers. According to the study, on a monthly basis local businesses receive just under 24 contacts, which is a huge jump from the average of 14.6 in 2015. That translates into between 5 and 6 contacts per week.

Weeks after registering the domain, calls still continue to trickle in. While this strategy of calling SMBs with newly registered domains may have been effective when fewer providers were engaged in it, I would be surprised to hear it is still effective today given the overwhelming number of calls I received. In addition, the problem of scammers in the industry has likely put SMBs on high alert.

This isn’t the first URL I have registered, but this is the first time I was inundated with sales calls. Working with the same web hosting provider for the last six years, the last website I registered was a couple of years ago. I don’t remember receiving any sales calls at that time.

Based on some forum discussions I read, these businesses and scammers can simply search for “whois” information from newly registered domains. “Whois” information includes domain name, an IP address block, and other, often personal information (name, phone, email, etc.).

Borrell’s study goes on to show that SMBs prefer to be contacted by email (above), but that doesn’t necessarily mean they enjoy email pitches. Instead, this is merely the lesser of two evils showing that SMBs prefer email to phone calls which, in my experience, were intrusive and annoying.

I did answer one of those phone calls and told them I wasn’t interested, to not call anymore and then I hung up. The same number called me right back. Not only will I not be working with these businesses, but if I was an SMB, my trust in the industry as a whole would be minimized by experiences like this.

“These SMBs are effectively under siege,” said LSA’s Greg Sterling and the intrusive, and sometimes unethical players in the space are giving the rest a bad name. This is likely why many have turned to content marketing and “in-bound” marketing to generate leads.