The foundation of a new business rests on proper market research. If you are trying to launch a new product or a service, then you should have a good idea of the market. Failing to do proper market research can result in huge losses.
Web scraping is one of the easiest ways to acquire crucial data about your target market, your customers, and your competitors. In this article, we will learn why proxies are essential for market research. Let’s start with the basics first.
What is market research?
Market research is a data-gathering process that lets you acquire crucial information about your target market and customers. It is a required element of your overall business strategy that enables you to make better business decisions. You can understand the needs of your users and the strengths and weaknesses of the products offered by your competitors. Nowadays, market research is powered by AI.
Why is market research useful?
Here are some of the ways why market research is so vital for your business:
# You can build better products when you know the exact needs of your target cohort.
# It gives crucial business information related to your competitors to avoid making risky business decisions.
# You can build the foundation of your business strategy on data-based strategic planning.
# You can spot the latest trends in the market and prepare plans to capitalize on them.
# It lets you better forecast your revenue so that you can evaluate the success of your business.
Why you should focus your market research on data
Market research is all about data. You should take every step needed to acquire lots of data related to your target market. The methods usually employed to gather data are survey research, focus groups, interviews, and customer observation.
Data is equivalent to knowledge, and you can make informed decisions to improve the quality of your products or services. Moreover, you can easily measure the effectiveness of your strategy and get the desired results by stopping the guessing game.
What are alternative data sources?
Data can be obtained via two sources, namely, traditional and non-traditional or alternative data sources. Traditional data consists of a central database that stores the data in a fixed file format. The data is captured every day, and the size of the information is small. However, alternative data sources consist of vast volumes of data and comprise different sources. Some of the most used alternative data sources include:
1. Web scraped data
2. Credit card transitions
3. Email receipts
4. Website usage
5. Satellite images
6. Weather forecasts and others
How to obtain alternative data sources with web scraping?
Alternative data is the best way to gather information for your market research. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6% between 2020 to 2026.
Web scraping is the most preferred method to acquire alternative data. Non-traditional data lets you gain insight into the investment process.
Web scraping is an automated data collection strategy where scraping tools are used to gather data and gain deeper insights into the customer’s needs and preferences. The introduction of proxies has allowed the whole data scraping process to be automated.
Web scraping lets you scrape websites on the public domain, and you can get brilliant market research insights without having to spend too much time or money. All you need is a web scraping tool and a proxy server.
You can run the web scraping tool to collect data from several websites and store them in a format of your choice. The scraper should be run only after using a web proxy because website servers can catch any robotic activity and might ban your IP address. IP blocking would stop the web scraping software from accessing the website, and you won’t be able to gather the required data. Hence, web proxy is essential when you use scraping software for market research.
Top reasons to use proxies for market research
Now, let us learn in detail about the importance of proxies in market research.
A proxy is a software that hides your IP address, and all the browsing requests are initiated via a proxy server. The website returns the requested information to the proxy, which then forwards it to your screen. Hence, your IP address is not exposed.
Here are some of the top reasons why a proxy is needed for market research.
1- Target website server is not able to determine your IP address
A proxy server hides your IP address and uses its own IP address to request the resources for market research scraping. Besides, with the help of IP rotation, several different servers are used, each belonging to different sets of IPs so that the target website server assumes that the requests are sent by a real human. Hence, by mimicking human browsing behavior, you can carry out all your web scraping tasks without worrying about the target website servers identifying and banning your IP.
2- You can collect data swiftly with IP rotation
IP rotation is a process used by proxy servers to distribute a set of IP addresses to resources automatically and randomly. Different proxies such as datacenter proxies and residential proxies use the technique of IP rotation effectively.
IP rotation lets you collect data swiftly because both search engines and the target website server allow your program to browse and copy the contents of the site easily. They can’t detect any robotic activity or web scraping because the IP address keeps on shifting.
3- Anti-scraping tools can’t block your scraping software
Websites are smarter these days. They are swift to detect whether you are using a scraping program to copy their content. They employ anti-scraping tools to identify and block bots. Using a proxy server ensures anti-scraping tools can’t detect and block your program.
Two major types of proxies used for scraping are datacenter proxies and residential proxies.
Datacenter proxies offer you different IP addresses in bulk. Rotating datacenter proxies provide you with better protection and keeps your IP anonymous. However, since your ISP provider does not provide the IP addresses used by datacenter proxies, they are easier to detect and might get banned.
Residential proxies offer you much protection than datacenter proxies because they are real IP addresses. They are the hardest to detect, and you have much lower chances that your scraping software will get blocked by anti-scraping tools.
4- Your business stays safe from phishing attacks and malware
Carrying out scraping activity is not easy. When you run a scraping software, data retrieval happens automatically. But, have you ever wondered if the target website has malware, then it can directly harm your computer or laptop. Any sensitive information contained in your business laptop might get stolen by hackers.
When you use a proxy server, it keeps your business safe from any such malware or even phishing attacks. Since the target website can’t detect your IP addresses, they won’t be able to send malware to your laptop. The proxy server will detect and quarantine them effectively.
Conclusion
Market research is an essential business activity to understand your competitors and to identify the exact needs of your customers. Web scraping is an integral part of market research because it lets you capture data at a minimal cost. However, web scraping should only be performed with a proxy server to get complete security and peace of mind.
