Web scraping
Information is probably the most valuable asset a business can have. However, companies need data to gain that information. The internet is cluttered with millions of data sets, but unfortunately, not all of it is available and open for download. That’s when web scraping comes in. It is the ultimate way to collect any internet data that isn’t open and available for download. Once unstructured data is collected through web scraping, it can be analyzed to get valuable insights. Here are a few ways that businesses can gain from ethical web scraping.
Leads Generation
The collection of up-to-date and correct information is the most fundamental requirement for generating leads. Most data on the internet has no definite structure. You are probably aware of which niche and industry your target audiences belong to. That way, you can develop a web scraping tool, and use it to scrap forums, community portals, competitors’ social accounts, and other online platforms to know who is following your brand. With that, you can engage potential customers and understand what they are saying about your brand. With a web data extraction tool, businesses can scrap reviews, build databases, acquire leads, and export their data to a database or CRM. Recruiters can use web scraping to know what talent their rivals are looking to recruit.
Brand Monitoring
Brands often carry a significant worth. That’s why it is crucial to keep monitoring your social networking platforms and other channels. It is crucial to know what is being said about your customer service, products, brand, and anything related to your business. Data scraping can help brands collect piles of data sets from the internet and use them to measure, monitor, and track their success. In short, web scraping enables a brand to analyze its blog posts and tweets, draw a comparison of its competitors, and distill its unstructured data sets to a list of actionable insights.
Sentiments Analysis
Online reviews are the most reliable repository of customer opinions. Thousands of users often post their experience with services and products on online review sites. Online reviews are publicly available, and brands can scrap them to gain insights into potential opportunities, competitors, and trends. Natural language processing, along with web scraping, can help online traders to know how customers are reacting to their services and products.
Competitive Analysis
Research claims that products and services that are sold online could be 100 times more than the human population. Data scraping can help have real-time access to this data in either a database or a spreadsheet. Data-driven pricing strategies are a sure way to influence the customer buying decision. Businesses can use data scraping tools to set their prices a little lower than the market base, a strategy that can help attract price-sensitive clients and optimize revenue. Data plays a critical role in the success of virtually any business.
Finding Important Data
Most top companies often extract data from different channels such as social media and use it to set strategies to counter their competitors. Data can include email addresses, product details, information about competitors, and web visitor statistics. As an entrepreneur, you may need different tools to scrape or extract this data from various sources. For example, you may need a tool to extract email addresses of other companies before launching an email marketing campaign.
Track Search Engine Results
Whether you are a newbie or an established entrepreneur, you’ve probably heard of the term SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a marketing strategy aimed at increasing traffic to a website and converting visitors to potential buyers. Web scraping tools can help marketers collect heaps of data that can help them get an idea of what their target audiences are up to. With this data, markets can draw inferences and come up with strategies that suit their target market.
Benefits of Web Scraping
Web scraping has, over time, become essential for virtually any for-profit business as it fuels sales. After all, no for-profit enterprise can sustain itself without making a profit. Entrepreneurs no longer focus on building and cleaning databases containing competition and customer information; instead, they work towards turning those leads to customers. Web scraping, if executed correctly, helps extract data that can equip a business with everything needed to take optimum marketing and financial decisions. Companies turn to the internet whenever they need information. Though data on the internet could be readily available, most of it is unstructured and may not be downloadable. Fortunately, data scraping tools can make it easier to extract raw data on the internet and analyze it to get actionable insights.
