Data Driven Marketing: Why You Need Proxies to Do It Right

Wouldn’t it be great if your customers would simply tell you what they want? Your goal is to provide it, after all. Shouldn’t you all be on the same team? Together, your team works toward common goals, and data driven marketing can help you achieve these goals even more.

Turns out that your customers do tell you what they want. But listening takes some special tools — namely web scraping applications and proxies — in addition to your drive to know what your customers are looking for. Responding to the information you glean also takes some practice and creativity.

Data driven marketing starts with collecting an almost inconceivable amount of information about your consumers through web scraping with proxies. Then you analyze, adjust, and even make predictions about the future. It’s the perfect approach for the business with just the right amount of imagination and thirst for knowledge.

What Is Data Driven Marketing?

Before delving into the necessity of proxies for it, you need a working data driven marketing definition.

You’ve probably deduced that data driven marketing is marketing that is primarily informed by the careful analysis of customer data. But what does that mean?

Your target market is made up of individuals who conduct much of their lives online. More than ever, they constantly leave information in their wake. They tell you what they like and when they like it. They tell you what they’re willing to pay, and what they’re actively seeking.

You can scoop up all this information customers leave behind when on the internet. Instead of making guesses about trends, you can follow a data driven strategy where you collect all that information and analyze the numbers for all the insights and trends you need.

Discover the keywords for which users search and the times of day they’re most likely to engage with social media. Keep tabs on the promotions offered by the competition.

In addition to publicly available data, enterprise companies also generate a ton of in-house data that they can sift through for valuable information. You can use data both to personalize ads and to craft larger campaigns.

How Data Driven Marketing Works

But what does this look like in practice? The incredible mass of data available means that there are multiple ways that you can use it. For example, you can segment your marketing campaigns with demographic data.

Different zip codes, different age and social groups, different industries — they tend to respond better to some approaches over others. The numbers can tell you what a certain segment gravitates towards in your catalogue or what buzzwords peak their interest.

One lawn-care company realized that it needed to refine digital ad campaigns by neighborhood, targeting price-sensitive customers with advertisements that spoke to them. They combined census data with previous campaign information and ran different ads to different demographics. The result: more than 200 percent increase in click-through rate.

Data isn’t always easy to decipher. Rapid changes in customer behavior have made it hard for some to keep up. But others found ways to take advantage of these shifts.

For example, during the COVID crisis, a retail company figured that beauty product sales would increase as communities emerged from lockdown. They tracked epidemiological statistics and traffic data to determine where and when to focus their efforts.

In a constantly evolving world, one of the beautiful things about data driven digital marketing is that you can intake, analyze, and then implement changes quickly. You don’t have to wait until next year or quarter to realize gains from today’s insights. Switch things up for tomorrow.

How to Learn Data Driven Marketing Analytics

Okay, you’re convinced. The numbers are speaking, and you should take action. But how do you do that?

First things first. You need to collect the data. In theory, you could sift through the tons of data available, input it into a spreadsheet, analyze it, and then craft a marketing strategy. In practice, this would take months, particularly for enterprise companies. You’d miss things, and by the time you were ready with your recommendations, your data would be dated. You can scale the process and boost your business toward your goals with various kinds of pre-built web scrapers and APIs, or you can build your own data collection tools with proxies.

Why you need a web scraper

Good thing you don’t need to do any of that.

All you need is the right Application Programming Interface (API). APIs allow programs to share information with one another. And web scraping APIs allow you to collect and sort data from websites with ease.

In fact, Scraping Robot’s API gives you the ability to collect and combine data from multiple websites, putting them into the same analysis program. You don’t need to worry about partial pictures distorting the whole.

Why you need proxies

A good web scraper isn’t enough. When websites detect bulk requests coming from a single IP address, they get irritated and block the server.

For web scraping to work as intended without a pre-built scraper, you need to use proxies. Proxies are remote IP addresses that you use in place of your own server’s IP address.

Instead of continually pestering a site with bulk data requests from your own address, spread them out over multiple addresses. Problem solved.

Different kinds of proxies come with different capabilities, but more on that in a moment.

What to do with the data

Once you’ve got it, what should you do with it? How does data driven marketing apply to small business and enterprise-level operations? There are oh-so-many ways to use web scraping with digital marketing data.

Some of these include:

• Personalize customer recommendations based on the season and their past or present purchases.
• Improve SEO with keyword-rich content.
• Segment marketing campaigns based on demographics.
• Monitor brand mentions and reviews.
• Launch multi channel initiatives that remind interested parties of their interest at the right place and time.
• Price products to sell.

What is data driven content marketing?

One of the most effective data driven strategies revolves around content marketing. Create shareable material that doesn’t directly promote your product — but does bear your brand.

You can then use this content to attract visitors to your site and increase their engagement with your brand. All you have to do is research keywords to determine how popular and how competitive they are. Let these numbers guide you in choosing topics and forms.

How to Choose Data Driven Marketing Tools

Now, it’s time to dive deeper into proxies.

There are a couple decisions you have to make when you’re choosing proxies. Do you need data center proxies or residential proxies? Do you need rotating proxies, or will static proxies do?

To decide, you have to consider what you want to accomplish. The following are differences between various types of proxies.

Rotating proxies or static proxies?

With static proxies, you purchase a set number of stable IP addresses that you can use. If you want to switch to a new address, you need to do so manually — and to a different IP address that you also possess. (But if you don’t want to do this manually, you can use proxy management systems like Proxy Pilot.)

Rotating proxies are the better bet for data driven marketing at scale. Instead of a set of dedicated servers, you get access to a whole pool of them. Even better, Rayobyte will automatically switch between them in order to give you the ultimate in web scraping capabilities.

Data center proxies or residential proxies?

Data center proxies come from, well, data centers. You typically buy them in bulk, and they don’t have a connection to your internet service provider or location. In fact, you can choose whatever location you wish. (Fun fact: Rayobyte offers more than 30 proxy locations!)

Residential proxies, on the other hand, are tied to a distinct internet service provider and residential location. They are more expensive but also less likely to get blacklisted from websites.

In addition, some sites ban all data center traffic. You can only access them through residential IP addresses.

However, it’s imperative to check into the sourcing tactics of any residential proxy provider. Many businesses acquire them through less-than-legitimate means. Look for a proxy partner that abides to the ethical standards that Rayobyte does.

The Best Data Driven Marketing Solution

Rayobyte has you covered no matter what your needs are. Try our C-class data center proxies. You can purchase them at incredibly competitive prices and discounts. Moreover, they provide enough diversity for most enterprise-level corporations to get around data restrictions.

Or, invest in the highest quality data — with the least restrictions and the most speed — with our rotating residential proxies. Enterprise clients willing to commit to our ethical standards and vetting practices may qualify to become a beta tester. Beta testers will have the opportunity to try our ethically sourced, residential proxies for unbelievably low prices.

Get started with your proxies and web scraper today. This way, you can get on the same page as your customers.

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