The mantra that “data is the new oil” is littered on blogs, social media posts, and thought leader publications like The Economist. The business world today is so dependent on Big Data insights that data has become the frontier in business. Businesses are monetizing it for a living while others use it to stay ahead of the curve.
Data is so valuable that a Californian governor has pushed Big Data beneficiaries such as Google and Facebook to pay back the platform’s users for their data. As valuable as data is, it is worthless to many businesses whose ability to access and refine it is limited.
Any business without a robust data collection tool, cannot harvest, download, or analyze data to reveal its value to a business. Consequently, while oil has a clear and frictionless mine-to-market channel globally, much of the data’s worth remains buried and unrefined. Fortunately, data mining tools can increase access to the benefits of Big Data.
How businesses collect data
Some of the most critical features of a data collection tool are data collection bots and artificial intelligence. When combined, both features can capture data and analyze it for real-time business insights. Businesses can utilize data analysis recommendations to understand their customers more and to support decision-making.
Businesses collect data that spans predictive analytics, to consumer behavior regularly, analyzing it, and storing it in their vast databases. Consumer data is collected either directly from the consumer or by tracking the consumer’s digital footprint. Your business can also scrape data from other online databases rather than your own.
What is web scraping?
A web scraper is an automated data collection tool, which utilizes coded bots and AI to crawl, mine, and download vast amounts from web platforms. These data collection tools processes mirror that of the traditional copy and paste function. Bots and AI bring in the benefits of accuracy, speed, agility, and efficiency.
The web scraper can load and extract data from massive web pages at a simple click of a button and save it in useful formats such as as.CSV. You can purchase a custom-built data-scraping tool or utilize a generic tool from the internet. Web scraping tools need proxy servers to stay under the radar during data harvesting.
While the process is legal, many businesses are designed to resist scraping. Their anti-scraping bots will block or ban the IP address of a computer-performing web scraping hindering data collection. Fortunately, proxy servers can hide the IP address of a scraping tool.
Web scraping has turned into a compulsion for businesses. If you want to carry out market research, you need data. If you want to devise your sales strategy, you need data. You can use a PHP website scraper. If you want to generate leads for your business, you need data.
Proxy servers are intermediaries that stand between a browser and the internet. Proxies will hide the IP address of your computer by channeling all data to and from your computer through its server. Consequently, any website tracking or analyzing your actions on the web will view the proxy’s IP address instead of your computers. Web scraping tools use rotating pools of residential proxies to mimic the behavior of a website’s human user to prevent detection.
How a data collection tool can help your business
Use data to improve customer experience
Customer experience has become one of the most crucial drivers for business growth.
Here’s why It is so beneficial for your company:
Businesses that earn at least $1 billion in revenue can add to it $700 million more in three years if they invest in offering their customers a topnotch customer experience.
Data also shows that 86% of all online buyers are willing to pay a premium for a fantastic customer experience. Your business can harvest consumer data to meet the demands and expectations of the buyer. By accessing and analyzing data sourced from feedback, social media platforms, and reviews, you can modify your services, goods, and digital presence to suit the needs of the shopper.
Refine your marketing strategy
Your marketing department can create a stellar marketing strategy. Still, they cannot optimize it without post-marketing data insights and feedback. Data can highlight the public’s response to marketing campaigns.
Additionally, the post-marketing data can help personalize the marketing strategy to suit different customer personas. Use it to map the buyer’s journey through your website to other online and social media platforms. This process allows customer segmentation, which ensures that you only market goods or services to customers with a high chance of a conversion.
Sell it
A useful data collection tool can build a profit-making venture. There are businesses or data brokers that subsist by purely selling data to interested customers. Selling analyzed data is a fantastic source of revenue as more businesses begin to embrace its value.
Conclusion
The business applications of Big Data mining and analytics are endless. Data collection tools are becoming more sophisticated and more efficient, enabling efficiency in data capture and contextualization. Access a robust data collection tool to stay relevant, effective, and competitive in the market. Insight, not just data, is king.
