Pierluigi Paganini
October 27, 2023
Since the adoption of the first digital tools and connection to the internet, the competitive business environment has revolutionized and transformed the ways modern companies conduct business operations. With the help of Information Technologies (IT), data transmission, storage, communication, and other business-related operations have been greatly enhanced to stimulate growth and progress.
Although modern businesses follow the same core principles as before, the accuracy of extracted insights, precision of executed tasks, and competitiveness of companies have never been higher. If we compare markets and their rivalries before the incorporation of the internet, their progress was much slower and resources limited while big corporations have had much better circumstances for holding onto power and crushing the opposition.
Everything was much simpler, which meant that it was near impossible to outmaneuver the big fish with the best client leads, ad space, and a solid reputation. However, competition is the main driving force for progress, and the biggest businesses have had too many advantages over up-and-coming competitors.
In 2023, even though top companies have more incentives to succeed and thrive, the playing field is a lot more even. Digitalization creates new forms of entertainment, advertisement, communication, and promotion. The effectiveness of business growth strategies is a lot more diverse: even if your competitor runs ads on the most popular websites, you can still attract the attention of potential customers and even add a personal touch to increase the likelihood of a potential interaction.
To summarize, the world of business in 2023 has never been more fair, thanks to the valuable information systems and access to knowledge on the internet. With less pushback from top companies and access to required resources, anyone can conquer the web with unique ideas and good technical skills.
That being said, with fresh opportunities comes a heavy load of technical work. Today, all top businesses depend on software assistance for gathering and analysis of market intelligence. Then, the derived insights let you monitor market trends, customer behavior, competitor pricing, and other key data collected via market research.
Successful extraction of public data from the internet can be a tricky process, especially when visited websites use protection algorithms. That is why most data collection tools use proxy servers to hide your IP address to mask your identity and change the connection’s geolocation.
In this article, we will focus on the benefits of residential proxies in the field of market intelligence. We will highlight how residential proxies, by utilizing real IP addresses from diverse locations, enable businesses to gather comprehensive and accurate data from the web. The piece will emphasize how residential proxies enhance market research, competitive analysis, and trend monitoring by ensuring reliable and anonymous data collection, ultimately contributing to well-informed decision-making.
A residential proxy is usually the most expensive type of proxy server because it ensures the highest level of anonymity. At first, all proxies follow the same principle: the transmitted data packets get a public IP address from the internet service provider (ISP) and travel to the proxy server, where the identity gets changed again. This way, the recipient will see and treat your web connection as if it originates from the proxy server IP.
In most cases, proxy providers offer two types – residential and datacenter proxy IPs. Datacenter proxies run servers in data centers, which makes them fast, and cheap, but easy to detect. Residential IPs are slow, but they use real addresses that get leased to real users, which are clients of ISPs. Because of that, all of its drawbacks become irrelevant: residential proxies are the best tool for hiding your IP if your goal is to blend in with organic user traffic, which is exactly what we need for data scrapers and other tools for gathering market intelligence.
This section highlights how residential proxies enhance key aspects of market research, empowering used tools for fast and effective results.
Market intelligence focuses on collecting the most valuable public information from competitor pages, search engines, social media networks, and other sources. However, some of these sites block internet traffic for visitors from unwanted locations or restrict individuals who send too many connection requests.
With the help of a business-oriented proxy provider, companies can take addresses from massive proxy IP fleets with millions of real identities. After a quick setup, your web traffic or its specific part will travel through a proxy server, where it obtains any identity and geolocation of your choice.
Residential proxies also create scalability opportunities for even faster data collection. If you use a different proxy server for each active tool, it will diversify your connection without attracting any attention or suspicion towards the original address. Then, you can use your web scraping scripts or special tools to visit any website to collect data without limitations.
Let’s discuss all the benefits of residential proxies in one example: let’s say you have 5 main competitors you want to keep an eye on. With quick connections to 5 or more proxy servers, you can track the most valuable data points: product pricing, discounts, the addition of new services, customer behavior trends, and other aspects in many ways. Social media platforms are a great source of real client opinions. Search engine scraping will show your visibility in relevant search results. Continuous scraping of competitor platforms ensures that not a single change or adjustment goes unnoticed.
With the help of quality services from top proxy providers, residential proxies are essential for the effective collection of market intelligence. They are easy to set up and use, allowing you to bypass restrictions and dive into market research without limitations. If you want to beat your competitors, there is no better tool for anonymous data collection, which leads to fast, accurate, and dynamic decision-making.
About Author: Anas Baig
With a passion for working on disruptive products, Anas Baig is currently working as a Product Manager at the Silicon Valley based company – Securiti.ai. He holds a degree of Computer Science from Iqra University and specializes in Information Security & Data Privacy.
Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon
(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Residential Proxies)
