If you are starting your own business or you’ve accepted a job as a salesperson for a company, acquiring clients will be a top priority. Locating leads and developing a prospect base is no small task. But there is a way to save time and energy: scraping websites. By using a web scraping API, you can make a request to find names and coordinates of prospects on sites relating to your industry. Here is an overview of how to use this technique.
What is scraping used for?
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of scraping, you might be wondering how it can be useful. The answer is simple: you can use it to extract any information from a website. For example, if there’s an association that represents many members of your industry and their contact details are listed on their website, you can easily gather all that information at once by scraping the URLs where it’s located. This saves you the time and effort of manually finding and copying each piece of data individually. You can then add this data to your CRM as prospects.
How does it work?
By utilizing coding, it is possible to extract data from a website. A site like ZenRows lets you choose between a variety of languages to do so. Through their services, you have the possibility to choose Python, Java and c# web scraping to name only a few of the languages made available to that purpose. As long as you are knowledgable in one of the coding languages, you can scrape websites by using a web scraping API (Application Programming Interface). To ease the process, tutorials are provided on ZenRows website to help answer issues that you may face. Afterwards, all that is left is to identify the websites containing the desired information.
What are the Obstacles of Scraping?
First, you should know that scraping is a legal practice. In fact, there are even websites that provide web scraping APIs to assist in gathering information from their pages. However, not all websites allow scraping. Some explicitly state that the information on their site is intended for human use only and not for bots. It is essential to respect these guidelines in order to comply with the terms and conditions set by the website owners. It should also be noted that collecting personal data from sites like Facebook is strictly prohibited.
Web-scraping can also cause the targeted website to crash if too many requests are made, so it’s important to use it sparingly. In other words, it’s better to spread out your requests and come back to the site on different days rather than sending too many at once. Some websites have restrictions and may ban your IP address if they detect an excessive number of requests, which could prevent you from scraping their site in the future. Dealing with AJAX websites can be challenging, but using Selenium can help. This headless browser mimics human behavior, making it difficult for even powerful web application firewalls like Cloudflare to detect. It’s also important to note that a web-scraping algorithm is only effective as long as the website’s structure remains unchanged.
What to look for when Scraping the Web for Prospects?
As we mentioned earlier, there is nothing more suitable in you research for leads than to scrape the website of an association representing your industry, if the name and contact details of their members can be found on it. But it shouldn’t be your only target. People who start in sales often forget that there are other industries connected to theirs in various ways. In truth, it is important to consider other industries that may have a connection to yours, such as those who buy or sell from it. Additionally, trade shows and exhibition websites can be a goldmine for information, often listing attendees, speakers, and companies with booths at the event.
Conclusion
To create a database of sales prospects, scraping websites is without a doubt the fastest solution. Make sure you respect the rules and use the best tools for the job, like Selenium. Finally, remember to place your focus on the websites where many contact details can be found at once.