4 Proxy Use Cases and Benefits in Startups: The Ultimate Guide

The Internet changed everything for all of us and the new generation of entrepreneurs now have better tools and faster means than ever to launch services, products, and solutions in a space ready to receive customers from all over the world.

As companies of all sizes worked for many years to take advantage of proxies to attract the right type of content from the online space, we can clearly see that businesses interested in developing their marketing & sales strategies obtained some of the best results over the years.

Could an emerging startup enjoy the benefits a proxy provider can deliver to companies that want to grow online?

Why would a startup need proxies?

A startup - as much as an established company - requires proxies because the new enterprise needs easy access and privacy when looking to withdraw business-related data from online sources.

And if major companies have to protect the private details which could reveal their intentions when accessing geo-restricted content, the same applies to emerging startups that are ‘hungry’ to grow their business projects by taking advantage of valuable data from various websites.

Startups have numerous reasons to get involved in data extraction projects, with some of the main areas of interest ranging from marketing campaigns and obtaining leads to web and software development.

At the end of the day, the most important reason for new companies to use proxies is to find relevant, updated, and useful information that can help them reach their business goals.

Though there are numerous factors that influence very much the business decisions a company can take when deciding to use proxies, most of the time startups that just launched their products in the market are very much interested in:

• Obtain valuable content for the business
• Attract customers by increasing the online visibility with SEO
• Let the world know about the company on social media
• Keep track of competitors

4 Proxy Use Cases For Startups

1. Obtain valuable content for the business

Startups that enter the market have many requirements and needs, and they must move fast if they want to enjoy the early stages of success.

First of all, a new firm can use proxies to access websites of interest to extract valuable data for its marketing team. Since some of these sites restrict the audience access to a limited number of countries, a residential set of proxies are more than useful for a startup that requires fast and easy reach to the desired content.

At the same time, startups that need significant data for business growth may need to scrape some websites for longer periods of time, which could result in a temporary or permanent restriction of access.

So, this is another great opportunity for proxies to save the day by enabling users to change their genuine IP address(es) at a predetermined period of time and allowing them to scrape without worries.

Further on, a startup can benefit from proxies when gathering the necessary intelligence to assist the sales department with insights on potential leads. The collected data, if it’s organized into a CRM may offer the emerging company a valuable opportunity to improve the relationships they establish with the present and future customers.

Finally, depending on the business model, a startup may require online data to set up and deliver its own solutions and services.

For instance, we may have a web-based travel startup offering accommodation options or flights to customers from multiple areas of the world.

To put together all the available tourist options, the web-based startup needs to obtain the necessary information from a variety of websites that have installed different defense mechanisms raising some potential barriers to those looking to extract online data.

To overcome limitations, the web-based startup will simply have to appeal to high-quality residential proxies that can access any challenging websites.

2. Attract customers by increasing the online visibility with SEO

If you just start your business and you’re focused to serve customers from the online space, you will definitely have to design and improve your website.

From a customer’s perspective, the website is your home and the place where users come to find out about the new business and - more than anything - about solutions that can improve their lives.

For these reasons, and depending on the market you want to access, you will have to understand first who your competitors are and how they present themselves to customers. All this data will prove to be very useful when working to create a great website that you can be proud of.

Now, we won’t talk here about what it takes to set up a website and what theme you should choose as all these details are up to you. 

But we can tell you that proxies can prove to be a good solution for your business if you want to check your competitors’ websites and catch a glimpse of their content plans and SEO approach.

For instance, as a startup company, you can check competitors’ websites and access the best articles so that you may know how to design and improve your content plan. This will be very useful when deciding to set up a ‘Blog’ section for your site.

To do just that, use some reliable proxies from a serious company to obtain a precious insight into your competitors’ best pieces of content.

The proxies can offer not only a blog section’s main titles but also links, keywords, and meta descriptions so - by taking a look at all these details - you may have an idea of the SEO plan.

How else would you know your position in the market if not by looking at your competitors?

Of course, we are not advising you to ‘borrow’ any content from your competitors’ websites. We are simply suggesting that catching a glimpse of their content plans is not a bad idea.

As soon as you have an idea of your competitors’ SEO approach, you can work on your own content plan and choose the keywords and titles for the blog articles you want to publish in order to enjoy a growing number of visitors and increase your visibility in the online environment.

3. Let the world know about the company on social media

You may have created the website and launched your products, but have you spent time working on your social media strategy?

This strategy should consist of a content creation plan that would be linked to your social media accounts helping you build awareness of your business and services.

Start your social media adventure by creating a business social media account for reaching out to your customers. Is a single social media account not enough for your startup?

Well, with proxies you can simply create more than one social media account to promote your solutions to more people without getting blocked for creating more accounts. Thus, with proxies at your disposal, you can talk to a greater number of people and attract more customers.

Further on, if you can connect your social media account to a residential proxy server, you can choose to reside in any country of choice serving local customers while avoiding any geo-restrictions that would interfere with your marketing efforts.

Startups enjoy the benefits of proxies as they offer more freedom to social media managers to create diversified campaigns and address customers from different corners of the world as local businesses.

4. Keep track of competitors

Your startup just entered the market, but that doesn’t mean that your competitors are not already there working on new products, setting up temporary promotional prices, or changing the marketing strategies to attract new clients and increase revenues.

Wouldn’t you want to use proxies to hide your real IP address and scrape as much information as you like from your competitors?

With proxies at work, you can keep a close eye on your competitors’ websites to follow the latest changes in the prices and the way they envisioned and followed through with their marketing strategy.

It is reasonable to observe your more successful competitors and learn from them, but you shouldn’t blindly follow in their footsteps.

Furthermore, the same proxies can be used to track more competitors if we imagine a startup company that needs to establish the prices for its entire line of products. A new company can choose to extract data from more than one competitor and scrape all price-related information before making the right decisions.

At the same time, as we already mentioned, you can use the same proxies to keep up with your competitors’ SEO efforts and website content to have an idea of how they understand to attract visitors via the popular search engines.

Conclusion

Startups as much as any other companies that need to grow in the online space must rely on high-quality business data that can make a difference in today’s ever-growing competitive landscape.

And this type of information can only be obtained via some powerful set of proxy server solutions that can open doors to limited-access content from all over the world.

Though fast datacenter proxies can prove to be good enough for most scraping jobs, companies that require valuable data, complete access, and total privacy to the targeted websites should consider the residential proxies delivered by a reliable provider.

Though all types of companies should use proxies to obtain the necessary data for business goals, startups are some of the most data-demanding business operations in the online sphere.

If we take a closer look, it’s not that difficult to understand why. Startups need fast access to the markets of interest if they want to stand any chance of surviving as they face a competitive space where only the strongest survive.

Further on, since a startup is usually facing multiple competitors at the same time, the new company is always trying to remain one step ahead of the competition by launching sooner and delivering better products.

But great products and sound business plans are nothing without market insights as a new player must make sure its brand is recognized and appreciated in the industry.

How can they do that unless they improve their online presence via SEO and social media?

In addition, a startup must keep a close eye not only on the major players in their field of expertise but also on other emerging companies that could threaten its position by delivering faster and providing a better communication plan.

Finally, a startup can always take advantage of proxies to find the best leads for its sales team or to obtain relevant content for marketing purposes.

The digital world enabled the creation of a new class of entrepreneurs who can take innovative business ideas and turn them into successful startups in the online space. And proxies are here to help.