It cannot be said often enough just how important risk management is when operating a business of any kind and any size. Although the kinds of risks a company may face are primarily dependent upon their industry, it can be safely said that no company is ever without risk of personal and/or business financial losses.

Whether your company is a relatively new startup or a business that has been in operation for several years, have you taken the time to assess the risks you are up against and measures that can be taken to mitigate potential losses? Understanding and implementing risk management measures can be the salvation of your company. Here is some of what you should know.

Begin By Defining Potential Risks

The first thing you can do in terms of risk management is to define the types of risks you may be up against. For example, a manufacturing company would probably not face the same kinds of risks as a customer-facing business. However, in the manufacturing arena, you may face risks such as defective machinery causing injuries to employees. In contrast, a retail store might face a lawsuit resulting from a customer slip and fall injury. Take the time to define the types of risks thoroughly you may be exposed to, and then you can start looking at ways to minimize those risks in the future.

Insure Against Those Risks – General Liability Vs. Professional Liability

That being said, the danger you are up against is there are financial losses in almost any scenario. As it pertains to business, the risk is generally directly related to the potential for financial compensation. Fortunately, you can insure against risks, but you first need to know if they will be covered under general liability vs. professional liability policies.

General liability covers such things as:

• Bodily injury claims.
• Property damage.
• Medical payments.
• Advertising errors.
• Reputational harm.

As for bodily injury claims, this would not refer to injuries sustained by employees. That would be covered under your state-required workers’ comp coverage. The same holds true for Med Pay insurance, which covers medical expenses incurred by clients or members of the general public.

Professional liability insurance covers the employee, director, or owner when they are held personally responsible for an injury or financial loss brought about by errors and omissions or any action of an employee that results in some kind of loss, such as clerical errors of an accounting firm causing their client to sustain significant financial losses. If you don’t already have both of these policies, the sooner you have them, the better your risk management strategy.

Plan for Those Risks as If They Are Imminent

The one last thing you can, and should always, do is to plan for your identified risks as if they will happen at some point. Have a backup plan as well. This is where you plan for the best but prepare for the worst. As cliché as that may sound, it could be the ultimate salvation of the business you built on your blood, sweat, and tears.

In the era of bits, everything has become digital. Today, your mobile phone encompasses your books to the bank; therefore, it has become an inevitable part of your life. This digital revolution, along with the internet revolution, has also affected marketing techniques. Consumers are inundated by advertisements through social alerts from their friends, families, work, and brands. This causes too much distraction, which is why many people turn off notifications from email and other social media networks; therefore, most advertisements get ignored. Social media advertisements are gradually losing people’s attention; therefore, without a doubt, they will become obsolete in the near future. Using a Text expansion tool can greatly improve this process.

So, if you want to market at once, you need to send a text message to your potential buyers. It is considered more effective as the inbox is a more personal and quiet space. Although if you to a successful text messaging marketing campaign, first of all, it should be legal, properly structured, and traceable. Texting enables businesses to do things that traditional media cannot offer since you can run a marketing campaign without investing in hardware, labor, media buys, or print. It is more penetrable and ultimately more effective.

You should keep in mind that this type of texting campaign is not suitable for everyone. You need to ensure that your ad is relevant and helpful instead of unwanted or fake. In this article, we will tell you how to add texting to your digital marketing master plan without looking fake or annoying to your potential or current customers.

How Does This Work?

It relies on a database consisting of your targeted customer’s name, mobile phone number, geographical location, customer category, and interests. All this information will enable you to track the sales process. As any marketing campaign works, you need more is more information about your customer to make it workable and effective. For maximum outcomes, your campaign must be targeted to a specific audience.

As a marketer, you should know that mobile marketing should be a part of the overall marketing strategy. You cannot run a text messaging campaign if your targeted audience has not heard even the name of your brand. There should be a proper game plan that includes different types of advertising means; then, text messaging can be proven as icing on the cake; therefore, there must be a cake first.

If you are texting your customer without a backdrop, it could backfire. As said previously, text messaging is more personal than email or other social media platforms. If your targeted person does not recognize your brand, then you will be considered an intruder who is trying to invade someone’s personal space. This is unethical as well as illegal in some scenarios. Having a well-known brand profile will make texting more efficient. Lastly, Media Marketing sources which include social media, emails, SMS, and other channels, should complement each other, making a highly effective marketing campaign.

How Should You Set Up Text Advertising?

First of all, you have to secure legal rights; as you know, texting is more personal which is why it is more likely that the may targeted person might be sensing it as an intrusion. This can lead you to a legal conflict with authorities like Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Hence, following a proper legal channel should be your priority.

After securing legal rights, make sure that you should value the customer rather than being irritating and invasive. Following legal procedures and adding value to your ads will build up trust between brand and customer. Remember, it’s all about trust.

The next step would be collecting of database. Some companies build their database of targeted audiences; others rely on third-party service providers like Twillo to send bulk messages. Also, a small business can do text marketing by sending group texts and running their campaign.

A majority of businesses work with third-party service providers such as Twillo, TrueDialog, Trumpia, and Simple Texting, because they can handle a portion of database collection, legal issues, and messaging transmission. They can also provide you with a script for bulk messaging according to your targeted audience and demographics. Using a texting program to send happy holidays messages can be a nice touch for your clients and save you time.

Furthermore, there is some sophisticated messaging marketing software developed by companies like EZ texting and Braze that offer more automation and help you to track the progress of your marketing campaign, besides data collection and transmission.  

Regulators of Message Marketing

Before starting text message marketing, you must know all the legal aspects and regulations regarding SMS marketing. Because, as mentioned, it is a sensitive process. You can check here to learn more about TCPA regulations and what they mean for your business.

Federal Communication Commission

This is the top-tier regulatory body in the United States regarding communication affairs. You must be aware of FCC guidelines before launching any campaign.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act

This is a law that gives you very specific guidelines about how can you send bulk SMS to a targeted audience. The crux of this law is you have to obtain written consent from every customer before sending them texts.

The Cellular Telecommunication Industry Association

 CITA is a trade organization that provides direction and tips on SMS marketing. But it is advisable to rely on FCC and TCPA.

If you are not from the United States, these regulators and laws are not for you. Visit your own country’s communication authority website to find out what’s legal and what’s illegal.

Dos in Message Marketing

• Get permission.
• Keep the quote short and to the point.
• Don’t bombard the customers with text rather, adopt moderation in the number of texts and frequencies.
• Your texts should be valuable for customers, not a piece of junk invading their personal space.
• Send texts at the right time. Sending texts during business hours is advisable.
• Always offer an unsubscribe option.

Final Thoughts

Text messaging marketing is a very useful tool since it is highly penetrable and effective. But in the quest to spread your business or your brand, you should not undermine the privacy of people. It is unethical as well as illegal. Always be fair with your customers; it builds trust, which would be ultimately beneficial for you and your business.   

In today’s digitalized world, the most successful businesses rely on a regular data supply to make the best decisions, protect their reputation, find new buyers and provide the best consumer experience.

This, in turn, leads to more profit for these enterprises, with many of them dominating their markets and selling beyond their physical stores.

The process known as data extraction, which involves a large scale data collection, is often required to collect the amount of data that these businesses need to succeed.

But data extraction, also known as web scraping, works in a very specific and clear-cut way. Those unfamiliar with it may find it quite challenging and almost impossible to perform regularly.

We have put together this brief article to explain what data scraping means and the step-by-step processes involved in this important business operation.

What Is Web Scraping?

Web scraping is best described as using high-end tools and machines to harvest large quantities of data from different parts of the internet.

It includes the different processes and methods used to collect data from more than one source at once and automatically too.

It often starts by crawling the different sources to determine their quality and finishes once the data has been extracted, converted, parsed and stored in any available storage unit.

The data upon harvest can be used for the following common business operation

1. Preventing Reputational Damage

A brand’s online reputation is never something that can be left to chance. The tiniest and most insignificant things, such as a little negative review, can set the tone for buyer’s boycott and a decline in revenue.

When a buyer leaves a negative review or comment on some forum or discussion platform, and the brand fails to address it immediately, other buyers and potential buyers take that as a sign to avoid such a brand.

This is called reputational damage and can only be avoided when businesses collect important data every day.

2. Understanding Market trends

Market trends are generally seen as current conditions or happenings in the market. Brands that align themselves and their production schedule more closely to the market trends often make the most gains and become more successful.

But to even understand what is currently happening in the market, there is the need to frequently collect a large amount of market data.

Using specialized browser automation tools and applying Puppeteer avoid detection tricks, you’ll make your scraping much easier and effective.

3. Monitoring Competitors 

Web scraping is also important for monitoring the competition. And monitoring the competition allows a brand to generate new ideas and detect when some rivals are selling below the minimum advertised prices (MAPs) to gain undue advantage in the market.

4. Generating Leads and New Buyers

Another important web scraping application is generating leads that would eventually turn into paying subscribers.

Leads are often collected from large corporation websites and major e-Commerce platforms and include important details such as names and contact information.

How Does Web Scraping Work?

Web scraping works by receiving the request and gathering exactly what has been asked for. The process requires the use of tools that make it faster and automated.

Once the URLs have been gathered, requests can be sent to all of them at once. The tools such as a web scraper API can then harvest data from all the sources simultaneously.

The step-by-step process is discussed in detail in the next segment.

Steps and Proxies Involved in Large-Scale Data Collection

The following are the steps taken from the start of data collection to the end:

1. Using Proxies or Scraper API

The first step when you want to commence web scraping is to set up the necessary tools. One of which is a private proxy. Private proxies allow you to stay anonymous and protected while automating the process and making it faster.

Using proxies imply that you will be secure during data collection and your information and activities will stay concealed.

It also means that the usual restrictions that prevent many people from performing this important task will be easily removed.
Additionally, using a scraper API will help you to forget about long data collection processes. These tools are easy to use and require little to no effort when gathering large volumes of public information. If you are interested to learn more about scraper APIs, check this from Oxylabs.

2. Setting Up a Digital Fingerprint

The next step is to set up the appropriate digital fingerprint. Here you need to decide what browser you will be using for data collection.

It is often recommended that you use headless browsers as they are easier to handle and manipulate.

Once all that is set, you can send out requests to the target URLs.

3. Locating HTML Elements

Once the requests reach the target servers, you will need to locate and interact with the HTML codes.

Then you will collect the necessary HTML files in the raw, unstructured state, leaving behind what you do not need.

4. Parsing HTML

Once the raw HTML has been collected, you will need to parse it back to your computer for further processing. At this stage, you also need to convert the raw data into something with structure to make it easier to read, understand, and edit.

5. Handling Pagination

Once parsing and converting are complete, the next stage involves handling all the errors that might be contained in the data.

This helps to improve the data quality making it more valid, useful and correct.

6. Extracting Content to CSV/JSON Format

Finally, once all that is done, you will need to turn everything you have at this stage into some easy-to-read format such as JSON or CSV.

And after that, you can store your extracted data in the available storage system either for immediate or later application.

Conclusion

Data collection at a large scale is serious work, but it is very important. Tools such as proxies and a scraper API will help simplify things and make the exercise less tasking.