The knowledge of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and the ability to work with them is becoming essential for the data-driven marketers of today. To keep up with the increasing competition, marketers not only need to know what APIs are, but also integrate them with their content strategy.
APIs may seem very complicated and scary, but when you know the basics, you will find it easier to work with them.
What are APIs?
In simple terms, API or Application Programming Interface is similar to an information middleman. It allows an application to extract information from other software and use that information in its application. Essentially, APIs let your product or service communicate with other products or services without knowing how they are implemented.
A good example of API is Facebook. If you like to read news articles on your laptop, you will notice that there is a sidebar with social media icons. By clicking on the Facebook icon, you can immediately share the news article to your Facebook feed. This happens through the Facebook API.
API for data retrieval
Data collection is perhaps one of the most popular use cases of APIs. An API requests information by asking the server for a particular web resource, just like a URL processes a request. Some APIs work by using JavaScript to gather data. Creating and hosting an API, such as Flask API, can also ease your data gathering process.
Data collection with APIs is something that every marketer needs to learn. It has various benefits, including:
Lead generation
Data gathering can help with lead generation by identifying “where” the audience is for your product. For instance, if you are selling sports cars, you need to find car enthusiasts. If you want to sell fitness equipment, you need to find people who like to work out. APIs can use web data integration and help you find that information quickly.
Market research
It can also be a powerful tool for market research helping you stay abreast of all the latest trends in your industry. It tells you what kind of content you should be creating for your audience. Market research can also let you know what products are popular at any given time, what problems your consumers are facing, and where the big opportunities lie.
Doing market research manually can be extremely time-consuming. However, data extraction can automate the process, giving you a feed of what your competitors are doing.
SEO
Web data collection can also be extremely important for SEO. If you need to create a high-ranking website on search engine result pages, you need to know what the right keywords are. Data extraction can help you identify the keywords which are generating the most traffic for your website as well as for your competitors.
Understand demographics
Every marketer should know that if you want to sell something, you need to be aware of the demographics of the area you are targeting. Demographics include things like age, gender, marital status, education, employment status, and more. If you deal with luxury cars, trying to sell in a low economic area is not going to help. Data gathering can give you all the demographic information of the area that you are trying to sell in.
Avoid marketing disasters
All marketers work hard to avoid a marketing or PR disaster. Data collection can prove invaluable here as it can help you track the performance of a PR campaign and the response of the community to it. By doing so, you can avoid creating content that generates a negative outcome for your business.
Conclusion
Marketers can use data collection using APIs to gather valuable information about the market or industry. As marketing becomes more data-driven, it is important for marketers to leverage the power of data.
About the Author
Christoph is a code-loving father of two beautiful children. He is a full-stack developer and a committed team member at Zenscrape.com – a subsidiary of saas.industries. When he isn’t building software, Christoph can be found spending time with his family or training for his next marathon.
