How VPNs Empower Digital Marketers to Dominate Global Markets

Digital marketers are essential to the growth and visibility of businesses online. They’re responsible for pushing brands and their offers to every corner of the internet through digital marketing techniques. But for them to work, they need to dive deep into research, assessing the market, consumer behavior, preferences, and competitor offers. The insight they get from their research is important in crafting the marketing strategies they’d use in promoting any given product/service.

Thanks to the nature of their work, digital marketers often handle a ton of research and data. And to get things done, they typically need uninterrupted access to the internet and in-depth market resources. This means that they’d have to spend a lot on internet bills and paid subscriptions to premium market updates. Thankfully, using a VPN comes in handy in more ways than one.

What is a VPN?

Using a VPN is one of the basic web security strategies to safely surf the internet. By definition, a VPN or Virtual Private Network is a tool that creates a secure tunnel through which users can safely connect to the internet. It works by rerouting a user’s internet connection request through a secure remote server. Once connected to the server, the remote server masks the user device’s IP (Internet Protocol) address with its own. Thus, it gives the user a remote IP address that can bypass internet restrictions like soft paywalls and geo-locked content. 

Besides being able to bypass certain internet restrictions, VPNs are popular for being able to secure internet connections by encrypting web data. With a VPN, both the user’s data and all data coming in from the internet are encrypted against interception or spying. All your internet activities, from browsing websites to sending emails and downloading files, are hidden from third-party attempts to spy, hijack, or track you. Per Cybernews’ Surfshark VPN review, top VPNs use AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) and WireGuard for encrypting user data against spies and hackers that usually prowl public WiFis for vulnerable devices.

4 Ways VPNs Help Digital Marketers Work Effectively

It’s no news that digital marketers work with a ton of sensitive data. Apart from scraping data on consumer behavior and preference, they hold sensitive business data that must not leak. Given the nature of their work, they’re one of the major targets of cyberattacks. Hackers are always hunting for sensitive data they can steal and sell off to the highest bidder. Additionally, digging deep in research means a digital marketer needs access to premium resources, which might be hidden away or restricted. As such, here are four ways VPNs help marketers work effectively:

Enhance data privacy for anonymity and security against hacks: 

In most cases, digital marketers work remotely, and often have to connect to public WiFi to save cost on internet access. But public WiFi networks are mostly insecure and vulnerable to cyberattacks. Connecting to the internet to a vulnerable network is a free ticket to being spied on or hacked. As such, using a VPN ensures that a digital marketer is protected from malicious third-party activities on a vulnerable network. When you think about it, protecting user data isn’t just about your personal files, but also that of your clients. And that’s what a VPN helps with. 

With a VPN, digital marketers can conveniently encrypt their data against unauthorized access. Thus, they’d not just save cost on internet access, but also protect sensitive data like marketing strategies and client information. 

Remote access to competitive market insights:

When conducting market research, digital marketers often have to dig deep through generic info. However, certain insights are locked away in further result pages, and behind soft paywalls.  Where a digital marketer has no paid subscriptions for premium market data, they can rely on a VPN to bypass soft paywalls. But this isn’t always effective. Sometimes, the paywalls are impassable, and a persistent attempt for access could result in an IP block. 

Access to geo-restricted content:

Besides bypassing soft paywalls, using a VPN helps with bypassing location-based restrictions. By default, search engine result pages (SERPs) are designed to display content that corresponds with the location of a user’s IP address. And in some cases, access to certain content is restricted to certain locations. Hence, if a digital marketer’s IP location is flagged, they cannot access certain content that might be useful in market research or planning marketing campaigns. But with a VPN switching a user’s IP address with that of a remote server, digital marketers won’t have to worry about such restrictions. This is really helpful for staying up-to-date on global market trends and accessing marketing tools that aren’t available to certain locations. 

Testing targeted ads and learning from competitors through anonymous viewing:

Given the geo-restriction of content online, using a VPN positions digital marketers well for access to a wider range of content and also to run international campaigns. Think about it this way: a digital marketer could use a VPN to first learn about a target location, its users, and the market dynamics in that location. With this insight, they can effectively run targeted ads to such a location. They could even go further to test the effectiveness of a targeted ad by switching to a VPN remote server in the given location. Similarly, they could rely on a VPN to anonymously research competitors across different regions, especially if they’re trying to enter a new market. They could learn how competitors position themselves, observe their pricing, promotion, and sales strategies, and implement the same into their marketing plans. 

Conclusion

A VPN does more than just encrypt data and offer web anonymity. For a digital marketer, it means much more. Besides being a great tool for collaborating from anywhere in the world, it gives an edge in conducting market research and running marketing campaigns. And the best part is that it’s easy to use and highly affordable. While it’s not a comprehensive web security tool, it definitely helps digital marketers to achieve more.