Pros and Cons of VPNs for Business Mobile Marketing
Jacob Davis, data analyst and content strategist at Revuze, examines the pros and cons of using a VPN in mobile marketing campaigns.
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) play an important role in personal use and business activities. Users can choose a paid or a Free VPN for their needs due to the overwhelming number of options.
Most paid VPNs have additional or premium features. As a result, companies prefer them over free options. Marketing is an important business activity that decides the future of a business organization.
Because marketing data is a vital form of business data, individuals and businesses do their best to secure it. Both entities rely primarily on VPNs for this purpose.
But just like other things, VPNs also have their share of merits and demerits. Throwing both sides of the coin is necessary for a balanced opinion. This article will cover the role of VPNs in mobile marketing, as well as the pros and cons of using them in mobile marketing.
What is mobile marketing?
Since its inception, marketing has evolved from time to time as a basic business concept. Digital marketing is all the rage these days. From cost savings to better lead generation, it beats the traditional approach to marketing on multiple fronts. Mobile marketing is a common form of digital marketing.
Simply put, mobile marketing is a digital marketing strategy in which a digital marketer targets mobile device users. In this context, they develop and implement a strategy to collect commercial leads from smartphone users. These include users of tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices.
Being portable, mobile devices can be carried anywhere with ease. Due to this feature, they are popular among users these days. The majority of them access the Internet on their mobile phones. They use the latter to perform a long list of tasks ranging from reading emails to browsing different sites.
The growing number of smartphone users translates into acquiring more business leads and converting them into sales. Digital marketers use effective research-based mobile marketing strategies to achieve this goal.
What is the role of a VPN in mobile marketing?
There is no doubt that smartphone technology has evolved over the past few decades. Also, there has been a corresponding increase in the number of users using it. But often, new technologies also bring certain challenges regarding security and other aspects. Business VPNs and other paid VPNs play a central role in mobile marketing campaigns by addressing these challenges.
VPNs create a secure tunnel for data transmission through their secure servers. When a device connects to a VPN, outgoing data from the first goes through a secure tunnel to reach one of the second’s secure servers.
Then the VPN server redirects the data obtained from the device to the intended server. Instead of seeing the IP address of the connected device, the intended server trackers see the IP address of the VPN server in question.
In addition to securing the connected device, it also protects user privacy and anonymity. Also, it allows them to bypass geo-restrictions that prevent access to content from certain websites and platforms in a specific region. For example, over 40% of new US websites are blocked in Europe.
Most virtual private networks are custom designed to circumvent geographical restrictions due to licensing agreements and other factors. For these reasons, mobile users install VPNs on their devices. Just as iPhone users install an iPhone VPN, those with Android smartphones install a compatible VPN service.
These features are also useful for mobile marketers, although in different ways. Although VPNs benefit them, they also have drawbacks. Read on to learn more about the pros and cons of using a VPN in mobile marketing.
VPN-Based Mobile Marketing: Pros and Cons
Mobile marketing is basically a form of digital marketing that involves mobile devices and their users. As such, overall, the role of a VPN resembles that of digital marketing.
Here are the pros and cons of relying on VPNs for mobile marketing.
Benefits
- Privacy protection: Websites have trackers that collect information about visitors. VPNs help digital marketers bypass data collection by trackers. In this way, they help protect the privacy of mobile marketers.
- Data security: The security of marketing data is necessary for business purposes. VPNs prevent unauthorized access to data by third parties or cybercriminals.
- Ability to bypass firewalls: VPNs make firewalls appear to be on remote servers by replacing device IP addresses with their server IP addresses. Just like other users, this feature also allows mobile marketers to bypass firewalls.
- Ability to change IP addresses: Digital marketers running global mobile marketing campaigns need to overcome geo-restrictions to engage with their prospects. VPNs provide them with this functionality through many servers.
The inconvenients
- Risks: Some VPNs have a policy of using data logs and selling them to third parties. The way the definition of marketing changes these days can be detrimental to marketers.
- Slow internet speed: Some VPNs also slow down internet speeds, which can impact the productivity of digital marketers.
- Subscription fees : Digital marketers operate with a budget in mind. Expensive subscription fees for using a paid VPN service can put a strain on a digital marketer’s finances.
Final Thoughts
The above shows that using VPNs in marketing has both advantages and disadvantages. Although there are different ways to benefit from VPNs in marketing, there are also disadvantages. The major downside of using a VPN for this purpose is slow internet speeds which can slow down a marketer. But you can overcome it by choosing a VPN that offers stable internet speed.
