wiki/knowledge/integrations/web-scraper-custom-tool.md · 475 words · 2026-04-05

Custom Web Scraper — Competitive Analysis Tool

Overview

Mark built a custom web scraper capable of extracting structured data from any website, including those that deploy anti-scraping protections. The tool is part of a broader shift toward an API-first, automation-heavy workflow that also encompasses HubSpot and Salesforce integrations.

This tool enables competitive intelligence gathering at scale — pulling pricing, product catalogs, and other structured data from competitor sites into a usable database format — without manual copy-paste work.

Capabilities

Primary Use Cases

Use Case Example
Competitor pricing analysis Scrape a SaaS competitor's pricing page and track changes over time
Market mapping Pull all businesses of a given type in a target geography via Google Places API
Product catalog extraction Extract a competitor's full product/SKU list into a structured database

The scraper is part of a broader tooling philosophy Mark described in the [1]:

"Everything I'm doing now in HubSpot, I'm doing through the API, and I'm not doing anything on the front end anymore. I'm finding that I can get a lot more done a lot faster, and also things that I could never have even done before."

This API-first approach applies across:
- HubSpot — automations and data operations previously requiring hours of UI work are now scripted
- Salesforce — fixes and updates that would have required specialist contractors are handled via API calls
- Web scraping — data extraction that previously required manual research or paid third-party tools

The reported productivity gain is approximately 3× output per working day compared to six months prior.

Limitations & Considerations

Sources

  1. 2026 04 05 Asymmetric Marketing Call|April 2026 Marketing Call
  2. Hubspot Api Workflows|Hubspot Api First Workflows
  3. Salesforce Api Workflows|Salesforce Api Workflows
  4. Pomelli Google Labs|Pomelli — Google Labs Campaign Image Tool
  5. 2026 04 05 Asymmetric Marketing Call|Asymmetric Marketing Call — Website Rebuild & Campaign Status