Before starting Netvantage Marketing [http://netvantagemarketing.com/] I had the opportunity to work withsome large corporations as well as some very small companies. I headed a few market research projects aimed at better understanding internal capabilities and market perceptions. These findings were readily shared and decisions were made based around them in a pretty fluid manner.At the smaller companies I've worked with, I can't imagine even proposing this approach. In a smaller environment, the focus is on operations and revenue, as it should be. I know first hand the difficulties of running a small business. Start talking market research to a company with 15 to 50 employees and the likely response you'll get is, "That would be great, but we don't have the time or money."But everyone wants to know their customers better, and your website can be just the means to provide you with that information. While your site may not able to ask direct questions (though, by using a solution such as that offered at 4q.iperceptions.com you certainly could), your visitors' actions may speak louder than their words. A perfect example of this is the referrer information, available in nearly all basic server statistics packages provided by your web host. Having done my fair share of traditional market research in the past, I can tell you that questions on awareness and discovery are often the least reliable. This is the "How did you learn about us?" question so often seen in surveys. Unfortunately, when using surveys or focus groups ex post facto, few people truly remember how they come across new things. Your referrer information, however, will not have memory lapses. This information can tell you whether people are finding you through Google (are they searching for your name, or your products or services?), typing in your URL directly, or through other referring sites or ad campaigns. With this information in hand, you can see how many people are already aware of your site, or conversely how many people are finding you by seeking out your products and services.If people are only finding your site by directly accessing your URL or searching for your name, this shows that there is an audience that is aware of you and your site, but it also may show that you have poor positioning in search engines for your products or services. In a perfect world, those customers who know your name will be finding you and those who are completely unaware, but want your product or service will find you as well. Taking a quick glance at this each month and recording the trends in referrer information can tell you this and give you direction on how to refine your online marketing strategy. Once you get comfortable using your web statistics, this should only take you a few minutes to review each month. In these few minutes you can gain important marketing insights without creating one survey question or, even better, spending one cent.This will be the first in a series of articles discussing how the average small business can take advantage of their existing site statistics in their online marketing efforts.The author of this article is a managing partner of Netvantage Marketing, a Michigan Internet marketing firm focusing on search engine marketing and webanalytics.