By Nazir Daud of CityLocal: Many marketing opportunities are missed by companies relying too much on the internet, and specific keywords, in a blinkered attempt to become involved in the 'new technology'.

However, it is very easy to miss out through a lack of knowledge of the limitations of online marketing.

Any business will see marketing as a critical part of making sure that the company is meeting its objectives, and more importantly, meeting with customers' needs and expectations. However, many business owners see marketing as something necessary only at the launch of the business, or when launching new products or services.

Ongoing marketing

Although it does serve a crucial purpose at these times, there can be no doubt that ongoing marketing will prove valuable. It is critical that business owners have a good, solid understanding of how the business is perceived, and how it is managing to meet with customer demand.

There are many ways in which marketing can be employed, and this may well depend on the way in which your company does business. For instance, if you are based entirely online, then you may well use Google analytical data to identify keywords being used to drive customers to your site, discover what people are looking for, what your competitors are pitching their sites on, and how much they're bidding for the important keywords. This will also help you to establish or identify niche markets.

Most people think of marketing as identifying customer satisfaction and need, but in fact it's a great deal more than this, with careful identification and analysis of your rivals an important element. Marketing will also help you to identify who your main customers or clients are, as well as how they reach you. This will help you to identify who you're failing to miss, and what advertising or promotions are working well, allowing you to adapt and develop the business to attract more customers and make more efficient use of your promotional budget.

Today there are more marketing tools than ever before, so many that it can often become rather confusing knowing where to start. With many hundreds of companies and organisations online touting for business as far as offering people like you an inside view of how the marketing world works, it can almost seem an impossible task. Certainly it is true that there are many statistics online, and many ways of interpreting them, statistics don't tell the whole story.

It will be important to use and analyse those statistics, but one of the crucial truths often left out by these companies who are trying to sell you their system of analysis is that these statistics only reveal a small proportion of the truth. Not everyone who is after your business, product or service will use Google, not everyone looking for services you can provide will use the same keywords, not everyone you're trying to reach will even use the internet as their main source of information.

Blinkered

These statistics will reveal a great deal about the markets you may be reaching, and those that you're not, but only within the sum total of those potential markets that use the internet. All too often businesses make the mistake of becoming almost blinkered, and forgetting the real world still exists, and there really are people who search for, and find, information about products and businesses in ways which have proved successful for many, many years.

It's just a case of taking those blinkers off, realising that there are a whole range of ways in which it is still very possible to reach new audiences and grow your business without resorting to the theoretical keyword warfare which exists online.

To a large extent, your marketing will reveal a great deal more about these hidden legions of potential customers offline than they will online, and once you have identified this gap, you can start to consider ways in which to capitalise on it. These are exciting times, and most people will tell you, but not necessarily because of the internet.

As a result of internet technology becoming the main crutch upon which so many of your rivals will be supporting themselves, through their marketing and analysis, promotions and publicity, it is now more possible than ever before to find niche markets and reach potential customers using novel methods which do not rely on the internet. To a very great extent people are tending to pay more attention to offline advertising than banners adverts, web adverts, emails and such like.

Companies taking the time and trouble to do more than simply hit a few buttons on a keyboard or outsource to a graphics company to draw a pretty, flash banner carry more weight in the minds of the average consumer. Being aware of this and turning part of your marketing strategy towards this could well reveal a great deal of potential for the growth of your business. All you have to do, once the blinkers are off, is decide how you're going to market your product and service in a way which will stand out, be recognised, and reach those clients through real world means.

The writer is the founder of CityLocal, the franchise opportunity for people who want to work from home and be their own boss