In the last decade, we have felt first-hand the strong trend of digitalization both in general and in the case of the entrepreneurial environment in our country. Numerous reports and statistics have confirmed this subjective observation. They showed an increase in the internet adoption rate in Romania, an increased consumer interest in brands in the digital environment, an increase in the number of online orders and an increasing use of platforms by domestic companies.
In order to confirm these existing figures in the market and to determine the impact of companies’ interaction with online, we conducted the study “The importance of the online environment for the development of companies in Romania” between August and December 2023, in collaboration with the Center for Research in Communication and Social Innovation (CoRe) of Babeș-Bolyai University (UBB), BT MIC, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). It was attended by 1285 entrepreneurs and managers from all Romanian counties, from different sectors of activity and with turnovers that start from the annual threshold of less than 300,000 lei and reach over 3,000,000 lei.
His results were as intuitive as they were surprising. If we expected the majority of respondents to own a website for their business, we did not think that a majority of them, 57% to be precise, would say that they develop a marketing strategy for one or more years. In many cases, planning online marketing actions is not a priority for companies, the observation applying even to companies that carry out such actions. Entrepreneurs often enter the digital environment without a clear strategy, based on only a few vaguely defined objectives. Defining a strategy before implementing the actual actions is a positive aspect.
However, the results obtained show us that businesses in our country have difficulties in implementing the strategies built. Thus, only 23% of respondents manage to apply at least half of their annual marketing strategy. The causes of the impasses encountered in the implementation can be multiple. They start from the faulty setting of objectives, continue with the erroneous allocation of budgets and end up with insufficient knowledge about online marketing.
Knowing the problem, the question that arises at this point is, of course, how can it be solved? Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. However, companies can take certain steps to make it easier to overcome these obstacles. These include internal training, redefining objectives based on a SMART model or working with an agency to develop an online marketing strategy that is easy both in terms of implementation and achieving the desired results.
Even if Romanian companies have problems in applying their marketing strategy, they continue to use multiple online communication channels in their business activity. The most popular of these are Social Media platforms. Thus, almost 75% of respondents say they own a Facebook page, 46% an Instagram page and 30% communicate on LinkedIn. Moreover, about a quarter of the companies participating in the study invest in paid campaigns, both at the level of Facebook and Google.
Online presence is important for companies in Romania. But is it profitable? The results of the study show us that, from the perspective of the companies participating in it, there are some channels that have a higher efficiency for their business activities. They are mainly Social Media and your own website. The causes of the perception of the high profitability of these two channels are multiple, among them : their increased use, ease of content creation and their location at the center of online communication. On the other hand, PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns are not perceived as being profitable by participating companies, although there are numerous studies in the market that demonstrate their benefits. From our point of view, this is another consequence of the difficulty of implementation, as paid campaigns require a rich knowledge base, careful monitoring and continuous adjustment.
Next, we set out to find out what is the impact of online on the turnover of companies in our country. The results of the study show that almost half of the respondents generate between 1% and 15% of their turnover from this environment. On the other hand, for more than 20% of them, digital produces more than half of the total turnover.
In conclusion, online marketing actions can influence the evolution of a business, increasing its turnover and profitability. The uncertainty does not concern the viability of digital, but the ways to implement the marketing strategy. Improvements at this level can occur both from the inside, through an internal education of the staff who develop and apply online marketing actions, and from the outside, through a collaboration with an experienced marketing agency, capable of using the knowledge base of specialists to build an efficient planning, which intelligently uses the company’s budgets and brings visible results.
