More Greek firms pay to advertise online than in most of the EU. Fewer of them have a website for those ads to send people to.
What Eurostat counted
All figures cover enterprises with 10 to 249 persons employed and compare Greece with the EU average. They come from the Eurostat survey on ICT usage in enterprises.
- 43.8% of Greek firms paid to advertise on the internet in 2024, against 32.0% across the EU. Greece ranked fourth of the 19 member states with published data. In 2023 the Greek figure was 35.6%.
- 60.1% used social media in 2025, against 62.8%. On this, Greek firms are close to the EU.
- 59.5% had a website in 2025, against 78.5%. Only Romania and Bulgaria were lower.
- 44.0% had both a website and social media in 2025, against 57.4%.
- 40.5% used social media to obtain or respond to customer opinions, reviews and questions in 2023, against 30.0%.
Paid attention with nowhere to send it
Greek firms are not shy about paying for attention. More of them advertise online than the EU average, with their share up by eight points in a year. They also talk to customers on social media more than most of their European peers. Four in ten use it to answer questions and reviews, against three in ten across the EU.
What they lack is the place the attention is supposed to go. Four in ten Greek firms of this size have no website at all. Most marketing assumes a site and social presence working together. That combination reaches 44% in Greece against 57% across the EU.
The survey does not link the answers firm by firm. The advertising and website figures also come from different years, so the data cannot say how many advertisers have no site. What it does show is a pattern. More Greek firms than average pay for reach while fewer than average have a website to send it to.
The ad buys the attention. Whether it was worth buying is decided on the page it lands on.
How business buyers build a shortlist
A technical buyer who clicks an ad is rarely ready to call. Research on business buying keeps finding the same sequence. Buyers do most of their evaluation alone and contact suppliers late. Much of that research comes from vendor surveys with published samples, and recent ones point the same way.
- A 2025 survey of nearly 4,000 B2B buyers by 6sense, a sales-technology vendor, found that buyers first contacted sellers about 60% of the way through their purchase. The supplier they had ranked first before any contact went on to win 77% of the time.
- A Gartner survey of 646 B2B buyers run in August and September 2025 found that 67% prefer a buying experience without a sales representative.
Neither study reports results for Greece. The 6sense sample also required at least USD 25,000 of spend, more than many of our readers' purchases. Still, the direction is consistent. The shortlist is built from what a buyer can read without asking, and a click that lands on a social profile or a contact form gives the buyer very little to shortlist with.
From the ad to the page
In a technical firm, brand and communications come down to one test. Does the message the firm pays to send arrive somewhere that confirms it? If the ad says "precision", the page should show the method. If the post says "we work with industrial clients", the page should show which problems, in which sectors and what changed.
The practical order follows from that.
- The destination comes first, before the next advertising budget. That means one page per main service that says what the firm does, for whom, how it works and what happens next.
- Then the spend, sent to that page and not to the homepage.
- Then the measurement, meaning the share of paid visitors who reached the page, read it and took a step.
What Eurostat leaves out
Eurostat reports whether firms advertise. It does not report how much they spend or whether the spending works. Nor does it separate business-to-business firms from consumer-facing ones. The advertising question was asked for 2024 and the website questions for 2025, so the two cannot be combined into one snapshot. The buyer surveys quoted are vendor and analyst research, labelled as such. Neither reports results for Greece.
The Monday check
Take the firm's last three paid ads or sponsored posts and click each one as a buyer would, on a phone. Then note these for each one.
- where the click lands
- whether that page says in one screen what the firm does and for whom
- how many taps it takes to reach a way to ask for a conversation
If any of the three lands somewhere that does not answer the ad, fix that before the next budget is spent.
Sources
- Eurostat dataset isoc_cismt (social media use and internet advertising), indicators E_ADS (2024), E_SM1_ANY and E_WEB_SM1_ANY (2025), enterprises with 10 to 249 persons employed
- Eurostat dataset isoc_ciweb (websites and their functions), indicator E_WEB, 2025
- Eurostat dataset isoc_cismp (social media use by purpose), indicator E_SM_PCUQOR, 2023
- 6sense, 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report (vendor research; nearly 4,000 buyers; minimum spend USD 25,000)
- Gartner, press release, 9 March 2026 (survey of 646 B2B buyers, August to September 2025)
Researched and drafted with AI tools from the sources listed; reviewed and edited by Meterknot.
