Difference between Advertising and Personal Selling
Advertising is an uncongenial, paid form of contact used by the marketers for the promotion of goods and services. It is a method of influencing your existing customers as well as your non-existing customers about any exacting product. There are dissimilar modes through which advertisements can be done which are – newspapers, banner, magazine, social media, and others.
On the other hand, personal selling involves direct communication of the seller with possible consumers. It is the procedure of persuading a possible consumer to buy the product. It is designed to be used as a short-term approach to boost sales – it is rarely suitable as a technique of building long-term consumer reliability.
Advertising – It is a means of communication, which calls customer’s awareness towards the product or service, through mass media.
- Advertising is more useful in marketing to the ultimate consumers who are large in numbers.
- Advertising is an impersonal form of communication. It is one-way communication. So, it has lacked direct feedback
- Advertising involves the transmission of standardized messages, i.e., the same message is sent to all the customers in a market segment.
- Advertising is inflexible as the message can’ t be adjusted to the needs of the buyer. Its activities may result in an instant growth in sales but for the short term only.
- It reaches masses, i.e., a large number of people can be approached.
- In advertising, the cost per person reached is very low. And the product value is comparatively low and easy to use.
- Advertising can cover the market in a short time. It follows Pull strategy
- Advertising makes use of mass media such as television, radio, newspaper, and magazines. It is a tool used to stimulate sales by employing an incentive element to attract customers.
- Conveys the message to the end number of individuals in less time.
Personal Selling – It refers to an outline of promotion, wherein the sales representative sells the product to customers, by straight visiting them.
- Personal selling is more helpful in selling products to the industrial buyers or to intermediaries such as dealers and retailers who are relatively few in numbers.
- Personal selling is a personal form of communication. It is two-way communication. So, it facilitates direct and instant feedback
- In personal selling, the sales talk is adjusted keeping view customer’s background and needs.
- Personal selling is highly flexible. as the message can be adjusted. It can be seen in the long run when there is an increase in sales.
- Only a limited number of people can be contacted because of time and cost considerations.
- The cost per person is quite high in the case of personal selling. It is used when the product value is high, and it is difficult to understand.
- Personal selling efforts take a lot of time to cover the entire market. It follows the Push strategy.
- Personal selling makes use of sales staff, which has limited reach. It is an element of the promotional mix, where a salesman visits the customer and displays the goods to initiate the purchase.
- Conveys the message to a few customers only in relatively high time.
