Advertising and personal selling both are important tools of promotion mix. Both are useful in promoting sales. Advertising is more useful in the introduction stage of product life cycle, so as to create brand-awareness. Advertising supplements personal-selling. Sales-call of well known brands are better received by target customers, i.e. it is easier for the salesmen to convince the target customer for well known brands. So both advertising and personal selling should be designed to work in combination so a to achieve marketing objectives. Following are the main differences in advertising and personal selling.
Difference Between Advertising And Personal Selling
| Sr. No. | Basis | Advertising | Personal Selling |
| 1 | Personal, Non Personal | Advertising is a non-personal form of marketing communication. It involves no face to face contact between sender and receiver of message. | Personal-selling is a personal form of marketing-communication in which selling is made through face to face contact |
| 2 | Individual, Mass Communication | Advertising is a form of mass-communication. Here mass-media like TV, radio, newspaper is used. Message is communicated to a large group at the same time. | Personal-selling is a type of individual communication. Here message is communicated individually i.e. at one time message is communicated to one person only. Mass-media is not used here. |
| 3 | Feedback | Immediate feedback cannot be taken in advertising as it is one-way communication. In case the message is not understood by the audience then they cannot immediately inquire for their doubts/queries | Immediate feedback can be taken by salesmen during sales-talk/sales call. It is a form of two-way communication. Target customers can inquire about their doubts queries from the salesmen immediately if the message is not clear to them. |
| 4 | Adjustment Of Message | In advertising, message cannot be adjusted as per the requirements/background of individual target audience. Same message is given to all target audience irrespective of their individual differences. | In personal selling, message can be adjusted by the salesmen as per the requirement background/circumstance of individual target customers, i.e. message can be moulded for different target customers. |
| 5 | Objective | The objective of advertising is to inform, persuade and remind the target customer. Here emphasis is on brand-awareness, brand-popularity, brand-preference, etc. Here through communication of message, sale objective is achieved. Hence, sale-objective is achieved indirectly through communicatiorn objective. | Objective of personal selling is to sell the product. Here achieving sale is direct objective. |
| 6 | Usefulness | Advertising is more useful for consumer goods having wide market area. | Personal selling is more useful for industrial goods where number of customers is less. |
| 7 | Cost Per Audience | Here, cost per audience is less, as advertising message is communicated to large group of persons. | Here cost per audience is more as message is communicated individually to each target customer. |
| 8 | Speed | In advertising message can be delivered quickly by using fast media like newspaper. | In personal selling, message communication is a slow process, as each target customer is contacted separately. |
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