Is Social Media more convincing than

Personal Selling?

Summer Report

Submitted to: Prof. Jinal Parikh

2021

Name: Mehul Maheshwari

Roll No: AU1713078
Programme: Fourth year iMBA

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
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I would like to extend my sincere gratitude towards Ahmedabad University to help me during
such tough times. Further, I would also like to thank Professor. Jinal Parikh to guide and support
me throughout the project. Her guidance has helped me willingly complete my research project
on logical terms.

Name: Mehul Maheshwari

Date: 18th August, 2021

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Abstract
The following study is being carried out to understand the importance and growth of digital
marketing in this technological as well as dynamic world. Especially how people have started
using social media platform in last 10 years. How perspective of seeing and using this social
media platform has been transformed in certain years. How are they impacting us and mainly the
personal selling (i.e. Field work-sales)? What are the challenges that personal selling has been
facing since years and how it reduced after covid19? Will it rise again as before and if yes then
what type of companies would like to continue with it.

 Introduction
Is social media marketing more convincing than the personal selling in today's time irrespective
of any industries or products/services. In Last 5 years it’s been seen that social media is taking
over the personal selling (i.e. door to door marketing and sales) especially in the last 2 years of
the Pandemic period. We all got an idea at some point of time about the digital marketing growth
in the upcoming years but wasn’t sure that it would grow so rapidly. Every business either has
started digital marketing or is planning to do it irrespective of company size and financial
situation. Many people are aware of social media marketing nowadays and are willing to spend
for it as they know the importance and value of it for their business. It has become a core part of
our life and nobody can just simply ignore it. Few years ago door to door marketing was one of
the most effective marketing strategies for any company although the cost of it was high in terms
of salary of the salesperson, efforts and time. There are still thousands of companies which are
still doing it for the sales and marketing of brands. It’s not that personal selling is not good, it’s
just about its efficiency in today’s market which is observed to be declining. It really matters on
the company's products and services, like how they portray themselves in front of potential
customers, how they have trained their employees for a good sales pitch as well as presentation
of themselves, in what manner they talk with, voice tone, etc. There are multiple factors which
need to be considered before planning to do personal selling. It’s not that personal selling is
going to end, it is about the use of it and the results which might not match the optimum targets.
Although there are some specific industries and products/services which might like to continue

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with personal selling because of the nature of product or service. Objective of doing social media
marketing can be multiple whereas a personal selling objective mainly focuses on selling. Social
media marketing objectives can be brand awareness, consideration, lead generation and lastly but
not the least conversions in terms of selling, website traffic and goals fixed by us. Common
factor amongst them is Brand Awareness as both of the methods lead to introduction of the brand
product or service in front of the new audience. There are still many big companies in the world
which are completely relying on field work and has a big sales team underneath.

 Literature Review

Importance of Social Media Marketing

Social media has evolved into the most prominent and vital virtual arena, where the platform is
utilized not only for social networking but also as a powerful tool for digitally promoting your
business and products.

The power of social media is undeniable, as you can reach a big number of people within
seconds of publishing an ad, lowering your costs and ensuring that your adverts reach your target
demographic with these social media commercials. Facebook, the largest social media platform
in the world, has 2.4 billion users. Other social media platforms including YouTube and
WhatsApp also have more than one billion users each. These numbers are huge – there are 7.7
billion people in the world, with at least 3.5 billion of us online. This means social media
platforms are used by one-in-three people in the world, and more than two-thirds of all internet
users. Social media has changed the world.

With over 59 percent of the world's population online, marketers must not miss out on the
opportunity to market on these digital forums, where they may reach the greatest number of
potential consumers when compared to print or broadcast media marketing.

Nothing compares to these social media platforms, where most users spend the majority of their
time throughout the day and night.

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These social media outlets assist you in attracting the right clients and providing the right
information at the right time, as well as showcasing your product or brand to potential customers
at the appropriate periods.

Traditional marketing would entail approaching a publishing house with your

advertisement/marketing message, whereas social media requires you to create profiles on
numerous sites such as Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Here are the reasons why social media marketing is important for
your business:

Measurable
The effectiveness of social media marketing can be measured. You can see how many times your
marketing messages have been clicked, which web pages have been visited, how many
impressions your post has received, and how many times it has been shared. On the other hand,
in personal selling it is possible but not easy as compared to social media measurement tools.
Here each person needs to record the feedback, response and expectations of customers in any
physical form or digital form. They can’t simply memorize it and make a final report whenever
the company needs it.

Revision

When it comes to crafting marketing communication or messages, most often mistakes happen
due to several reasons. And the fact is we can’t even rectify it, the only thing is we can try to
avoid that mistake next time when facing any new customer. Newspaper advertisements are
difficult to modify and cannot be modified once they have been published. Users of social media,
on the other hand, have the ability to make immediate modifications and edits in the event when
any revisions are required. The chances of making mistakes here are there but the only thing is
we can rectify it as soon as possible. Sometimes companies make mistakes and don't even notice

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it or bother to measure its performance after a certain time which leads to chaos on social media
and competitors take advantage of this. So, it’s very important

You Get to Tell Your Story

Interacting with your audience on social media gets you additional visibility and helps you better
understand your audience. Customers will be able to get to know you and relate to your tales on
a more personal level, which is exactly what you need as a digitally connected company. People
who are unfamiliar with you or your company may be interested in learning how you built it, and
by sharing these posts, you may raise brand awareness about how hard you worked to make your
ambitions a reality.

You Can Grow an Audience with A Small Budget

One of the most cost-effective ways to market your business online is through social media
advertising. Simply being consistent and publishing relevant and relatable content for your
audience can help you grow as a social media page. There are a number of businesses and
bloggers that have developed a customer base that has connected with them without spending a
single dime on digital advertising. Instead, they used great content and great engagement with
their audience to create a customer base that has connected with them.

This implies that, even if you have a limited advertising budget, you may assist your company on
these social networking forums, where, via enhanced promotion, the process of digital growth for
your company can be accelerated.

Stay Top of Mind with The People Who Matter the Most
For a target audience with the potential to become buyers, it's critical that you interact with them
via social media forums, making such an imprint on their thoughts that your company comes to
mind anytime they search for or consider purchasing a similar product. This relationship between
a company and a potential consumer is crucial in turning them from a potential customer to a
loyal and regular one. And it is through social media marketing that you may achieve this.

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Learn About Your Competitors

You'd be able to look at the stuff they're sharing on their social media pages and determine which
ones are performing better. You will be able to include those questions into your digital
marketing strategy after conducting this research of your competitor's profile and looking into all
of the questions posed by their audience.

Can Build Custom Audiences

Businesses can use the various tools available on social media platforms to check how many
people were interested in the content they provided, how many people clicked on any calls to
action, and how many people bought something if they did.

Statistics like this aid in the creation of a personalized audience, allowing you to target customers
who appeared to be interested in your product but abandoned their carts at the last minute.

All social media networks are open to the public, allowing businesses to monitor the activity of
their customers or potential purchasers.

Learn The Buying Patterns of Your Ideal Customers

This allows marketers to have a better understanding of their target audience's likes, dislikes, and
interests, allowing them to develop a stronger marketing strategy to attract them. Learning these
patterns allows you to concentrate on the aspects of your page design that you are not following,
allowing you to improve your digital marketing techniques to attract the correct customers and
suit their needs. You may use social media to see what your clients are most interested in. As a
result, you may develop content that is relatable to your target audience, enhancing social media
engagement. This allows you to examine the different demographics of people who have visited
your page, as well as the most popular types of material on your social network profile. You'll be
able to sharpen your marketing skills and develop more compelling content.

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Increase Your Overall ROI

Because the cost of advertising on these social media forums is often cheaper than the return,
you can boost your return on investment by using social media marketing and advertising.

You may reach hundreds of thousands of people with digital marketing by simply targeting ads,
lowering your advertising expenditures.

Facebook and Instagram assist you in recruiting potential buyers while also aiming to keep
potential customers engaged on their respective social media networks so that you and they both
profit.

By this Bar
chart we can get to know the age distribution of social media users in India. As we can clearly
see that 32% of the audience follows in the age group of 25-34 and followed by 18-24 who are
contributing about 30%. They both follow under youth segment and contribution is almost equal
for it. The least users of social media are the people whose age are more than 50. Usually it is
seen that most of the decision makers to avail any service or buy any product are from the age
bracket of 25-34. Nowadays it is seen that children of age 18-24 are also asked to give their
opinion for the decision making and thus it becomes important for any company to focus more
on this two age groups. Sometimes the targeting differs according to product and service.

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Through this we can see which country has the highest social media Active users. It can be
clearly seen that India has the highest users of 180 million followed by USA, Brazil and
Indonesia. It clearly concludes that there is a high scope of Digital Marketing in India.

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Through this chart we can see different type of social media platform present in the world and
what are their audience strength. As Facebook is the oldest it has about 2 billion users in total
from all over the world followed by You tube, WhatsApp and finally the Instagram. Among this
most growing platforms are Instagram, WhatsApp and You tube. These 3 platforms are mostly
being used by the age group of 16-34 (i.e. youth). These platforms have become an essential
place for marketing and promoting the products or service. Many businesses use WhatsApp to
showcase their products and to talk with the potential customers. Many companies attached
WhatsApp as a messenger platform to discuss the queries customer has regarding product or
service. You tube is the best platform to showcase video content and it is confirmed by many
marketing research and psychology test that video attracts most of the audience and it is
generally liked by the customers for better understanding and brand awareness or recall
sometimes. Many influencers and big brands have made a channel on You tube to showcase
different type of engaging content. We can show ads on you tube also for different objectives.
While Instagram is the most loved platforms by young generation due to its features available.
There are different filters available, can make business accounts, and most important feature is
the reels. We can promote and boost the most engaging post which basically reaches to more
people.

Personal Selling
Personal selling plays a significant role in today's marketing tactics. Many consumer products,
such as home appliances, cosmetics, medications, and magazines, consider salesmanship to be an
essential approach for promoting and increasing sales. Personal selling is a face-to-face sales
method in which a salesperson employs interpersonal skills to persuade a consumer to purchase a
product. The salesperson strives to highlight the product's numerous qualities in order to
persuade the buyer that it would only bring value to their life. Personal selling, on the other hand,
is not always about getting a customer to buy a thing. Customers are frequently approached in
this manner by businesses in order to make them aware of a new product.

Personal selling is becoming more important as a result of rising consumer expectations on one
hand and organizations’ customer-centric approaches on the other. Many businesses have a solid
market position solely owing to effective personal selling. Salespeople can visit each customer

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one-on-one to persuade them and fix problems. It's worth noting that personal selling is vital not
just for selling things, but also for establishing long-term relationships with clients. Every time a
salesperson sees a customer, he or she can renew the relationship. People trust salespeople more
than inflated advertising. The issues that sales managers and sales organizations have faced have
changed substantially during the last 30 years. Having the correct sales manager, according to
their results, can boost a salesperson's effectiveness by up to 20%. In terms of forecasting
methodologies, sales force organization, sales force selection practices, sales training, and
supervisory and evaluation practices, there are considerable disparities in the level of adoption of
various SMPs between large and small organizations.

The direct selling market in India, which now ranks No. 15, is predicted to grow at a
Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of roughly 4.8 percent to reach Rs 15,930 crore by
2021, according to industry projections. This demonstrates that the Direct Selling Industry is
thriving and demonstrating its potential, as evidenced by the industry's continuing growth rate of
12.1 percent Y-o-Y. Direct selling is currently one of India's fastest-growing industries. Despite
these pandemic, the industry has grown dramatically in the recent three quarters.

Following points explain the importance or benefits of

personal selling:

1. Two-Way Communication:

It is the most effective means of two-way communication. Customer information on the

company's offer can be provided by the salesman, who can also collect information from the
customer. Customers can actively participate in discussions with salespeople to resolve their
concerns and objections. Other types of market marketing do not allow for this.

2. Personal Attention:

Publicity and advertising are examples of mass communication tools. Individual requirements
are not met. Personal selling focuses on a customer's personal issues. It is more effective and
results-oriented in comparison.

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3. Detail Demonstration:
Demonstrations are not possible, with the exception of television commercials. Television
demonstrations, on the other hand, are severely limited. A salesperson might give a detailed
demonstration and oversee the customer while they utilize the merchandise. It is more relevant
for technical products.

4. Complementary to other Promotional Tools:

Advertising, sales promotion, and publicity can all benefit from personal selling. It eliminates the
disadvantages of traditional advertising and sales promotion. Personal selling reinforces the
advertising message while advertising raises awareness. Personal direction or conviction can also
improve the effectiveness of sales marketing techniques.

5. Immediate Feedback:
This is the only method of market promotion that delivers instant feedback. A salesperson can
simply determine whether a customer is interested or in the market to buy at the end of each
call/visit.

6. Individual Services:
Individual services are available through salesmanship. It is capable of meeting the needs of
individual buyers. Customer satisfaction is the result.

7. Flexibility:
Individual character, motives, and challenges can be accommodated by tailoring sales talks and
presentations to the scenario.

8. Customer Confidence:

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A skilled salesperson can erase any worries, questions, objections, and ambiguities from a
customer's mind with a structured sales discussion and presentation, and gain their trust. It boosts
clients' trust in the company and its products.

 Challenges/Changes in Personal Selling segment

This are some of the major challenges/changes identified by various authors till this date are
provided as follows which have impacted sales managers and sales organizations. These
challenges/changes can be clustered into 5 categories: technology, financial, customer, sales
process and environment
● increasing customer expectations and taste;
● improvements in communication technologies (i.e. videoconferencing (i.e. Zoom and google
meet), teleconferencing, email, voice mail);
● managing multiple channels of sales;
● increasingly complex buying situations;
● more players involved on both sides;
● advancements in sales force automation;
● change occurring more frequently;
● intense global competition;
● budget cuts;
● soaring sales costs;
● sales force outsourcing;
● more diversity in customer bases;
● greater empowerment;
● more internal collaboration needed;
 Changing fashion trends
 Increasing span of control
 Great Accountability
Due to travel constraints and social distancing norms, the pandemic posed a challenge to
personal selling, requiring sales organizations to discontinue (or reduce) in-person meetings.
Working-from-home salesmen struggled to adapt to the virtual selling of a significant portion of
the sales process. Reaching out to customers and interacting with them on a human level at each

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stage of the sales process became extremely difficult. Prior to COVID19, salesmen primarily
employed technology to relieve the pressure of mundane chores. Customer relationship
management (CRM) products from Salesforce, SAP, Hub Spot, Zoho, and others include emails,
video calls, social media, and customer relationship management (CRM) technologies.

Although voice calling remained inexpensive, salespeople needed to transition to video calling or
conferencing to present products, discuss pricing, and complete deals since body language cues
provide significant context to the sales dialogue.
Because most salesmen are extroverts who get their energy from being in contact with people,
much of the conversation was lost during virtual selling. They've been demotivated as a result of
only selling via the phone, emails, and video conversations. Salespeople were able to make calls
from their homes without hesitation because to features like screen sharing and a variety of
backgrounds. Though video calls are superior to audio calls and emails, the high-tech augmented
reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) can enhance user experience during product demonstrations
since customers can get product pre-views before buying. Although video call saved a lot of
time, energy and cost of travelling for many salesman and sales company.
Instead of relying on gut instinct, sales processes employ big data analytics to study client
behaviour and machine learning (ML) algorithms to target the correct customers. Artificial
intelligence (AI) will not, however, be intelligent enough to replace personal selling.
There are multiple banks and services based companies which arrange a virtual meeting to
communicate and explain their products. The main difference is in personal selling anyone can
just go door to door to promote their product but now things have changed salesman or company
need to take permission of meeting priory through telephonic call. Some people say that it is
much more effective as we visit to those people only who are our potential customer. It becomes
much easier for a salesman to talk to customer who is already interested in listening. Yes, there
were other benefits of cold door to door visit but the chances of utilization of energy, time and
cost were underutilized or sometimes over utilized.

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  Conclusion
It been observed that personal selling industry have always been successful although there are
some challenges and limitations which however social media marketing covers it. It definitely
inappropriate to say that personal selling is dying. No in fact it has rose in last 2 years though it
didn’t process in the same way which use to be but with the syncing of technological
upgradation they made it out. This basically means that personal selling won’t decrease only if it
continues to grow with technological advancement. The method of doing it will change but it will
be a huge part of marketing. It will be useful and productive to ensure that virtual selling
incorporates in-person meetings. Organizations adopting virtual selling and overcoming
technological limitations will better realize their top-line and bottom-line goals. The sales
professional’s adept at virtual selling will be in high demand and remain gainfully employed. As
people are transforming themselves digitally social media will be huge part of it. It’s not just a
platform for entertainment, news, trends, life update but also big source of marketing platform.
Many businesses and organizations are using it and growing their profits as well as the brand
awareness. Combination of both can bring success to a new height for company. Both are the
essential components of marketing and none of which can be ignored. It can be a best strategy
if both of them are used for marketing proportionally. It can defer company to company and their
products or services. Some may do more of personal selling and less social media marketing or
vice-versa.

 References
 https://www.digitalmarketing.org/blog/the-importance-of-social-media-marketing
 https://online.maryville.edu/blog/social-media-marketing-vs-traditional-marketing/
 https://www.redalkemi.com/blog/post/traditional-marketing-vs-social-media-marketing
 https://shanebarker.com/blog/future-of-social-media-marketing/
 https://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/salesmanship/importance-of-personal-selling-10-
benefits/48675
 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/personal-selling
 https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-
users/
 https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media
 www.Reidetalsalesforce.pdf

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  https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/digital/is-personal-selling-dead-
the-rise-of-virtual-selling/80417593

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