The sales process has changed. We are all being asked to do more with less, faster, and more efficiently – buying software isn't immune.
As prospects research potential SaaS-based solutions to solve their problems, they are more reluctant than ever to spend the cycles filling out forms, responding to emails, being qualified, and chatting with multiple salespeople only to finally get a demo.
Offering your prospects the ability to take the demo process into their own hands and on their own time can help accelerate the sales cycle while showing the platform's value. More importantly, you can establish the platform's "happy path" to quickly show its value and the ideal way to use your solution.
Unique applications of interactive demos
Interactive demos aren't just for speeding up the sales cycle and offering a self-service buying experience for your prospects. You can utilize the tool to develop other materials, including:
Employee onboarding
You should give your employees access to your interactive demos so they can quickly learn the product, see what your audience cares about in your solution, and see how you deliver value.
Sales enablement
Similar to new employee onboarding, you can use product demos to showcase new features and create training that walks through your messaging and personas.
Customer success
If you want to get on your Customer Success team's good side, help them make their job easier by putting together interactive product guides that help speed the onboarding process, educate customers on how to use capabilities, and launch your solution in their organization.
This interactive product demo was created to show our buyers how their employees could interact and benefit from using our product – our customers like it so much that they use it when onboarding the solution to their company
Product updates
This one is obvious, but whenever there is a significant feature or product update, create an interactive demo to help promote and support the release. Here’s a product tour that was created to support the GA launch of a new feature.
Grab your copy now.
How to create an effective interactive product demo
Alright, so you now know what interactive product demos are essential, and you have a few ideas on how to utilize them outside of the sales process, but how do you create an effective interactive demo?
Here are four steps to creating an effective product demo:
Set clear goals
Before you dive in, you'll want to define the goal of the demo. What are you trying to achieve with it, and what do you want the person to walk away from the experience with? Understanding these two goals will help you outline your demo journey.
Create user-centric journeys
Whether your goal is to accelerate the sales cycle, promote a new feature, or educate internal teams, your interactive demo should be focused on the user. Your tooltips should be written with your audience and their goal in mind.
Keep it simple
Focus your user journey on one feature, one journey, and one desired outcome. Trying to cover everything your product offers in one interactive demo could overwhelm your audience before they convert. You'll also want to try to direct your users' attention.
To do this, maintain a minimalist design, blur or edit out text that isn't relevant, and highlight the features of focus.
Test and optimize
Regularly gather feedback from users and different teams on improving the flows for the intended audience. Analyze the data to see where usage drops off so you can adjust the copy to move them to the next step. Also, you'll want to continuously refine the demo and update it based on UI changes and new capabilities.
Deepthi Nagarajan
Key channels to promote your interactive demo for maximum impact
As with all marketing initiatives, creating the interactive demo is the first phase. Promoting your demo through multiple channels to maximize exposure and engagement with your target audience is the next crucial stage.
The good thing about these demos is that they can be a tool leveraged by sales, marketing, and customer success teams – so, you’ll want to include these departments and their audience as you plan your promotion strategy.
Below are just a few places where you should promote your interactive demo:
Website
Think of all the relevant pages to add your demo on your website, it could be solution pages, case studies, blogs, etc. You should also consider adding a section dedicated to these types of assets on your resources page.
Social media
Regularly post your demo across the social platforms that your audience uses the most
Marketing emails
Integrate your demo into newsletters or marketing emails to allow your prospects to see the product in action with limited sales involvement.
Outbound sequences
Equip your BDR/SDR team so that they can include the demo as part of their outbound sequence. This is a good asset to have at the end of the sequence when there isn’t engagement.
In-product and release notes
Just because they are a customer, doesn’t mean they know everything your product has to offer. Include your demo in an in-app pop-up for customers to see. If it’s a new feature, include it in your release notes and in your documentation to give your users an additional way to learn about your enhancements.
Event and webinar follow-ups
Send the demo as a follow-up email after webinars and events to give attendees a self-guided way to check out your product.
Final thoughts
Interactive demos are quickly becoming a key asset in a product marketer’s tool kit.
As the buying process changes, enabling a prospect to explore the software independently simplifies the decision-making process, helps accelerate the sales cycle, gives existing customers a chance to discover new capabilities, and helps your field learn in new ways.
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