Statista data shows product demos are among the leading marketing videos used worldwide. And for the right reasons.
Besides making it easy to introduce your product, interactive product demos are also a learning tool for your customers. Let’s say you sell a video conferencing tool.
While a lengthy product description page might seem like a bore to customers, an interactive product demo can bring in the ‘wow’ factor.
Here’s what possibly goes through a customer’s head while watching the product demo video. “Okay, I love the interface. Wait, there’s an option for video recording too? Perfect. And I can share my screen with team members. That’s great for complex projects. Oh, integration with my calendar and Google Slides! Just what I need.”
If this sounds like the range of emotions you want your customers to go through, keep reading to learn what interactive product demos can help accomplish.
What are interactive product demos?
An interactive product demo showcases your product’s functionality and capability to your customers. Why interactive? Because it lets customers click on on-screen prompts to experience the functionality in real time.
Suppose you’ve created a product demo for digital signature software. The demo becomes ‘interactive’ when you let customers click on their screens to test the signature, comment, or drawing feature.
How do interactive product demos differ from product tours?
While both may sound the same, there’s a notable difference between them. Product tours are used for onboarding new customers.
They help make new users familiar with the product’s features.
For instance, you’ll see a product tour when you download a food delivery app. It will take you through the app’s features, like adding products to a cart, where to search for restaurants, how to add payment details, etc.
Meanwhile, product demonstrations are useful in sales and marketing. They show the potential of a product to prospective customers, encouraging them to get a subscription. In doing so, they drive sign-ups.
Importance of interactive product demos
Interactive product walkthroughs and demos can help engage customers and increase conversions. Here’s what they can do for your product.
- Engage Audiences: Prospective users won’t see a product’s real appeal until they try it. That’s what product demos allow them to do. By engaging with the product, they can understand its full potential.
- Overcome Objections: Every customer has possible questions and concerns about a new product. Will this solve my problems? Does this work better than other options? A product demo can help answer these questions in real time.
- Increase Conversions: Interactive product walkthroughs show customers exactly what they can expect from your product. When prospects see your product’s value, they’re likely to convert.
- Drive Customer Success: The primary goal of any marketing campaign is customer success. After all, customers’ success is closely linked to your success. With a well-made product demo, you can expect prospects to see their challenges resolved even before they begin using your product.
When to use interactive product demos
Most marketers use product demos early in the sales funnel. But that’s not the only use case for these walkthroughs. You can also use them in the following ways.
Pre-purchase product demos
Has a customer shown interest in your product? Use a product demo to further peak their interest.
For example, add a product demo link in your next marketing email. Or send it to them after a successful sales call.
The SurveyMonkey product demo is a good example. It shows viewers how easy it is to use SurveyMonkey. Plus, it shows how to integrate it with Slack and other platforms.
The best part? All of this is shown in under 2 minutes. So it doesn’t let the viewers lose their attention.
Product demos for a PLG approach
If you take a product-led growth (PLG) approach to marketing, product demos can help customers explore your offering in detail. Suppose you offer project management software.
It’s complex, feature-rich, but extremely helpful. How do you help customers navigate the initial complexities to finally reach the “Aha! moment?”
Send them a demo invite. If the product is too complex for the customer to navigate alone, you can offer a demo with a brand representative.
Or, give them a 7-day free trial to explore the app on their own.
Interactive product walkthroughs
Your product is an employee engagement software. While it’s helpful, it’s something your prospects have not tried before.
An interactive product walkthrough can help them explore the product step by step. Instead of a clickable software version, a walkthrough explains each feature individually.
For instance, your product walkthrough can show clients how to:
- Give anonymous feedback
- Customize feedback templates
- Set and track goals
- Create development goals
- Assess skills through in-app features
- Generate reports and analytics
By the end of the walkthrough, the prospect will feel they know significantly about the product. That might lead to their activation.
In-app demos
In-app demos are an alternative to live demos that don’t involve the help of a company salesperson. Instead, prospects can go through the product independently, trying different features.
Best practices for creating interactive product demonstrations
When creating interactive product demos, pay close attention to your customers and brand objectives. Here are some tips to get it right.
Know your audience
Before you start creating a product demo, determine who your audience is. Have these people purchased something from you before? If yes, the product demos don’t have to be as detailed. Instead of touching on the basics, focus on the advanced features of your platform.
Is this audience seeing your product for the first time? In this case, you need to showcase every feature of your product. How long of a video can your audience watch? Have they shown prior interest in your product? What is the pinpoint of your audience? Keep all these pointers in mind when creating a video.
Suppose you’re introducing document management software. Your target audience is managers who’re looking for an office document management tool.
Don’t only show your app’s UX in the product demo. The audience wants to see features like workflow management, status tracking, collaboration suite, file sharing, real-time, etc. Focus on the things that will get your audience to take swift action.
Don’t include every functionality
The last thing you want is for customers to feel overwhelmed. Yes, you must show them what your software is capable of. But don’t go into every itty-bitty detail.
Instead, focus on a few customer pain points. Then, use the product demo to show how your tool can solve those issues.
The more features you include, the more confusing and long the video gets. So, precision is key here. Use your customer surveys to determine top pain points and stick to showing their solutions.
Create a good script
The script is an integral part of your product demonstration. It will set the tone for the whole video.
Begin with a brief. Then, create an outline and write the script accordingly. Make sure every section has the same tone and pace.
Share the script with your team. Also, give your script a verbal run-through. For example, you can try it on non-marketing colleagues and ask them for feedback.
It will help you determine if anything needs reworking.
Take a non-linear approach
Don’t force customers to move through the product demo in a straight line. Let’s say your document management software shows functionalities like this: workflow management > 1-1 chat > status tracking > mobile access > forums and so on.
The viewer isn’t interested in the mobile access feature because they don’t need it for their workforce. They shouldn’t have to sit through 20 seconds of mobile access feature explanation.
Instead, curate your interactive product demo like a dashboard. Customers should be able to choose the feature they want to learn more about. It will keep them interested and ensure higher satisfaction.
Link to product demos in the resource center
Your website’s resource center should have more than your success stories and blog links. Embed a link to your product demo here too.
It will allow customers to access this walkthrough if they have forgotten how to use a feature. With this self-service functionality, your support team will not have to respond to repetitive queries.
How to creative interactive product demos: a step-by-step guide
From reducing SaaS churn rate to improving conversions, interactive product demonstrations can do it all. But how do you make sure they work? Here’s a step-by-step process to follow.
Step 1: Plan
Start by deciding where you’ll show the product demonstration. Will it be on your website in the resource center? Do you want to create an in-app demo?
Knowing where the demo will go helps you create content that speaks to your audience. Also, decide which tools you’ll use.
If you’re creating a video, how long will it be? Will you take a linear approach? How will you follow up after the prospect has watched the product demo? Having answers to these questions beforehand will prevent action delays.
Step 2: Create user personas and buyer journey
As already established above, you must identify your audience before creating product demos. A collection of user personas can help you do that. Here’s what your user persona should include:
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Pain points
- Challenges
- Purchase motivations
- Concerns/passions
After you’ve created user personas, map out the customer journey. Which stages does your customer go through during product engagement?
Typically, a SaaS customer journey starts with awareness and leads to consideration. If everything goes right, next comes acquisition and adoption. The customer may renew their subscription after successfully using your product for the initial period.
In some cases, the next step is expansion, where the customer may get a higher-tier plan. With ultimate satisfaction, the last step is advocacy. Now, the customer is your word-of-mouth marketer. Bingo!
Step 3: Create a storyboard
It doesn’t have to be the final version. Think of it as a brainstorming place for the whole team. Lay out your customer journey and other findings in a replicable template.
It will help you visualize everything clearly and share it with team members. Since it’s replicable, the same template can work for future projects too. You’ll only have to make a few changes here and there with customer personas and journeys.
Step 4: Personalize demos for prospects
Gone are the days when you used to receive emails with ‘Sir/Madam.’ Today, it’s all personalized with Mr/Mrs/Miss XYZ. The same approach should extend to product demos too.
Personalize your interactive product demos to individual buyer personas. Use relevant tools to customize logos, names, numbers, features, etc.
Step 5: Analyze your product demos
Once your product demos reach the right audience, analyze them periodically to monitor their performance. For example, a tool like Userpilot can help you set performance goals.
You can design goals like:
- Adding teammates
- Tracking reuse
- Connecting an account
- Scheduling the first post
Check the completion rate of these goals. If the completion rate is low, your users might be experiencing friction. Get user feedback to learn which features you might need to change or add.
Step 6: Roll out the demo to prospective customers
After you’ve made the required changes, you’re all set to roll out the demo at different phases of the sales cycle. For example, you can embed its link in your resource center.
Choosing the build strategy for your interactive product demos
Interactive product demonstrations come in different shapes and sizes. There are three main categories these demos fit into.
Flow
The flow represents the demo as a static set of screens or steps users go through to experience the product. Choose one of these three flow types:
- Linear Walkthrough: It’s a simple product walkthrough with a few features. The demo is step-by-step, and the user has to finish the previous step to move to the next.
- Choose Your Path: In this type, you have up to three or more linear walk-throughs with different steps or steps arranged in different orders. The user can change which path to take.
- Self-Service: It’s a non-linear approach. The user can click wherever they want to learn more about your product.
Device
Which device can customers view your product demos on? Most demos are desktop views only. But mobile-view demos can be helpful if your offering is for mobile users, such as ride-hailing apps. Or, you can opt for a mobile plus desktop view product demo.
Product
Do you want to show the whole product, just one category, or only a single feature? Let’s use the example of a video conferencing app. You might only show how to create a multi-user meeting in a single-feature product demo. The demo could include the following features:
- Inviting members to a call
- Using one-on-one chat
- File sharing
For a single-category demo, you might focus on the features related to scheduling meetings, such as showing how to set up a meeting series or sharing a meeting link. Meanwhile, a full product demo will include all the major features of the platform.
Tools for creating interactive product demos
When it comes to creating product demos, choosing the right tools is imperative. Here are some tools you can use.
Walnut.io
Walnut.io helps you create interactive product demos by taking screenshots of your tool and combining them. All it takes is a few clicks and some customizations to create personalized walkthroughs. After that, you can send product demo links to your outreach. Or embed links on your website. Even better, the tool lets you show product demos to prospects live in demo calls.
Reprise
Don’t have any coding knowledge? No worries. Reprise is a fully-integrated demo platform that your presale, sales, and marketing teams can use. Besides product tours, Reprise also lets you create sandbox environments and live demos for your software.
Userpilot
Userpilot is one of the best SaaS product demo creation tools due to its support for progressive onboarding. Simply, this means the customer only sees the next step after taking a certain action.
Progressive onboarding allows your prospects to learn through engagement rather than simply clicking through on-screen prompts mindlessly. You can also embed how-to video tutorials in product demos to provide the additional assistance prospects need in understanding your offering.
Tolstoy
If you want to create interactive videos, opt for Tolstoy. The tool lets viewers select their learning trajectory by answering questions and viewing features personalized to their pain points and interests. Tolstoy’s branding videos help users learn about your SaaS product in an engaging way. It’s sort of like a face-to-face conversation minus manual intervention.
Create a product demo that drives conversions
Creating interactive product demos that deliver your message to prospective or existing customers takes time and precision. One way to avoid disappointment in this regard is to work with a digital transformation partner that knows the ins and outs of customer success and conversions.
VeryCreatives rises up to take the spot for any company with a futuristic vision and customer-centric approach. Our digital product designers can help you put forward product demos that get your prospective customers and leads interested in taking action.
Book a call with us today to learn how we can take your business to the next level.
