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The Smart Demo: Five Steps to Product Demos That Generate Results
September 12, 2008
By Amy Gesenhues
Product demos are a key component of any strong lead generation program and can serve as one of your most effective marketing tools when creating a comprehensive library of marketing materials. Giving prospects a view of your product and showing how it works is an effective way to pull prospects further into your sales cycle. But, building a product demo can be a slippery slope and may work against you if the demo is not produced with a professional eye and expertise.
A poorly produced product demo can send the wrong impression of your product and company. Too much marketing language and not enough product information can dissuade prospects from wanting to know more. A product demo that includes lackluster product images, bad scripting and an amateur voiceover works against your lead generation efforts and can be worse than not having a demo at all.
Avoid ineffective demos by following these five steps:
1. Make the demo product-centric. Conceptual language about how your product saves time and money is great; but, if you want to turn a prospect into a hot lead, it is more effective to let them see what your product looks like and how it works. For example, a software demo should show actual screen shots of the software synched with a professional voiceover that narrates key features and benefits.
While showing your product in action is effective, don't take it too far and go overboard with your product information. Define your product's three key selling points and narrow your demo content down to these three key messages. This helps you better define what content to use and keeps your demo-length short and too the point. If you spend too much time trying to explain every last detail of your product, your prospect will become bored and will lose interest.
2. Automate your demo and leverage it everywhere. Webinars have become indispensable for hosting online product demos. They offer great vehicles to providing in-depth product overviews, but, can be counterproductive when trying to initiate the sales cycle. Spending 30 minutes to an hour introducing your product to a group of leads—who may or may not be ready to make a purchase—is not always the most effective use of time.
A four- to five-minute automated demo is all you need to create a real attention-getter. It's plenty of time to go through the three key selling points of your product, and prospects can access it at their own convenience. Allowing prospects the freedom to view your product demo on their own schedule is a crucial factor when introducing your product to new leads. First, it gives them the flexibility to watch it on their schedule. Second it saves your "demo-giver" from wasting time on leads who may just be in the early stages of product evaluations.
To automate your demo, use an application like Macromedia's Flash so that you can place the demo on your site, put it on marketing CDs and even leverage it at tradeshows. You can include links to your product demo in online newsletters and within your employee's email signatures. The more places you use your demo, the better your ROI will be.
3. Give it a registration page. To make your automated demo a hard-working member of your lead generation team, place a registration page at the beginning or end of your demo. If you place the registration page at the beginning of the demo, keep your request light so that prospects are more likely to complete the registration process. A small window that asks for their name, email address, and company name is enough to information for you to follow-up, but doesn’t overwhelm the prospect.
To collect stronger leads you can always have a more comprehensive registration page at the beginning of the demo, but it will decrease the number of views your demo receives. Placing an intensive registration request at the end of the demo delivers extremely qualified leads who know what you have to offer and want you to contact them. These are hot leads and should not be left untouched for more than 24 hours. If this is the registration process you choose, be sure to have a plan in place that allows your sales team to follow-up quickly with these leads by phone or e-mail.
4. Track how often the demo is being viewed. Marketers today are held more accountable than ever when it comes to tracking and measuring the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. The amount of metrics you can pull from site traffic, PPC campaigns and every other new media tool is without end. Your demo's usage should be audited along with every other marketing tool you're using.
Tallying the total number of demo views and determining who is viewing the demo will help you gauge its overall effectiveness. You will also be able to define where you should use it within specific campaigns: Do you send an e-mail blast promoting a link to the demo? Who should be on the e-mail list? New prospects? Hot leads? Will it be an effective tool to increase your Webinar attendee numbers? Tracking your demo can provide specific answers to these questions and offer an efficient means to developing marketing programs that yield the best results.
5. Keep your demo updated. Your demo should be a true reflection of your product. Don't leverage an outdated product demo and take a risk of distributing old product information. Nor do you want to include features that have not been implemented. Your demo should be consistent with your product offering to keep prospects and your sales team on the same page.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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