Video demos might be the next big thing in software sales.
Or are they really already outdated?
Because there’s actually an even better way to sell your product: interactive demos.
The new frontier of product demos
No, these demos are not the kind where your SEs spend a week crafting and spinning up the perfect demo in an expensive, high-maintenance environment (or in your actual production environment with personal identifiable information and all the security hazards that entails).
We’re talking about scalable, reusable interactive demos your team can put in front of prospects so they can experience your product’s true power and interactivity.
But first, let’s cover why demo videos aren’t the end-all-be-all of SaaS demos.
When Video Demos Work
Let’s state this right off the bat: video demos aren’t useless. There’s a time and a place for them, and they can be effective when they’re used in the right way.
Gartner research found that buyers’ top three forms of content types used to make purchase decisions are online trainings, video tutorials, and product documentation/user guides. All three are great fits for video demos—they can educate your prospects on how your product works, possible use cases, and much more.
Video is a super-popular medium right now. Just take Meta’s frequent pivots to video content on Facebook and Instagram, and the fact that YouTube is the second-biggest search engine on earth right now.
People do enjoy watching videos to learn about new products and how to complete tasks. I’ve personally learned everything from how to unclog a drain to how to master growing houseplants via YouTube videos.
Where Video Demos Fall Flat
But… (and you knew there was a but coming) video simply isn’t the optimal format for all product demos.
Yes, prospects like video more than a one-pager they’re not going to read. Sure, SEs prefer creating a video demo to spinning up a whole finicky custom live demo.
Video demos are better than the current B2B sales status quo (a deck filled with screenshots of your product, in many cases).
But that doesn’t mean videos are the best, or the only, way to deliver more value in your sales process.
- Time: They take a lot of time to create, from writing the script to filming and editing the final product.
- Expensive: They can cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce if you go with a professional team.
- Obsolesence: They’re hard to update—if you release a single new product feature, you might have to refilm the entire video.
Let’s be real, we’ve all clicked on a video that promises to teach us a vital skill or show us something cool. And it does… but it’s also a little bit deadly. You want the information, but the video just isn’t engaging—it’s just someone talking at you, overloading you with information.
Since you’re not engaged, you’re less likely to remember all the finer points covered in the video. You might even forget the brand, or the content, because there’s no way to participate in the demo or tutorial.
Keeping prospects engaged in your software demo video is a real challenge when you can’t interact with them like you would in a live sales demo. And your SEs can’t be on every call to create and walk through a custom demo—that’s one of the biggest time-killers in their role, and you simply cannot scale your SaaS demos with a process that clunky.
Introducing the Interactive Demo
Enter the interactive demo. It has all the great qualities of video demos, meaning it’s asynchronous and autonomous to save SEs time and give prospects more control. It’s customizable, easy to update as new features roll out, and offers sophisticated analytics as well.
And it’s more effective—interactive content gets twice as much engagement as static content.
With interactive demos, instead of just watching someone use the product, prospects can get in there and experience it for themselves. It’s like watching a video of someone driving a Ferrari versus playing a hands-on video game where you get to drive a Ferrari—much more engaging and memorable.
Free trials are more like taking a test drive in a Ferrari. That excitement of actually getting on the road is incredible. But it’s not something you want to let most early-stage unqualified buyers do right off the bat because of security concerns. Plus they might not know how to get the most horsepower out of the engine safely, or even how to get onto the freeway by themselves.
Interactive demos are a great in-between step. You don’t need to hand over the keys to anyone who pops in and wants to take a ride, because that’s not a good use of your time. But they can drive it virtually so they’re in control and can get the most vital parts of the experience themselves.
Buyers today want to touch and feel a product before they commit to purchasing, whether they’re buying a sports car or B2B software. And 51% of B2B buyers say interactive content is helpful when they’re tackling business challenges. Your sales process needs more ways to let them do so without compromising quality or the buyer experience, and interactive demos are the perfect solution.
How to Create and Use Interactive Demos
Sounds great, right? But doesn’t creating all of those interactive demos to send to prospects suck up SE time and server resources?
Well, with demo software like Reprise it can be as easier than as creating a video demo. In just minutes, your SEs (and even AEs) can create interactive sales demos that look, feel, and act exactly like your live product. You can swap out pieces in seconds to add in new features as they arise too.
Users can click around as much as they like on their own time to get a feel for your product experience, but they can’t stumble into any private data or bugs accidentally because they’re in a nice secure little sandbox.
If you love your video assets, you don’t need to ditch them completely either. You can weave them into your interactive demos to give them even more effectiveness and power.
You can even create an interactive demo library to have on hand for your SEs and AEs so they’re not running to create a new demo every time a prospect wants to see the product. It’s a way to make demo creation more scalable by creating interactive assets you can reuse for prospects in the same vertical or with a similar use case.
Reprise is the only complete demo creation tool—you can create both guided demos and live sales demos with our platform. Want to check it out for yourself? Try Reprise Starter for free today and create your own interactive demo!
