6 ways to include interactive product demos throughout the buyer’s journey

Product demos aren’t just for the live sales demo call anymore. In fact, you can use them across the entire buyer’s journey to give your prospects the in-depth, interactive product experiences they crave. 

Here are six creative ways to use interactive product demos to accelerate time-to-value from the first time a customer hears about your company to the moment they sign their first contract. 

1. In a thought leadership piece 

Thought leadership content, or any kind of blog posts, are great ways to attract prospects and grow your brand awareness. And while you have the eyeballs of those readers on your content, you can add in a mini interactive product demo to illustrate a point. 

Just like adding in a graphic can draw a reader’s eye, a mini demo can enable them to see and experience what you’re talking about. For example, let’s say your SaaS product is a customer service software. You can talk about a specific feature you offer that solves a common pain point, and add in a micro-demo that shows prospects what that looks like in action. 

(If a picture is worth 1,000 words, how many more do you think an interactive demo is worth?) 

2. On your homepage 

This is a classic use of interactive product demos—right on your homepage. Once a prospect navigates there to start learning more about your company and what you do, you can offer them a clickable, interactive tour of your product right up front. Check out Conquer’s homepage demo for a great example. 

Forrester research shows that 60% of buyers will go to a vendor’s website before accepting an online or in-person sales meeting, so showing your product up front helps prospects qualify themselves. If they like the glimpse they get here and contact your sales team, your deal is one step closer to closing. 

3. On your product pages 

Once a website visitor has gotten the general look and feel for your product as a whole, you can dive into showing them any specific features and use cases that might interest them on your product pages. Check out how EvaluAgent created a library of product feature demos to see it in action. 

The key here is to ensure your product pages are easily navigable by all of your ideal buyers so they can explore and research easily on their own if they prefer. And that ease and helpfulness pays off in buyer experience and even in deal size. 

Gartner research has found that customers who found the information they received from suppliers to be helpful in advancing their buying were 2.8 times more likely to experience a high degree of purchase ease, and three times more likely to buy a bigger deal with less regret. 

4. As a free trial or freemium onboarding piece 

So your prospect is now intrigued enough by your interactive tours to sign up for your free trial or freemium option—awesome! Bet you didn’t know that interactive demos are critical here as well. 

You should add a guided demo to your free trial/freemium onboarding process as well. Having an interactive intro helps your new users get more immediate value from the product because they know what they’re doing (this is even more critical if your product is quite complex). Seeing more value up front means they’re less likely to drop off and more likely to convert to paid customers eventually. 

5. As a post-call takeaway 

After a sales call, are you still sending a one-pager to your prospect? There’s a really good chance they’re not ever reading that. Instead, send them a quick, tailored interactive demo based on what you discussed during the call. If they asked about a specific feature, send them a demo takeaway showing that feature. 

If they have a similar problem to another customer, send them a demo showing how that customer solved it with your software. And making their data private is easy with Reprise’s no-code demo platform—you can edit data (and dates) as you create a guided demo so private information stays private. 

6. As a champion enablement asset 

63% of purchases today have more than four people involved — vs. just 47% in 2017. And most of those people involved aren’t eager to hop on yet another sales call with someone they don’t know for a product they haven’t even seen. 

Enabling your champions with a takeaway demo designed to appeal to their stakeholders helps you get over this hurdle. Once you have a champion who is excited about your product, perhaps because they’ve had a live sales demo or signed up for a free trial, you just need to give them the tools to sell to their own organization. 

Giving them an interactive guided demo tailored to their needs means they can show their internal decision-makers exactly how your product will solve a significant pain point, you’re that much closer to a deal. 

From the beginning to the end of the buyer’s journey 

Demos can be used in so many ways throughout the buyer’s journey—but don’t get overwhelmed at the thought of creating so many different kinds of interactive demos. With a comprehensive demo creation platform like Reprise, you can build all the kinds of guided demos we mentioned above, as well as live sales demos. Learn more today!