In recent years, software companies have recognized the power of interactive product demos as a means to drive product-led growth. These demos provide a hands-on experience for prospects and customers, allowing them to get a feel for the product without the need for complex setups or integrations. As a result, companies are increasingly prioritizing this interactive approach to showcase their products effectively.

What are interactive product demos and why are they popular?

Interactive demos are a powerful tool that businesses use to engage and educate their prospects and customers. Static screenshots and GIFs do not help as they are not at all engaging. By providing a hands-on experience with the product, interactive demos allow users to see and experience first-hand how the product works, its key features, and its benefits. This experiential approach helps to promote understanding and reduce any skepticism or uncertainty that potential customers may have.

One of the key advantages of interactive product demonstrations is that they can be easily created using no-code demo software. This means that even companies without extensive coding knowledge or resources can develop interactive demos that showcase their products effectively. These personalized demos can be used at various stages of the customer journey, from initial email outreach to website product demos and feature launches. This ensures consistent communication of the product's value proposition throughout the buyer's journey and helps improve conversions at each stage.

Furthermore, interactive product demos provide a personalized experience for each prospect or customer. By tailoring the walk-through based on their specific pain points or needs, businesses can effectively demonstrate how their product solves those challenges. This level of personalization helps build trust and credibility with users, as they see how the product directly addresses their unique problems. Overall, interactive demos play a crucial role in driving conversions by offering an engaging and informative platform for prospects to explore.

Simple steps to create an interactive product demo

Choose your end objective

When starting any initiative, it is crucial to first establish the end objective. Without a clear objective in mind, it can be difficult to measure success or determine the best course of action. In the case of an interactive product demo, this step becomes even more important as it sets the foundation for the entire process.

There are several possible goals that may be chosen for an interactive demo. One common objective is to boost awareness of a product. By showcasing the features and benefits of what is being offered, potential customers can become more familiar with the offering and develop an interest in learning more. Another goal may be to generate leads. A well-executed demo can capture contact information from interested individuals and create opportunities for further engagement and potential sales conversions. Lastly, interactive demos can also serve as a way to enable sales teams to personalize their prospect's buying journey.

Once the goal has been defined, it then becomes easier for the next steps in the interactive demo creation process.

Finalize the right channels

Your website

Most companies showcase their interactive demos on websites. Companies can add their interactive demo to their homepage or include a link on CTA or product-specific pages. Websites are at the top of your funnel, so creating a product demo for your website should prioritize reach and minimal personalization.

Your blog

Many companies have started using interactive demos in their content marketing efforts as well. This is particularly useful while announcing new products or features. By easily embedding an interactive demo in a blog, you can definitely increase the engagement time of your users.

Your outbound campaigns

Including interactive demos in your email outreach is a great way to capture your prospect's attention and stand out from the crowd. Instead of pushing them to jump on a call, you can allow them to experience your product at their own pace. This builds more trust in your product leading to more meetings for sales teams.

Sales demo calls

Teams are now using interactive and personalized demos in their sales meetings. By customizing based on user persona, use case, and industry - you can wow your prospect and ensure that you only show what matters to them.

Post-demo follow-ups

It is a common practice for sales reps to send meeting notes and include all decision-makers in a sales process. Interactive demos can play a key role here and will help your internal champion to showcase how best your product solves their pain points.

Customer Success

Interactive demos are a valuable tool not only for attracting prospects but also for training existing customers. These demos act as virtual walkthroughs, providing a visual and interactive experience that helps customers understand complex processes in a more engaging manner. You can think of this as a demo library or a resource center for your customers. You can not just empower your customers, but also reduce the load on your customer support teams.

Choose the right no-code interactive demo software

With the growing interest in creating interactive demos, there are many interactive demo tools in the market helping teams with their no-code platforms. Fable is an interactive demo platform that makes it easy for sales and marketing teams to create interactive demos with minimal effort.

One of the strengths of Fable lies in its ability to provide businesses with customized demos tailored to meet specific sales requirements. This enables sales teams to showcase their products in a way that resonates with potential customers, ultimately helping them make informed purchasing decisions. Additionally, Fable also proves beneficial for marketing efforts as it allows users to create interactive product tours that offer potential customers an immersive experience and a deeper understanding of the particular product.

Create a storyboard or a template

Creating a storyboard or a simple template is an essential step in designing an interactive product demo. This demo flow or template serves as a visual representation of the user journey within the demo. When planning this click path, it's crucial to identify the aha! moments that are unique to your platform and offering. These aha! moments are key instances where the user understands how your product will help them and experiences its core value.

Put yourself in the shoes of potential users and consider what aspects would make them excited or intrigued about using your product. These could be functionalities that solve their pain points, features that differentiate you from competitors, or unique experiences that provide significant value.

It is important to showcase these high-value moments as they illustrate how your product stands out from the competition. By strategically placing these instances throughout the demo, you can effectively communicate the unique selling points of your product and capture users' attention by highlighting its core value.

Capture relevant product screens

When capturing your product's screens for your interactive demo, it is important to be strategic and selective. Instead of trying to capture every single feature your product has to offer, focus on the parts that are most relevant and useful to the specific prospect you will be presenting to. This will help prevent overwhelming them with information and instead, allow you to tailor the presentation to their needs.

One of the biggest mistakes in a sales demo is overwhelming the prospect with an excess of features without relating them back to their pain points. To avoid this mistake, it is crucial to highlight the aspects of your product that directly solve the prospect's unique challenges or problems. By doing so, you can ensure that your demo brings maximum value and resonates with the individual you are meeting with.

To capture your product's screens effectively, start by identifying the specific pain points or challenges that your product solves. Then, determine which features or functionalities directly address these issues. It is important to keep your prospective customers in mind throughout this process.

Add guided annotations

Adding annotations and interactive elements to your demo is a crucial step in creating an effective experience for your prospects. While having an interactive demo is already great, annotations take it to the next level by guiding your prospects through the specific flow you want them to follow. With clear instructions, you can ensure that your prospects understand how to navigate and explore your product effectively.

For sales teams, annotations also enable prospects to continue exploring your product even after the demo call. By providing instructions throughout the demo, they can refer back to these annotations and revisit different features or areas of interest at their own pace. This empowers prospects to have a self-guided experience with your product, increasing their understanding and familiarity with its capabilities.

Overall, incorporating annotations ensures that your prospects get the most out of their interaction with your product, leading to higher conversion rates.

Decide whether or not to gate your demos

When deciding whether to have a gated or ungated demo for your interactive demo, it is essential to consider your end objective. If your primary objective is lead generation, then gating the demo makes sense. By requiring visitors to provide their email addresses in order to access the demo, you can collect valuable leads for future marketing efforts. You can do this by adding a simple lead capture form.

Once you have collected email addresses through the gated demo, it is crucial to continue providing value by following up with prospects. Sending them additional information that is relevant to their specific use case helps build a relationship and keeps them engaged with your product or service. By nurturing these leads and offering helpful resources, you increase the chances of converting them into paying customers. Gating the interactive demo can be an effective strategy for lead generation when combined with a thoughtful follow-up approach that focuses on delivering additional value to prospects.

Similarly, for sales teams - it might help in gating your demos. There will be multiple members from your prospect's organization viewing these demos. It will be a good idea to learn about all the decision-makers involved in the buying process.

Embed on your website or share it with your prospects

Once the demo is ready, you can either generate a shareable link for your prospects or choose to embed this on your website or a blog. This unique link will come in handy to keep a close eye on the demo performance.

Learn from your demo data and reiterate

It is crucial to closely monitor and analyze the performance of your interactive demos to make any necessary changes. This step is essential to ensure that the demo provides a seamless user experience and effectively showcases the product. By utilizing analytics, you can track user behavior and identify any drop-off rates that may occur during the tour.

Checking completion rate and drop-off rates on a regular cadence enables you to identify if users lose interest in certain features or aspects of the demo. With this information, you can make necessary tweaks to improve the overall experience.

Having access to a no-code tool like Fable presents a significant advantage when it comes to making these changes based on analytics data. The ability to quickly update the demo ensures a smooth process and allows for rapid improvements based on user engagement levels.

In summary, creating interactive product demos involves incorporating annotations to guide prospects, deciding whether to gate or ungate the demos based on lead generation objectives, collecting email addresses and following up with prospects, embedding the demo on your website or sharing it with prospects, monitoring and analyzing demo performance through analytics, and making necessary changes to improve the user experience.

It's time to start exploring interactive product demo software and create amazing demos that convert. This might just be the secret sauce in your product-led growth journey.