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How to Create Marketing Demos That Sell Products
by Amy Gesenhues
Published on April 22, 2008

One of the biggest challenges that marketing departments face is producing marketing tools that actually get used by the sales team.

If you are like many frustrated marketing professionals, you spin your wheels trying to create effective marketing communication materials that are left unused; or worse, you give up hours and hours fine-tuning your product's messaging to communicate key features and benefits, only to hear each salesperson giving a different pitch.

You want to create marketing tools that help sell products, not collateral that sits on a shelf. So how do you do it? How do you create a marketing tool that not only gets used but also can reinforce your marketing messaging so that everyone is speaking the same language?

A professionally produced product demo can do wonders for your marketing initiatives. It can accelerate your sales cycle and generate qualified leads. You can leverage it on multiple platforms and within various campaigns, from your site to your tradeshow booth, on marketing CDs and in email marketing efforts. And when done right, a great demo can get everyone speaking the same language.

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Four Questions to Ask Yourself

Before you begin building your demo, you have to answer the following four questions:

  1. What's your demo's objective?
  2. What type of demo will best fit your needs?
  3. How do you build a demo so that it gets the maximum return on investment?
  4. Do you have the resources to build your demo in-house, or should you outsource it?
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Comments

  • by Skip Mays Tue Apr 22, 2008

    Don't forget to include a functional, tangible reminder to trigger recall of your demo. When properly intergrated with your presentation, clipboards, coffee mugs, mouse pads and similar (but appropriate) materials will keep your demo fresh in your recipient's mind. Perhaps a custom made leave-behind might even be better. Don't think of them as trinkets. They really work and help cut through the fluff and clutter.

  • by Chris Keller Tue Apr 22, 2008

    In our own product demos, I have found it very valuable to use site survey data to know what people have a hard time doing on our site or what they have a hard time grasping.

    Viewing user click traffic across our site also drives our content.

  • by Kelly Tue Apr 29, 2008

    We use Macromedia Captivate to develop our demos in house. It is an affordable solution.

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