Most businesses claim to offer different capabilities, functionalities, features, and applications of their products and services. However, the buyers, customers, or users wish to view how those features work, be it a product or a service. Providing practical demonstrations instead of relying solely on theoretical explanations establishes improved sales or initial potential customer engagement with the brand or company.
That’s where newer avenues exist, which provide greater leverage in extending your reach to a larger target audience as well as involving the audience in an interactive session when showcasing your products and services.
Through the medium of webinar, you can host a demo webinar, known as deminar (a portmanteau of “Demo” and “Webinar”), that can extensively display and even guide your target customers through using your products and services.
It provides clarity, context, use cases, technical specifications, feedback, and testimonials, which further the sales funnel prospects!
So, let’s get on with knowing more about how to organize, schedule, and host your deminar today!
How is a Deminar Different from a Webinar?
A webinar is basically a meeting of speakers or hosts with an audience that simply tunes in to the webinar, absorbing the content or topic as discussed by the hosts for the duration. A deminar, on the other hand, is an interactive session held through a webinar, where the speakers or the host showcase their products and services to an audience, which may have logged in live for the duration.
This basic difference between them is through which a company or brand enumerates or demonstrates the features, benefits, usage methods, and applications of the products and services they want to offer to their potential customers. Interactive deminars nurture enhanced engagement and interactive dialogue between hosts and attendees, furthering the understanding of your product or services.
How Does a Deminar Work?
Create a short, 30-second video highlighting your product’s key points, showcasing different features, use cases, and more! Using this video as an integrated product demo as part of your deminar’s marketing content is a simple and effective way to generate leads and engage your audience.
This approach is more likely to convert into customers since you can identify highly engaged audiences! In due course of the deminar, the product or service speaks more for itself by effectively demonstrating its features, usage, methods, ease of deployment and installation, etc., to the target audience!
Benefits of a Deminar for Business Growth
Gaining an edge over the competition is the primary goal of every brand or company and using every available avenue or resource in the race is a necessity. Through a deminar, you can speak directly to your audience interested in your product. For product demonstrations, a deminar is an excellent tool for the following reasons:
- The direct interaction between potential buyers and the brands fosters a real-time conversation, with immediate feedback from the recipients of the information of the products and services. This 2-way communication enables greater clarification of doubts through a highly engaging and interactive experience!
- Irrespective of geographical boundaries, and deminars, today’s leading virtual meeting platforms are scalable for connecting with specific target markets, verticals, regions, or language preferences. This facilitates flexibility in connecting with your target audience, along with fluid or lucid transfer of information in one go!
- Brands can showcase their products or services in a visually appealing, brand-emphasized environment. Any effect, regardless of size or complexity, can be demonstrated effectively using high-quality products and detailed visuals. Thereby delivering better visibility, application, and visualization of the products or services and their functionality and benefits.
- A sophisticated deminar becomes a data funnel for the sales and marketing tech stacks, providing collated data such as the time spent in the webinar, resources downloaded, questions asked through interactive tools like Q&A, chatbots, or email, and responses to polls, surveys, and additional content consumed, at the end of the deminar.Such data can be further utilized for a redesign in existing or newer deminars for more excellent attendance of potential customers or better and more effective future deminars! All webinar participants’ data drives better analysis of prospect behavior, preferences, and interests, enabling more targeted and
personalized follow-up strategies.
Step-by-Step Process to Host a Successful Deminar
By showcasing how the product works in real-time, potential customers can see its application and benefits firsthand. It would be best if you prepared beforehand for hosting a deminar, considering several aspects as necessary and discussed below.
Decide Your Deminar Format (Live, Pre-recorded, Whiteboard or Simu-Live)
Importantly, decide upon which style or approach of content flow will be of your deminar. From the various deminar formats to choose from, will it be live, or will it be a pre-recorded session?
- Live Video deminars are real-time videos streamed live, providing greater options for attendee engagement through live Q&A. They allow no room for mistakes and can be pretty challenging when hosting for the first time.
- A pre-recorded deminar is recorded much ahead of time and either is accessed by attendees on-demand or by logging in to watch your product demo video.
- A Whiteboard deminars highlights concepts, details, and focus areas spoken about by speakers in real-time, emphasizing the various aspects of the products and services, directly addressing the attendees logged in.
Usually recorded ahead of time, a Simu-live deminar has more video content, showcasing the usage of products and services in the video, with all the various Q&A clubbed together at the end of the deminar.
Define Your Objective
A hands-on approach for creating a deminar creates a more engaging experience and builds trust and credibility in your attendees. Deminars showcasing specific features, addressing common pain points, and demonstrating the value of the product garner more excellent attendance and proportionately higher sales conversion.
It would be best if you ascertain whether you are hosting a deminar simply to gain sales data for funneling potential customers or whether through genuine dissipation of products and services, features, and benefits you gain by educating your potential customers about the benefits of your products and services. Design your deminar content according to the answer you arrive upon.
Plan the Deminar Content
As it is obvious that it’s a video content medium, structure your deminar with minimal textual and on-screen readable content, and replace that with a personalized presentation of your products and services.
Remember that the less you verbally explain and the more you showcase the practical usage of your products and services, the better the result!
In the process, consider using more visualization by throwing the spotlight on ‘how a product functions’ through different camera angles, close-ups, and slowed-down footage. Making your content more engaging will enhance your target meeting context multifold!
- Begin with creating a designed flow of information from the beginning to the end of the deminar. This entire flow should adhere to the primary or central idea of hosting the deminar.
- If you have invited or included guest persona, special guests, technical experts, or product sales reps, begin the deminar by introducing them, along with describing their role and relevance of their presence, and what they shall be imparting in the deminar.
- The deminar video simply won’t begin with directly demonstrating the product or services. You will have to lead with some minimal textual content; it can be digital or physical placards that will describe or show the video until the product or service demonstration begins. Deploy some creativity while making this to keep your audience hooked until the important demo section takes center stage.
Include Interactive Content in the Deminar
An interactive element encourages audience participation, such as by allocating dedicated time for questions and answers.
Highly engaged prospects are more open to receiving a deeper understanding of your product, for which they need to make a purchasing decision. In other words, they’re closer to buying from you through satisfied replies filled with the information they are looking for.
You gain extra points by going the extra mile and asking for their specific needs, wants, and applications of the products and services.
Choose Deminar Platform
It is quite imperative that you select a platform that provides an immersive, unrestrained, and glitch-free experience for the hosts as well as the attendees of the deminar. An uninterrupted session is a basic criterion that guarantees the success of your deminar. More so, vital if you decide to go ahead with a live deminar!
Even for pre-recorded or hybrid deminars, the video streaming and the interactive elements must seamlessly flow to the audience during the playback. WebinarPress is one such option that you can rely upon for a smooth experience!
Promote Your Deminar
With multiple avenues for propagating your upcoming deminar, utilize every available resource to maximize and spread the word. From preparing invites to mailing your customers, or announcing the upcoming deminar on your company’s social media page! Communicate outward, much in advance, to ensure the majority of your target customers can confirm and attend your deminar!
Read Also : 9 Webinar Promotional Strategies
Rehearse for Your Deminar
It’s paramount for live or recorded deminar, to rehearse your act, actions, dialogues, speech, presentation, and responses to Q&A.
A video recording is quite tedious, and in live deminars, a mistake when live on-screen does irreversible harm! Consider your (or everyone’s) body’s physical, verbal, and non-verbal language on camera, and practice the presentation to perfection.
Technical aspects require meticulous examination beforehand, recording or going live on air! Any faulty equipment may adversely affect the virtual presentation, thereby drawing flak from the attendees. In no world should you face any such technical difficulties during your live deminar. A recorded deminar, on the other hand, can be undertaken again until you get the desired resulting video!
Host Your Deminar
On the scheduled date of your deminar, go online ahead of the designated time. Ensure that all your equipment such as a computer, video camera, and microphone are all performing up to mark. Double-check your internet connection, the deminar web service platform, etc. too! A pre-checklist should be handy to ensure what all needs to be checked.
Schedule an AMA (Ask Me Anything) after the Deminar
After the deminar ends, have an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session with your participants. Any unresolved or emerging questions arising out of the information disseminated from your deminar should be clarified or elaborated promptly. This builds trust and dependability upon you or your brand/company in the attendees. Nothing measures in building a bond with the attendees as much as having their queries resolved on the spot.
Get Feedback from the Audience
Similarly, be very receptive and forthcoming by asking your attendees whether they have something to highlight about your deminar. If they expected something or were missed, or in case anything extra needs to be added to your deminar.
Follow-Up and Post-Deminar Activities
After the deminar ends, take time out, and create specific communication material that goes out to your attendees. Avoid beginning with a direct sales-oriented approach. Begin the first communication by thanking them for participating and providing any feedback and suggestions to improve the deminar.
Following this, offer additional resources or materials along with the email. It could even be the links to downloadable resources from your company’s website.
Analyze Attendee Data and Feedback to Measure Success and Make Improvements for Future Deminars
With the attendees’ data at your disposal, analyze the inputs received & act upon them. Establishing webinar KPIs is vital for measuring your Deminar’s performance. Create newer deminars and differently designed and structured communications in anticipation of the next deminar.
Common Mistakes to Avoid While Hosting a Deminar
Here’s a list of common mistakes that might negatively impact your deminar:
- Poor Planning: Such as logging in late or improperly structured flow of content or the demonstration.
- Ignoring the Audience: Without considering the skill levels and interests of your attendees, creates detachment, furthering disengagement and dissatisfaction.
- Neglecting Technology: Host your deminar from the most prevalent forms of online technology, such that it is accessible by everyone seamlessly and effortlessly.
- Overlooking Budget Management: Of course, every promotional effort incurs some cost. However, that shouldn’t be a burden or strain your brand’s financial resources beyond capacity.
- Inadequate Promotion: Social media, email marketing, and event partnerships are great methods for promoting your deminar effectively.
- Failing to Adapt: Always be prepared for unforeseen contingencies before, during, and after the deminar. A backup plan alleviates stress, giving you a relaxed environment to perform during the deminar.
Conclusion
A deminar is supposed to showcase your products and services. The entire effort of organizing, and hosting a deminar should serve the primary goals of your brand or company. That is, namely, lead generation, and converting the attendees as potential customers into as many sales conversions as possible.
Therefore, it’s imperative to jot down at every step, to double-check the planning and executions until the very last minute. This would definitely lead you to a better presentation, and more than satisfactory responses from the entire effort!
All the way, enjoy the experience, and the learning that comes along with it as a bonus!
