Product Demonstrations: Attract Customers & Raise Investment

This article is intended for companies or individuals that wish to understand the best practices behind creating an effective and cost-efficient product demonstration.

Product Demonstrations, or Product Demo's, often take the form of a video, clickthrough prototype or high fidelity prototype and are used to present concepts of a product, service or experience (i.e. an initiative) to investors or to advertise a business idea to potential customers.

Product Demo's often come when a company or individual:

• Wants to confirm Product-Market Fit (PMF) by advertising the initiative (i.e. Dropbox).
• Have found a PMF and need to raise investment to create the initiative.
• Want to train their employees on how to sell an initiative before it has been launched (i.e. Beats Tempo).
• Want to create a demonstration to help give the target audience a test of the product before buying it (i.e. the Apple Watch Nike+ Product Demo).

To effectively create a cost-effective product demonstration, we recommend that a company or individual deliver the following documents or artifacts to the agency or consultancy (i.e. third party).

Please note that this guide does not include how to audit a third-party to make sure that they are capable of producing the work. We recommend that you consult their past work and case studies and interview them to determine who the right partner is.

To make sure that a company or individual achieves their desired outcome, it is fundamental that the third-party knows what they are making and what the purpose is.

This definition may take the form of a document that includes:

• A description of the product demo (i.e. a video, clickthrough prototype or high fidelity prototype).
• The target audience.
• The technologies that need to be used.
• The metrics that will be used to identify value (i.e. the lead and lag metrics and other qualitative metrics).

Please note that we do not advise that you create a product demo until you have clarity as to what problem you are solving and if it is worth investing in.

For more information, please consult the article linked below.

In order for the third-party to effectively deliver they must be able to visualize what they are making.

The documents and artifacts that may aid in this process are:

• A storyboard.
• A sketch or CAD Model.
• A user-experience map.
• A technology systems map.

If you do not have these, you may wish to work with members of your team, contractors or the third-party to create them to make sure that things are done adequately.

Please note that an idea for a product demo often needs to be refined in order to guarantee impact and therefore, it is worth spending time and money to determine the right execution before bringing a product-demo to life.

Finally, we all wish to get the most out of our time and budget. However, sometimes what we are asking for is not feasible.

A timeline and budget will help you and the third-party negotiate what's possible and what can be achieved.

We would love to get to know you and see how we can help your organization with its goals and needs.

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