Everything You Need to know about Interactive Product Tours

By now, you’ve probably heard a thing or two about product-led growth or PLG. What was once an emerging trend in smaller startups is now a huge topic of interest, even among big players in the enterprise tech space.

Many PLG companies that were tiny years ago have become incredibly successful; Calendly, Dropbox, Zoom, and Atlassian are now household names. And there’s been even more focus on PLG as behemoths (like Salesforce) acquire PLG-focused companies (like Slack).

But if you’ve ever worked at a product-led company, you know it isn’t just about adopting the moniker and calling it a day. Going full PLG means reevaluating your product, your pricing, your go-to-market strategy一really everything about how your company operates.

So for companies that aren’t PLG today, what does it take to become PLG in the future?

While it can be done, it’s a long, arduous road. Even just setting up a free trial or freemium structure takes careful thought and planning. Plus, creating free trials or freemium experiences occupies engineering resources’ time, distracting them from improving your main product.

If this sounds overwhelming - it is. The key is to take baby steps that move you in the product-led direction. That’s where interactive product tours come into play.

Below, we define interactive product tours, explain how to create them, and review the many benefits of using them as a sales conversion tool.

An interactive product tours walks prospects through the main features of a product or solution. This form of demo gives users a hands-on way to experience your product without bugs or errors.

Plus, interactive product tours give users guidance, explaining what’s happening and how the product operates every step of the way.

Typically, interactive product tours follow a predefined story and can be configured to showcase features that will solve a prospect’s known pain points. That means increased buyer knowledge without a sales rep spending time with a lead one-on-one.

Interactive product tours give prospects the confidence they need to purchase, ultimately shortening the sales cycle.

Some companies opt to build interactive product tours in-house. While going this route gives you more control, it takes experienced resources who have created similar tools before.

Even with those resources on deck, it can take four to six months to develop an interactive product tour 一and that’s not including updates. Keep in mind too that marketing teams may want to tailor interactive tours to different campagins.

Interactive sales product tour software removes the need for engineers altogether.

These platforms are often codeless, meaning that reps can drag and drop components to highlight features according to their prospects’ wants and needs.

They also have the creative freedom to switch up the storyline and include different calls to action. Whenever adjustments need to be made, reps can edit an existing template, save it, and send it off to a prospect in a matter of minutes.

Besides saving time and increasing flexibility, here are four more pros to using interactive product tour software:

1. Eases the transition to PLG

Most companies can’t afford to put engineering resources on marketing and sales-related projects. Interactive product tour software enables sales and marketing teams to take PLG into their own hands, creating customized, high-quality product-led tours (and leave-behinds) every time.

2. A modern form of lead generation

Potential customers want to be wowed by something other than a contact us or demo request page. Adding an interactive product tour to your website is the best way to show, not just tell, prospects the value of your product.

Front is a great example.

The Front product tour points out useful integrations, allows users to test out comment functionality, and demonstrates how users can share drafts of messages with teammates without notifying a customer.

At that point, users are getting comfortable with the tool and are interested in what will happen next.

Front has cleverly added a pause in the interactive product tour to insert a contact us form for people to fill out before continuing. Folks who will that out will probably have a higher buying interest than those that don’t want to keep going with the tour.

Front isn’t the only one using this strategy一Citrix and Corrily are as well.

3. Send personalized product tours

You don’t want top accounts to get just any product tour. Sending an interactive product tour specific to a certain vertical or industry is a surefire way to get some attention. Inserting interactive product tour in ABM campaigns or other email marketing strategies is a great way to pique prospects’ interest.

The best part is that sellers can see what prospects were clicking on, helping them prepare for their first call with important leads.

4. Extract higher quality leads

Interactive demos enhance your prospects’ understanding of your product. When leads already understand what your product does before they walk in the virtual storefront, sellers don’t have to waste time answering easy product-related questions; they can just focus on selling.

Interactive product tour can yield big benefits in theory, but how do you make that a reality? Luckily, there are a few software solutions that can get you started. Below, we cover the pros and cons of each.

1. Recorded videos like Loom

Pros:

• Fast - You can whip up a product tour using Loom in no time once you’re logged into a product.
• Draw attention to the right features - With the rep in the driver’s seat, they can hone in on what the prospect might be looking for in a tool.

Cons:

• They are short - Loom is meant to replace emails or walk-throughs. Because they are so short, it’s hard to get everything about the product across to a client.
• No engagement - While sellers might be able to track if a potential client watched a video, they don’t know what the person found interesting or valuable or if the product would even suit their needs.

2. Demo recording like Gong

Pros:

• Sellers are used to it - Most sellers have something like Gong recording their calls at all times, so hitting record and walking through the product should be second nature.
• Customizable - Sellers can talk about whatever they want in a pre-recorded demo.
• Transcription - Gong transcribes what sellers say as they are recording, so marketing can turn a demo into some other form of content relatively easily.

Cons:

• Non-interactive - Prospects want to engage with the actual product. Showing a video isn’t the same as enabling them to try out features for themselves.
• Takes time - Sellers don’t have all day to edit out the likes, ums, and other mistakes in the video. And if a bug happens to show up while they’re recording, they have to film it over again without that section or wait until it’s fixed.

3. Interactive product tours like Navattic

Pros:

• Trackability - You can never have too much information about a prospect before hopping on a call. Sellers can extract telling metrics from interactive product tours, giving them insight into what potential buyers really care about.
• Minimal effort - Interactive product tour software is codeless, meaning that anyone can create product tours in minutes. If you don’t want to give everyone full reign, you can create modifiable templates that fit individual prospects’ needs.
• Interactivity - The first two options have no way for customers to use your product. With an interactive product tour, that’s the whole point. Prospects get a true sense of how your product works.
  

Cons:

• More set up - For many sales and marketing teams, Gong or Loom are already part of their process. Adding an additional set up and execution step for an interactive product tour tacks on time to their busy schedules.
• Limited features - Interactive product tour typically show a limited range of features, so sellers can’t go as in-depth as recorded product demos.

Product-led growth is here to stay. Yet, fully moving in that direction can be a challenging, time-consuming, expensive endeavor. What if you could free up your engineers, sales, and marketing teams to do what they do best, move towards PLG, and drive conversions?

If you’re interested in using interactive product tour software, see a live product tour on our website.