Have you ever viewed product demos that looked great, but the content was outdated or messaging was inconsistent? Exactly! In today's digital age, it's all about immediacy. Users want the most relevant and updated information to consume. The purpose of a product demo is to provide users with an engaging and informative experience that inspires them to purchase the product. This means relevancy and consistency have to be always maintained.

It’s more important than ever to undertake content maintenance of your product demos. Because it helps in establishing your brand identity and reputation, which is essential for building trust and credibility with your users.

However, it can be challenging to keep content up-to-date, and different demos may require unique content formats. In this blog post, we'll discuss the challenges and provide tips for overcoming them to ensure that your content remains fresh, accurate, and consistent.

Why is content maintenance important?

Content maintenance in demos is important because it helps to ensure that the messaging, appearance, and relevancy of the product remain consistent with potential customers. When an organisation is showcasing its product through demos, consistency is critical for establishing a robust impression and trust.

Source: Forrester

Mixed messaging can confuse both the buyers and the employees. Consistency in messaging means that the same core message and value proposition is communicated across all demos, regardless of the platform or delivery method. This helps users and employees to align clearly, leading to higher engagement and increased interest in the product.

When we consider appearance consistency it means that the narrative and value proposition remain consistent across all touch points, which helps to establish the product's brand identity and reputation. A consistent appearance creates a sense of familiarity and trust, which can help to reduce the perceived risk of purchasing the product.

In contrast, outdated or inconsistent content can lead to confusion, frustration, and a negative buying experience. When content is relevant, customers are more likely to find it useful and engaging. Relevant content also helps to establish the company as an authority in its field, which further enhances its reputation and credibility.

The struggle is real - Challenges for content maintenance:

We are living in a fast-paced world where content can never be static. When it comes to product demos, what worked a year ago may not be as effective today, and this makes it more challenging. Here are some of the challenges when it comes to maintaining the content of product demos:

1. Time-consuming:

           Creating and updating demo content can be time-consuming, especially if the product is complex or has many features. You need to allocate enough time and             resources to ensure that the content is created and updated regularly.

     2. Keeping up with product changes:

          Product updates are one of the main aspects of growth and sustainability. It can be challenging to keep the demo content up-to-date and match with the changing            interfaces or features. Companies need to have a framework in place to ensure that any changes to the product are reflected in the demos quickly.

     3. Consistency:

           Consistency in messaging and appearance is critical for building trust and credibility with customers. However, it can be challenging to ensure that the messaging            and appearance remain consistent across all demos, especially if different teams are creating the content and sharing it with third parties.

      4. Technical expertise:

           Creating product demos often requires technical expertise, like the one the presales teams have. The easiest solution here is to use progressive technologies like

            no-code demo platforms to create and scale high-quality demos.

       5. Relevancy:

           To keep customers engaged, demo content needs to be relevant and useful to them. You need to understand the target audience and create content that meets            users needs and expectations.

       6. Localization:

           If you are operating in multiple countries or markets, it can be challenging to create demo content that is relevant and resonates with each audience. Localization            requires an understanding of cultural nuances and a willingness to adapt the messaging and appearance to each market.

The struggle is real - but you don’t have to lose hope! As technology continues to advance, you will need to adapt new strategies to stay ahead of the competition and meet the changing needs of your audiences. Let’s deep dive into how you can ensure your product demos are not stale!

How to solve the product demo content maintenance issue?

The content maintenance of product demos is like a game of Jenga. You carefully stack your demo content, hoping it will all stay in place. But inevitably, something falls out of line and you have to make a move to keep everything from toppling over.

It can be frustrating trying to keep your demo content up-to-date and relevant. But don’t let that stop you! The key is to have a solid strategy in place so that you can make those moves with confidence, knowing that your content is well-organized and easy to maintain.

What if I guide you with practical tips and tricks that will help you keep your aging demo content fresh and engaging? Grab your focus. It's time to solve the demo content maintenance issue once and for all!

A simple yet effective - 3 part solution

1.  Create a demo library using a solid structure

When it comes to maintaining content for product demos, having a well-organised demo library can make a significant difference in streamlining the process. A product demo library is a digital repository of interactive demos that highlight the company's offerings. These demos are typically tailored to specific buyer personas, use cases, product features, or integrations, and can be made accessible on the company's website.

By mapping out a demo library structure, you can ensure that all of their demo content is easily accessible and organised in a way that makes sense for the users and the internal teams. This can help with content maintenance by making it easier to find, update, and repurpose existing demo content.

Wait, but how to map a demo library structure?

A good demo library structure should be intuitive and easy to create and navigate with clear categories or subcategories that align with the sales process. Here’s how you can map a demo library structure,

Products: When you have multiple products and features, the best way is to create a dedicated folder for products. This allows teams to quickly access all of the demo content related to a specific product or feature, making it easier to update and maintain.

Buyer’s Journey: Another layer is to structure demo folders by the stage of the buyer's journey, allowing teams to quickly find and use demo content that is relevant to a particular stage of the sales process.

Persona: A persona-based demo library helps you add value to each person involved in the decision-making by addressing their specific pain points.. Structure the demo library folders by persona to help teams quickly find demo content that resonates with a particular target audience. Thus making it easy to find and update when required!

Use Cases: One of the primary reasons you would require a demo library is that you sell to multiple audiences or serve multiple use cases. Demo folders can be structured by use case, which can help teams quickly access demo content that is relevant to specific customer needs or pain points.

Localised Content: Selling the product across multiple geographies needs you to work in the local language for efficiency. Creating demo folders dedicated to translated content will help internal teams to find and run maintenance checks faster.

Here’s an example of how Zendesk does it,

💡Pro tip: Using a demo automation tool like Demoboost can be a valuable asset in mapping a demo library structure, as they provide insights and collaboration capabilities that can help to ensure demos are up-to-date, effective, and aligned with overall sales strategies.

How does the demo library play a crucial role for internal teams?

Creating a structure for your demo library helps you with,

Centralised Content Management: The demo library typically serves as a centralised repository for all demo content, including videos, screenshots, user guides, and tutorials. This makes it easier for internal teams, such as marketing and sales, to manage and update content in a centralised manner, ensuring consistency and accuracy across all demos.

Easy Content Updates: The demo library enables a user-friendly interface that allows internal teams to easily update and maintain content without technical expertise. This empowers teams to quickly make changes to demo content, such as updating product features, use cases, or buyer personas, without relying on external resources or IT support.

Specific Demo Content: Organise content based on buyer personas, use Channel partnerscases, or product features making it easier for internal teams to locate and update content specific to their target audience or use case. This ensures that the content remains relevant and resonates with the intended audience, leading to more effective demos.

Version Control and Tracking: Version control and tracking capability allows internal teams to manage different versions of demo content and track changes over time. This helps teams keep track of content updates, revert to previous versions if needed, and maintain an audit trail of content changes for accountability and compliance purposes.

Collaboration and Workflow Management: Supports collaboration and workflow management features, allowing internal teams to work together in a coordinated manner to create, review, and update demo content. This streamlines the content maintenance process and ensures that all updates are approved and aligned with the overall content strategy.

Read: How Can Sales Demo Software Help You Close More Deals?

2.  Allow external sharing of your demo library for consistency

B2B buyers are clear on what they want! A report from McKinsey states “consistent experience” is one of the most critical things that buyers need. They might not hesitate to switch if they are failed to offer.

Source: McKinsey

Building a well-organised demo library gives your internal and channel sales teams the power of consistency at their disposal. Working with third party sales teams like resellers, or channel partners, can be a highly effective business strategy. For example, Channel partners can help expand a company's reach and bring in new customers, while also providing valuable insights into local markets and customer needs. However, working with them can also present some challenges that you need to overcome to ensure success.

One of the biggest challenges is partner enablement. For resellers to effectively sell a company's products or services, they need the right knowledge, tools, and resources. Without proper enablement, resellers may struggle to effectively communicate the company's message and value to potential customers, which can lead to lost sales.

Furthermore, maintaining brand consistency while working with resellers can dilute your brand if resellers are not properly trained and incentivized to adhere to brand guidelines. This can lead to confusion among customers and potential customers, and ultimately harm the company's reputation.

What are the benefits of sharing demo libraries externally?

Sharing demo libraries externally can provide several benefits, mostly in terms of maintaining the content and ensuring consistency in messaging and appearances across demos. Let’s see how,

Empower your partner enablement: By sharing demo libraries externally, partners can have access to the latest and most up-to-date demo content. This can help partners to learn about the product and its features more effectively, leading to more effective sales and revenue generation.

Maintain brand consistency: Sharing demo libraries externally can help to ensure that all parties, including partners and internal teams, are presenting the product in a consistent and effective way. By providing partners with a shared demo library, companies can ensure that all partners are presenting the same content, which can help to build a consistent brand image.

Easy for content maintenance: By providing partners with easy access to the latest demo content, companies can ensure that all partners are using the most up-to-date content. This can help to reduce the workload of internal teams and ensure that demo content is always up-to-date and relevant.

Improve buyer’s experience: External sharing of demo libraries can help to ensure that the buyers get the best experience and most relevant product information, no matter whether they buy from you or your channel partner.  This can help to build trust and confidence in the product, leading to increased sales and customer retention.

Track channel’s performance in real-time: Sharing demo libraries externally can help to streamline the sales process, and track the performance of your channel partners in real time. This not only helps to maintain a consistent brand image but also provides a measurable way to identify top-performing partners and predict channel revenue.

Examples where demo library sharing can be helpful

Partner training: External teams like partners have access to the latest demo content and are trained on how to present the product consistently.

Partners enablement: Sales teams can quickly and easily access the latest demo content, ensuring that they are using the most up-to-date messaging and appearances in their presentations.

Customer education: Customers will have access to the latest and most accurate information about the product. This can help to build trust and confidence in the product, leading to increased sales and customer retention.

Internal communication: This can help to improve internal communication and ensure that all teams are presenting the product consistently with up-to-date messaging.

External sharing of demos and other content to distributors and resellers ensures that they have access to the latest and most relevant information, which can help them to effectively present the product. Furthermore a valuable tool for companies in maintaining demo content, messaging consistency, and brand image.

Thinking about how to create, share, and monitor demos?

Well, demo automation platforms like Demoboost are the future of sales and partner enablement. They provide you with the ability to scale your sales and marketing efforts through the creation and sharing of digital assets that are customizable and measurable.

By automating the demo creation and sharing process, you can ensure that the messaging and positioning remain consistent across all channels and partners, leading to an improved brand image and seamless customer experience.

• Demoboost platform enables you with,
• Create interactive product demos by cloning your product within minutes
• Enhance selling by adding multimedia, video narrative, and storytelling
• Live demo support and analytics for the sales team
• Create shareable demo libraries with unlimited folders and subfolders
• Share your demos with channel partners, internal teams, and customers
• Track and monitor the performance of your resellers for winning demos

The Demoboost Channel Partner feature enables you to create folders and assign them to resellers who can then use the assets for sales and marketing purposes. Resellers have the flexibility to customize certain aspects of the assets while ensuring the messaging and positioning of the product or service remain consistent.

3.  Build a framework for keeping demos up-to-date

Creating and maintaining demos can be a time-consuming process, and as products evolve, it becomes increasingly challenging to ensure that all demos are up-to-date. However, it's essential to use the latest demos in the field, as outdated demos can mislead prospects.

The report by Forrester highlights that 51% of buyers feel that the content provided to them by sales teams is useless. Sales teams are still relying on outdated sales materials that fail to engage buyers or provide the information they need. This indicates that organisations need to do a better job of understanding the target audience, tailoring the content, and keeping it updated for consistency and relevancy.

When it comes to product demos, establishing a framework to identify and retire ageing demos, creating new demos consistently, and ensuring that all demos are reviewed regularly is crucial.

Source: Forrester

Strategies for keeping your demos up-to-date

In today's digital age, buyers expect more personalised and interactive product demo content that speaks to their unique challenges and goals. Organisations that fail to adapt to these changing expectations risk being left behind, as buyers increasingly turn to vendors who can provide a more compelling and relevant content experience. Here are the strategies to build a keep your demo updated,

1. Choose a robust Demo Automation Platform

Standardising the way your sales team creates, shares, and maintains the demos while ensuring the privacy of your business data requires a platform that can help you enable this. Demo automation platforms like Demoboost offer,

✅Enterprise-grade secured platform for storing your demos

✅Create interactive demos and share them anywhere within minutes

✅Build demo libraries to help you with structure and ease of maintenance

✅Enables you to build a framework for creating, sharing, and maintaining content with the help of one platform.

✅Provides unlimited customer support who work with you to help you strategize

2. Create a logical structure of demo folders

When creating a product demo library, it is important to establish a logical folder structure along with a folder hierarchy to ensure that the demos are easy to find and manage. Here are a few steps to follow,

• Always start with a high-level folder for each product that will contain all related demos.
• Create subfolders for different types of demos such as product overviews, use case demos, and industry-specific demos.
• Organise demos by persona or industry if your product caters to different personas or industries.
• Use consistent naming conventions for the folders and demos to make them easily identifiable. For example, {product name} x {demo type} x {date}
• If you have multiple versions of a demo, create separate folders for each version and clearly label them to avoid confusion.
• Regularly review and update the folder structure to maintain the content of demos

3. Review and restructure your existing demos

To keep your demos up-to-date, it is important to review and reorganise existing demos. This involves taking a critical look at your current demo library and identifying demos that are no longer relevant, inaccurate, or outdated. You should then retire these demos to prevent them from being used in the field.

It is also important to reorganise the remaining demos into a logical folder structure, making them easy to find and use. Once an update is needed- allocate the time to update all demos referring to this specific point. Consider grouping demos by product, industry, or use case, and ensure that each demo is properly labelled with a clear and concise title. By reviewing and reorganising your demos, you can ensure that only the most relevant and up-to-date content is being used in the field, which can improve the effectiveness of your sales and marketing efforts.

Read: How to Easily Reuse Standardised Demos to Scale your

‍4. Foster a culture of collaborative efforts

To keep your demos up-to-date, it's important to improve collaborative efforts among the teams responsible for creating and maintaining the demos. This involves creating a culture of collaboration where cross-functional teams work together to update and improve the demos. Teams should have regular meetings to discuss the latest product updates and ensure that the demos are aligned with the latest messaging and positioning.

In addition, it's important to have a clear process for feedback and updates, so that all team members are aware of changes and can work together to implement them. This can involve using a demo automation tool or a shared document to track changes and updates. By improving collaborative efforts, teams can ensure that demos are kept up-to-date and reflect the latest product features and messaging.

5. Assign ownership and regulate access

Assigning ownership is crucial to keep your demos up-to-date. It ensures that the right people have access to the right data and that everyone knows who is responsible for maintaining and updating the demos. By assigning ownership, you can ensure that someone is accountable for the accuracy and relevance of the demo content.

This ownership should be clearly defined and communicated across the organisation. Additionally, regulating access ensures that only authorised personnel have access to the demo library and that all changes are tracked and audited. By doing so, you can maintain the integrity of your demos and ensure that they are up-to-date and accurate.

That’s all folks!

Maintaining up-to-date and consistent demo content is crucial for building a strong brand image, improving customer experience, and increasing revenue. Don't underestimate the importance of content maintenance and make sure to prioritise it within your organisation. By implementing these strategies and tips as mentioned in the article you can ensure that the demo content is always relevant, accurate, and effective. If you are thinking on where to get started, connect with our team now!