An online demo is a powerful tool that can connect your prospects with your software in minutes, showcasing a full array of features and helping you drive home the value of your solution. But it can do much more than that, writes Jayson Gehri in a MarketingProfs article titled "The Surprising Evolution of Online Marketing in Software Sales." A demo can help marketers understand their prospects' behavior in an unintrusive manner and capture vital lead-generation data, including:

• Who used the demo and for how long
• Which features were used
• Where the lead came from, including search engine and keyword data

Online demos are also affordable and flexible. Delivered on-demand through a customer's Web browser, they are generally less expensive than downloads or CDs and can be developed to target a specific audience, Gehri points out.

In addition, marketers can dynamically adjust how their website and demos interact with the prospect, change qualification requirements and even interact via live chat or telephone, he says.

Most software vendors don't take advantage of the ability to fully personalize the customer experience. Yet studies show that personalized and well-targeted marketing yields higher conversion rates.

"Although online marketing can customize messages on a micro level," says Gehri, "the data accumulated over time also allows marketers to customize messages for broader, macro-level 'buckets' of potential customers who share common characteristics."

→ end article preview
Read the Full Article