A Comprehensive Guide to Interactive Product Tours

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The world of marketing has changed a lot in the past few years, and keeping up with the latest trends is essential to remain competitive. In this guide, we'll explore how interactive product tours can revamp your go-to-market (GTM) strategy and provide four creative ideas for using these tours.

Interactive product tours are guided demos that give prospects a walkthrough of your software in a controlled environment that's free of product errors. These tours work exceptionally well as presale or marketing strategies because they give buyers the freedom to explore and interact with your product independently. While your customer is self-educating, you can direct their attention to your software's "wow" moments to ensure they experience the value of your solution before losing interest.

But what makes a product tour "interactive"? At one point, the only way marketers could create and share a product tour was in video or screenshot formats—static content that passively engaged prospects. Today, marketers can generate dynamic, interactive product tours that actively engage viewers. With demo creation tools such as Folio's no-code platform, marketers can develop an interactive product tour that includes pop-up guides, animated buttons, and even a virtual tour guide.

Interactive product tours play a key role in moving prospects further down the sales funnel where deeper, richer product experiences await them. For example, an interactive product tour can convince a product-saturated audience that your freemium product is worth trying out. And because freemium products don't come pre-populated with user information, tours are an effective way to decrease the user's time-to-value by showcasing the software's full potential with a focused experience.

Interactive product tours also help lead better-qualified prospects to a custom demo experience, making it the ultimate Product-Led Growth (PLG) matchup. Imagine that you've watched a great movie preview, and it piqued your interest enough that you bought tickets to the full show. Except this movie? It was made just for you. It was filmed in your hometown, the hero has your name, and the villain is the porch pirate that keeps stealing your Amazon packages. The movie's not only enjoyable to watch, it's so highly personalized that you forget you're not actually inside of it.

Once you've made one (or more) of these awesome, interactive product tours, where do you use them? At customer touch points such as your company website, landing pages that highlight new features, version rollouts, etc., and sharing links to product tours in email campaigns and on social channels. Interactive product tours are a key marketing resource, but they also have a broader organizational value. Your company can use interactive product tours to onboard new employees, provide product education, and get internal teams excited about new product features and offerings.

Now that we understand what interactive product tours are and how they work, let's explore four creative ideas for using them in your GTM strategy:

1.Create Product Tours

Consider creating multiple, interactive product tours that demonstrate your product's value to existing verticals and help capture the attention of new ones. By customizing tours for specific industries or use cases, you can show prospects how your solution meets their unique needs and challenges.

For instance, if you sell sales enablement software, you could create a tour for healthcare providers that highlights how your software streamlines patient information management and reduces errors. Meanwhile, you could create another tour for retail that shows how your software improves inventory management and empowers sales reps with the latest product information.

By creating tours, you can speak directly to prospects' pain points and demonstrate how your solution helps them overcome those challenges.

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2.Gamify Your Tours

Gamification is an effective way to boost engagement and make the learning process more fun and memorable. By incorporating elements of gamification into your interactive product tours, you can encourage prospects to interact with your product and complete the tour.

For example, you could add quizzes or challenges that test prospects' knowledge of your software. Or you could include a leaderboard that shows who has completed the tour the fastest or answered the most questions correctly.

Gamifying your tours not only makes them more engaging and memorable, but it also helps prospects retain information better and increases their likelihood of converting into customers.

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3.Host Virtual Events

Virtual events have become increasingly popular in recent years, and they offer an excellent opportunity to showcase your product and engage with prospects. By using interactive product tours as part of your virtual event strategy, you can provide attendees with an immersive, hands-on experience of your software.

For instance, you could create a product tour specifically for your virtual event that highlights your latest features and use cases. During the event, you could encourage attendees to take the tour and ask questions about your solution. You could also host a live demo session where a product expert walks attendees through the tour and answers their questions.

By incorporating interactive product tours into your virtual events, you can provide attendees with a unique, memorable experience that sets your brand apart from competitors.

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4.Use Tours for Customer Onboarding

Interactive product tours aren't just for prospects; they can also be a powerful tool for customer onboarding. By showing new customers the ins and outs of your software through an interactive tour, you can reduce their time to value and increase their satisfaction with your solution.

During the onboarding process, you could offer customers a personalized tour of your software that highlights the features and workflows most relevant to their needs. This approach not only helps customers get up to speed quickly but also demonstrates your commitment to their success.

Another benefit of using interactive product tours for customer onboarding is that it frees up your customer success team's time to focus on higher-value activities, such as strategic planning and relationship-building.

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Conclusion

In today's crowded market, marketers need innovative strategies to capture and convert prospects effectively. Interactive product tours offer a unique way to engage with buyers and provide them with an immersive, hands-on experience of your software.

By personalizing tours for specific verticals, gamifying the learning process, hosting virtual events, and using tours for customer onboarding, you can revamp your GTM strategy and stand out from competitors.

With the right demo creation platform, such as Folio, you can create dynamic, interactive product tours that actively engage viewers and drive conversions. So why wait? Start exploring the power of interactive product tours today and take your marketing to the next level!

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Try folio for your demo creation now.

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