How To Make A Product Demo Video In 6 Simple Steps (With Tips & Examples)

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November 11, 2024
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14 minutes
Lorenzo Nicolini image
Lorenzo Nicolini

Picture this: you’ve just launched a shiny new product and are excited to show it off to the world. But when it comes time to create a product demo video, you freeze. What do I say? How do I show off my product’s features? Can I make a clear and engaging demo video on my own? If you’ve ever faced a challenge like this, you’re not alone. Product demo videos are a crucial part of marketing for any new product, yet creating them can feel overwhelming. In this article, we’ll explain how to make a product demo video so you can confidently show off your new product.

Moonb’s product demo video service makes creating engaging product videos a breeze. With our help, you’ll learn how to make a product demo video that captivates your audience and boosts sales.

What is a Product Demo Video?

man on a laptop - How to Make a Product Demo Video

A product demo video demonstrates how a product works and highlights its key features. It is used in the acquisition stage to help businesses educate potential customers about their products and close deals. 

These video demonstrations often appear on websites and landing pages or are used in ads to showcase the product, capturing the potential customer’s attention and encouraging them to learn more about it.  

Product Demo Videos in Driving Conversions

In a recent study, 84% of consumers said they’d been convinced to make a purchase based on a brand’s video, and over three-quarters of respondents said they’d decided to download a mobile app or product after specifically watching a product demo video. This highlights the vast potential of product demo videos to drive conversions and growth for your business.  

Leveraging Interactive Webinars for Enhanced Product Demos

Product demo videos are a game changer for marketing and sales teams looking to bring prospects to an ‘aha’ moment where they understand the product's true value. The good news is that product demos can be made even more interactive through engagement-focused live webinars and on-demand webinar replays.

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Benefits of Making Product Demo Video

man on a tablet -  How to Make a Product Demo Video

Boost Sales with Product Demo Videos

A product demo video can ease the sales team's initial hurdles in convincing prospects. Seeing a product in action helps convince a person rather than mere words or brochures. On top of that, at least in the first stage, it can work without your sales representatives. 

Word-of-Mouth Through Product Demos 

You can use your product demo video to engage with your customers on social platforms. An excellent video can spread like flame and reach users experiencing problems your product can solve. 

Increase Customer Satisfaction With Product Demo Videos

When customers spend money on your products, they want to be able to use them most beneficially. With a product demo video, you can guide your clients to use the product correctly and leverage all its benefits. It can also act as a self-service channel since the more common problems and solutions can be easily explained over a pre-recorded video rather than a written medium, which can often be more challenging to understand. 

Product Demos Can Train Internal Teams 

A product demo video can be remarkably effective as a medium for training your sales and customer service team. Demo videos help your sales and customer representatives understand how the product works and how they should assist a customer with its usage. 

Elevate Your Brand with Moonb

Moonb is a video marketing agency offering unlimited video editing subscriptions to elevate your content. Key features include:

  • Project Management Integration: Seamless collaboration through Trello, Slack, and MS Teams
  • Weekly Strategy Calls: Regular check-ins to align with your goals
  • Contract-Free, Full-Service Production: A flexible approach without long-term commitments

Moonb stands out as a superior alternative to traditional video agencies, freelancers, and in-house production teams, thanks to:

  • A flexible, subscription-based model
  • Expertise in creating compelling video content

We’re the ideal partner for companies aiming to enhance their marketing and educational efforts through powerful video content.

Start a 3-day free trial with our product demo video service to take your content to the next level.

How To Make a Product Demo Video in 6 Simple Steps

woman on a laptop -  How to Make a Product Demo Video

Set Goals & Define Your Target Audience

A product video demo can have various goals, such as:

  • Increasing subscriptions
  • Education
  • Brand awareness

First, you must determine your goal and what your videos are trying to achieve. Then, depending on your target viewers, create videos that suit the goal. Remember that your target audience will play a significant role in determining your video's goal. 

You will need to create different types of videos depending on the characteristics of your target customers. If setting goals is challenging, consult an expert and plan accordingly.

Plan for a Budget

Without planning the budget correctly, creating a product demo video will likely cost you more. So, first, you need to assess how much of your budget you have. If you have a budget of 10,000 dollars and want your video's standard to be more like Apple's, you need to modify your expectation level. 

A good idea is to consult an expert and determine how much you can accomplish with the amount you want to allocate.

Get the Proper Format and Length

The structure of demo videos plays a significant role in achieving your targets. These videos can help you tell a story, highlight pain points, or create FOMO to engage viewers. Decide how you want to convey your message and choose the format that best fits the video. 

Also, make sure you focus on the video length. The ideal size is 2 minutes. The crisper the script, the more engaging it is. But if you want an in-depth demo video explaining everything about your product, 5 minutes or more will not create issues.

Decide Between Animated and Live-Action

Another critical aspect of these videos is the type of visuals. For example, you can use animated videos or live people to demonstrate your product's work. These two video types require different strategies and budgets. 

For animated videos, you do not need to invest in costly locations and actors, and you will not only save money, but time and effort will also be nominal. These videos can be beneficial for abstract product or service demonstrations.

On the other hand, live-action videos are:

  • Very authentic
  • Instructive
  • Have a humanistic touch

However, these videos require more investment than animated ones. Hence, choose the type you think is more effective for your product and customers without breaking the budget.

Write Your Script

The video script is an essential step when creating an instructional video. It needs to be clear, comprehensive, and short. Written well, it may convey a great message to your prospects and bring valuable outcomes. Though there are no hard and fast rules for script writing, you may start by giving a brief intro, then outline the entire content in a few lines and explain the procedure involved in your product's usage.

Chalk Out a Marketing Plan

After you have created your demo video, it is time to bring it to the market. Now, you must carefully plan a strategy to share the product demo video with your existing and potential customers. For the best results, you can create 2/3 videos and conduct an A/B test to ensure which works best.

8 Best Practices For Creating Product Demo Videos

employees on their laptops -  How to Make a Product Demo Video

1. Know Your Audience to Craft a Tailored Product Demo Video

Understanding your audience before delivering your product demo is crucial.

  • Who are they?
  • What are their specific needs and pain points?
  • What do they expect from your demo?

Personalize Your Product Demo

Gaging these factors helps you customize your presentation accordingly to keep your audience engaged and make the demonstration more relevant to them. Engaging with your audience by asking questions to uncover their interests can also help you personalize your product demo video and address the most pressing topics. 

2. Set Clear Objectives for Your Product Demo Video

Like any other business communication type, it helps define specific goals for your demo. Doing so ensures that all stakeholders understand what you aim to achieve and helps measure the demo's success once it’s complete. Clear objectives also help tailor your product demo video to meet potential customers’ needs. 

For example, you could demonstrate how your product can improve efficiency or solve a problem.

3. Follow the Tell, Show, Tell Method

The "Tell, Show, Tell" method is an effective structure for product demos. It involves:

  • Tell: Start by outlining what you will demonstrate and why it matters to the audience.
  • Show: Move into a live product demonstration, highlighting key features and functionalities.
  • Tell Again: Conclude by summarizing what you've shown, reinforcing key points for better retention. 

4. Highlight Key Features and Benefits

Focus on demonstrating how specific features of your product solve real problems for users. Each feature should be tied back to the audience's need or challenge. Use practical examples to illustrate how these features can improve efficiency or productivity. 

5. Incorporate Storytelling

Use storytelling techniques to make your demo more engaging. Start with a relatable problem your audience faces and introduce your product as the solution. This narrative approach helps contextualize the features within real-world scenarios, making it easier for potential customers to see the value of your software. 

6. Provide Context

Ensure that your audience understands how each feature fits into the broader picture of their workflow or business processes. Avoid overwhelming them with technical jargon; explain how each aspect of your product contributes to solving their specific challenges. 

7. Include Interactive Elements

Engage your audience by incorporating interactive elements into your demo, such as:

  • Polls
  • Q&A sessions

This keeps them involved and provides you with immediate feedback on their interests and concerns 5. Allow them to explore parts of the software themselves in a controlled environment.

8. Maintain High Production Quality

Ensure that both audio and video quality are top-notch during the demo. Use high-resolution video (at least 1080p) and clear audio without background noise. A professional setup enhances credibility and keeps the audience focused on your message.

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10 Examples Of Great SaaS Product Demo Videos

1. Moonb's Animated Product Videos: Creative Animation to Explain Software Products

moonb -  How to Make a Product Demo Video

Moonb is a video marketing agency offering unlimited video editing subscriptions. It is a collective of:

  • Senior motion designers
  • Video editors
  • Illustrators
  • Creative directors

Our team uses animations to explain software products better. An example is this V-NOVA demo video, which highlights the software's benefits by using animated characters that viewers can relate to. 

2. Apple Vision Pro: A Demo Video That Shows, Not Just Tells

apple vision pro -  How to Make a Product Demo Video

Apple's Vision Pro demo video speaks to desires and needs and shows the magic of experiencing its immersive world firsthand. The approach in this product launch video is all the more valuable since we're looking at a spatial computer.

The product video offers a glimpse into the world through the eyes of a Vision Pro user. It's a stunning demonstration that showcases:

  • A personal screen experience
  • Intuitive tech control through natural gestures
  • The seamless blending of mixed realities 

But right when you're getting comfy with the new features and feeling like a user, action switches, and you start seeing, from a distance, the user with the headset on. This is quite the clever "dual perspective." It's not just storytelling; it's bringing the future to life. 

The video demonstrates how the product might fit into your everyday routine and makes you start craving that futuristic feeling in your own hands.

3. Figma: An Engaging Software Demo Video Example

figma -  How to Make a Product Demo Video

Figma is a collaborative platform that brings all parts of the design process into one shared working space. With fluid animations, the video shows how all design team members can work on the same piece simultaneously. 

The casual narration and clicky sound effects add that pop to the video while making things easy to understand.

4. Microsoft Tasks: A Mixed-Media Approach Product Video

MS Tasks -  How to Make a Product Demo Video

This cool software demo introduces Tasks for Microsoft 365 using a mixed-media video approach with 2.5D screencast animation techniques. Yaniv, the creative director behind this product demo video, uses animation overlays to illustrate various use cases for the audience. 

5. Office Scripts in Excel Online: A 3D Animated Demo Video

office 365 -  How to Make a Product Demo Video

Microsoft's latest software demo film showcases one of the latest and most exciting capabilities of Excel Online, which allows the recording, editing, and sharing of simple yet powerful scripts using a modern programming language. 

From Complexity to Simplicity

This 3D animated demo illustrates that these scripts run in the cloud and can be scheduled to run autonomously and asynchronously across spreadsheets. In this 3D software marketing demo, they wanted to capture the duality between complexity and simplicity that customers often experience when gathering large volumes of data. 

With this demo of the software, they also wanted to register the ease of use of this experience in creating these scripts and sharing and automating them in an authentically Excel-branded world.

6. Facebook At Work: A Live Action and Animation Product Demo

Hornet teamed up with their friends on Facebook to share the software’s newest extension, Facebook at Work. This software product demo explains the features of the latest collaborative and professional platform. The 60-second spot mixes live/action for 3D, with various handcrafted designed screenshots at work backgrounds.

7. What is Slack?: An Animated Explainer for Business

slack -  How to Make a Product Demo Video

This software product demo with custom-built screenshots describes how Slack transforms the way you work. The screencast animation illustrates how Slack is your digital HQ and messaging app for business, plus the company’s home for everyone and everything. 

The product demo showcases how you can move faster by organizing your work life and focusing your time on your terms while simplifying teamwork for everyone.

8. WHOOP Partners with Creators to Demo Its Watches

whoop -  How to Make a Product Demo Video

Sometimes, the best product demonstration videos don’t feel like ads. WHOOP, for example, uses a TikTok-style video produced by a creator to showcase its stress-monitoring watch in action. 

A Glimpse into WHOOP

The watch isn’t the protagonist of the video. The story centers on the creator, who uses her watch to monitor her stress while she watches the Women’s World Cup. The video subtly shows how WHOOP watches work, the different color bands available, and what its reported stress levels mean. 

9. Rhode Skin is Used in Hailey Bieber’s Skincare Routine

rhode skin  -  How to Make a Product Demo Video

Rhode Skin is a skincare brand founded by celebrity Hailey Bieber. Instead of the traditional product demo format in which the product is in the foreground, Hailey published a YouTube video walking potential customers through her skincare routine using her Rhode Skin products. 

This type of explainer video is often more impactful because viewers can connect with the founder, in this case, a celebrity they already know and trust. Plus, when people see a real-life skincare product application, they can answer their own question of whether it’ll work on their skin.

10. HelloFresh Uses Animation to Explain How Its Service Works

hello fresh -  How to Make a Product Demo Video

HelloFresh is a meal delivery service that uses an animated product demo video to demonstrate its operation. Within the first 15 seconds, it addresses the pain points of its ideal customers, promising that when signing up for a subscription, they “don’t need to worry about meal times.” 

What’s also interesting about this video is that it’s optimized to reach people on YouTube searching for terms like “food delivery subscription” or “fresh meals.” When new customers find HelloFresh through this video, they’re primed on exactly how its subscription model works and can address any objections about joining. 

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Start a 3-day Free Trial to Take Your Content to the Next Level with Our Product Demo Video Service

Moonb’s product demo video service helps showcase your product or service effectively to your target audience. Product demo videos can take different forms, such as:

  • Instructional Demos: Featuring a narrator explaining how to use a product, accompanied by footage of the product in action.
  • Customer Testimonials: Highlighting a customer who explains how they use the product, supported by illustrative footage.

Product demo videos aim to help prospective buyers better understand your products so they feel more confident purchasing.

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Have Questions?

How successful is video marketing?

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Marketing videos can be very expensive, especially with traditional agencies, where costs can reach $20,000 to $40,000 per minute. With moonb, we offer a flat monthly cost that provides you access to a dedicated team focused on delivering high-quality videos quickly and efficiently, making the process more budget-friendly while still maintaining exceptional standards.

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There are no limits to revisions during the process. We want to make sure you’re completely satisfied with the final product, so we’ll work with you until it meets your expectations.

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The marketing video production process can vary widely depending on the brief. For short-form packages, it might take just a few days, while more complex advanced animations could require a few weeks to ensure quality and attention to detail.

How long should my marketing video be?

For most marketing videos, aim for a length of 30 to 90 seconds. This duration is typically enough to engage viewers while conveying your key message effectively. However, depending on the content and platform, some videos can be longer, so consider your audience's attention span and the context of your message.

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