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What’s a demo video?
A demo video is a pre-recorded presentation designed to showcase a product, service, or process, highlighting its features, functionality, and value proposition.
Demo video examples
In SaaS, most of the demo videos you’ll see fall into these two categories 👇
📹 High-quality, high-production demo videos
Here’s an example from Gamma ⤵️
🧑💻 Low-editing screen-sharing demos that are easily sharable
Here’s an example from Arc Browser ⤵️
What’s an interactive demo?
An interactive demo is a self-guided, clickable walkthrough to help prospects evaluate a software product's capabilities and value proposition.
Interactive demo examples
Here’s an example from Skilljar ⤵️
Videos and interactive demos have many advantages in common, such as:
- Visual learning: Helps viewers grasp concepts faster than text or static images.
- Engagement: Video and interactive demos capture attention better than written material.
- Trust-building: Demonstrates transparency and expertise by showing how the product/service works.
- Scalability: A single demo can be used across marketing campaigns, sales pitches, customer support, training, etc.
Below are the unique traits that they each have to help you consider which one is best for you in a given circumstance ⤵️
Pros & cons unique to demo videos
Pros
👍 Low-quality demo videos are faster: Creating a demo video with screen recording tools like Loom is faster than creating an interactive demo.
👍 Videos have a wider range: Demo videos can include visuals not necessarily of the product, like customer interviews and custom animations.
Cons
👎 Videos force content on viewers: Why is Netflix more popular than cable TV? Because you can watch what you want when you want. The same goes for interactive demos. Videos force a stale pace on viewers and don’t allow them to choose what they want to see.
👎 Video drives way fewer conversions than interactive: As you’ll see below, videos can help communicate things to your audience but don’t drive nearly as many conversions as interactive demos.
Pros & Cons: Interactive demos
Pros
👍 Interactive demos are highly personalized: Interactive demos can be personalized to specific prospects or audiences, whereas videos can’t.
👍 Interactive demos have better ROI: High-quality interactive demos are easier and cheaper to create and launch than high-quality videos.
👍 Interactive demos are easier to iterate: Interactive demos provide rich insights into viewer engagement and interests, enabling informed decision-making.
👍 Interactive demos drive more actions: Interactive demos can incorporate call-to-actions throughout the experience, capturing viewer intent in real-time.
Cons
👎 Interactive demos can be trickier for complex products: Trying to showcase an entire complex solution can make your interactive demo too long and disengage prospects. In that case, a demo video could be an option, or leveraging demo centers and collections 👇
What does the data tell us?
Performance: Which one drives more growth?
Vidyard recently released its 2023 Video Benchmark Repor, which said that the average video CTR across the 1.7 million+ videos on its platform was 3.21%.
The average click-through rate (CTR) across the 20k+ published Arcades is 23%, or 7.2x higher. Interactivity drives engagement and increases conversion.
Our competitor, Navattic, also backs this finding. They have found that interactive demos built in Navattic also outperform video by 2.5x for the top 25% of demos and 10x for the top 1% (20x for the top 1% of Arcade demos).
Production cost & speed: Which one has better ROI?
Videos can range from a quick and scrappy 5-minute screen recording to a $50k+ investment that can only be approved once or twice a year.
So the answer for video is: it depends.
According to Vidyard, around 72% of videos created are user-generated. The remaining 28% are produced. Furthermore, 47% of marketers report specifically investing significant budgets into demo video production.
On the other hand, interactive demos are much easier and faster to create, most often for a higher-quality output.
The average time to create an Arcade interactive demo: 6 minutes!
Our customers keep telling us how much faster it is to create interactive demos than videos 👇
Read the ShowMonkey case study here 👈
Popularity: What are people doing?
As reported by the C-Suite Benchmarks Survey, companies of all sizes are adapting their GTM strategy to prioritize interactive demos over demo videos. Interactive demos officially outpaced videos in 2022 and have continued to increase popularity amongst SaaS teams and business leaders.
A great example of that trend in practice is Quantum Metric. The product marketing team needed a way to help prospects evaluate the many aspects and features of the quantum metric platform.
They initially started with videos, but they weren’t driving the business outcomes they wanted and were slow and costly to produce.
They moved to interactive demos (most are found in their product tour library here) and saw a massive increase in conversions, engagement, and speed to create new content.
💡 Important note: Prospects who prefer to watch demo videos can still do so.
Here’s an example of a product tour that the Quantum Metric product marketing team crafted with Arcade 👇
Can you combine video and interactive demos?
Video platforms are losing steam because the top interactive demo solutions (like Arcade) now include video recording and editing capabilities.
Therefore, it’s more advantageous for teams to combine screen recording video and interactive demos under one intuitive platform than, say, using Loom and Arcade in parallel.
Here’s a great example of combining video and interactive components in one demo 👇
Want to try the best interactive demo platform?
That would be Arcade (that’s us 👋). Don’t take our word for it; Arcade is recognized as the fastest, easiest, and most customizable interactive demo platform for creating stunning demos that drive business outcomes you care about 👇
Here’s an overview of the platform 👇 Looking for other options? Check out our complete guide with other solutions.
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