4 steps to creating an effective product tour

Create a successful funnel to encourage your aduience to buy

Product tours aren’t for everyone. No, you see, they’re for your ideal buyer — the customer you’ve identified through your marketing data is most likely to convert and make a purchase. A great product tour will keep your sales team in productive conversations with quality prospects that are more likely to convert, shorten the sales cycle by providing relevant information upfront, and increase conversions through a main call to action.

Focus your energy on building a compelling product tour rather than wasting resources funneling the wrong folks through the marketing and sales pipeline. It begins with a relevant and engaging demonstration of how your product benefits users.

Funneling to Success

Consumers move fast on the internet, scouring pages of content and looking for even quicker solutions to their problems. With 96 percent of your website visitors seeking valuable content to lead them through the buyer’s journey, it’s critical for your product tour to avoid the self-promotional material.

Relying heavily on features can discredit your product and push you into the mix of competitors. Let your product show how it will make the lives of your customers easier. Help Scout helpdesk software, for example, emphasizes benefits like singular location for management, automated grunt work, and personalization in every customer interaction.

Providing relevant content that’s helpful and positions your product's benefits can boost conversions. But don’t overdo it — look at the price of your product and length of the sales cycle. An effective product tour for a $2.99 mobile app would direct visitors to purchase the app. A low price point and short buying cycle means buyers need to get the app quickly without tons of product information upfront.

Simplicity in structure has benefits beyond the sales and marketing process — it also directly impacts visitors on a product tour who are further along in the sales process. In our product tour, we avoid the pop-ups and scrollboxes that are so effective at connecting with leads in other places on our website. Instead, we put a button at the bottom of the page with a clear CTA — “get your live demo” — to steer their full attention to converting.

Overwhelming buyers with details on the main product tour page can diminish credibility. Optimizing the user experience is more of a priority. Consider subpages and sub-navigations to assist SEO bots, lead your buyers further into your site content, and ideally, convert them.

Designing a successful product tour may sound complicated, but it boils down to four clear steps:

1. Know your ideal buyer.

More than one-third of marketers aren’t confident that the content in their product tour meets customers’ direct needs.

Dig into your audience to identify your ideal buyer — the sweet spot in your customer base that loves your product, has a high customer lifetime value, and helps grow your business through referrals, reviews, and other forms of brand awareness. Then address that customer's greatest pain points and challenges.

2. Be concise.

You could talk people to death about each feature of your product. With average attention spans at 8.25 seconds, save the in-depth feature explanations for the sales process and consumer onboarding.

Be strict with your word count on your pitch and add elements like videos, downloads, and statistics to build a more intriguing case for your product.

3. Demonstrate a clear value proposition.

Clearly convey what differentiates your product from others on the market by focusing specifically on the areas where it excels and solves your ideal buyer’s specific paint points.

4. End with an immediate call to action.

Because a product tour can seem to drag on if it's too lengthy, a motivating call to action is a good way to wrap it up. Reiterating your value proposition in a brief and engaging fashion will compel users to dive into your product more quickly and more enthusiastically.

It’s not what you say, but how you say it. Position your product tour as a problem-solving solution for your ideal consumer, and you’ll be surprised how many follow it into the sales and marketing funnel.

Thanks to Jonathan Herrick for sharing their advice and opinion in this post. Jonathan is co-founder, chief sales officer, chief marketing officer, and chief high-fiver of Hatchbuck, an all-in-one sales and marketing platform. His extensive experience in digital marketing and sales strategies has been a driving factor in growing Hatchbuck’s sales by over 2,000 percent.

Contributer : Smart Insights