How to Run a Successful Demo

Brands spend a lot of money on demos, but very few implement processes to measure the ROI from that demo to see if it makes sense to continue to run them for their brand.

This post is going to outline how to run a successful demo program for your brand and what pitfalls to avoid.

In the early days, when you are the only employee, it’s important that you are the one doing the demos.

You understand how to serve your product, which questions to ask, and most importantly, how to get them to buy the product. The important thing to remember as you scale is that your results as the founder are not translatable to anyone else. If you hire a sales associate or an external demo team, you need to understand, that in most cases they won’t replicate your results, and that is just fine.

As a brand, you want to do demos early on so that you can create a guide for best practices and begin to develop the framework for what are good results and what are bad results.

Most demos serve one purpose in the eyes of a brand/founder and that is to drive incremental sales for your brand at a specific retailer. Although this is correct, with technology, you should be able to get more than just a momentary sales lift.

We are going to cover how to maximize demos and how demos are also a great opportunity to capture valuable insights from your consumer.

The basics for a demo are simple…

Here is an image from a demo I did years ago when I was just starting out in the industry. It’s ok, I think I would rate it a C+, but there are definitely ways that it can be upgraded.

• Product - Make sure you have plenty of product and that you have merchandized it in a clean way for the customer.

• Swag - If you have it and you can part with it, swag is a great giveaway item that also helps people pull the trigger on buying. It is also a great item for the store staff, they can be walking billboards for your brand in-store. You also want to make sure that you are swagged out for the demo.

• Signage - Make sure people understand your brand and the key callouts.

• (Optional) - Take away Information - Postcards, one-pagers, etc are great, but most consumers are just going to throw them away and it’s going to distract from the product. This is something I should have removed from this demo.

• Serving utensils and plates/cups - This is an obvious one, but make sure you're making it easy for people to feel safe about eating your product.

The biggest mistake I made here was putting the samples in front of the product and allowing people to just take it themselves.

This provided me with little to no opportunity to actually speak with the customer and tell them about the brand. YOU CONTROL THE DEMO. This is your domain, you are the demo sherpa here to guide them on their journey.

When the samples are behind the product, it forces the consumer to engage (it is also much more sanitary). You can now serve the customer after you speak about the brand and increase your ability to convert them into a customer.

As your brand grows, it is going to be hard for you to do the demo or even an internal staff member, you are going to be faced with a handful of decisions on how to approach your demo strategy.

The biggest pitfall I see brands make here is when it comes to store-ran demos. These are line items on a retailers trade spend deck where you can sign up for a number of demos for X$ and the store will run the demo for you.

Please, I am begging you, don’t do this.

You are going to have some 85-year-old man from the deli department speaking to customers about your functional sparkling beverage and it’s going to be a trainwreck. I am sure Gary from the deli department is a great guy, but he isn’t your customer and he doesn’t represent your brand.

You have to either build out a demo team or outsource it. Building out a field team that also handles demos is not usually an option for emerging brands, so they will turn to demo companies.

The prices can run anywhere from $150-$300 for a 2-3 hour demo. You need to make sure that the demo company is employing people who are inside your target demo and that you can train them beforehand. You also need to outfit them in swag and ensure they are excited about the brand.

I love demo companies that employ actors, they do a great job of hyping up your brand and you can trust them to represent your brand in a good light.

You also need a demo company that is going to provide you with all the sales metrics and feedback they collected after.

• How many people did they talk to?

• How many units did they sell?

• What was the feedback?

• What was the most requested flavor?

• What hesitations did consumers have?

All of this information is valuable.

The biggest issue though is that this qualitative feedback is usually inputted in a form second hand by the demo provider after the demo. It’s a game of telephone by the time it makes it to you and the insights are not going to be very actionable.

You are also losing the customer after an interaction with them or even after they purchase. Some brands will have an email signup list, but the engagement is pretty low.

We are seeing brands having success using WeStock during a demo (there are plenty of other options as well). They are creating a QR code that links to our consumer feedback page so that they are capturing those insights and the customer’s information in real time.

They are also providing an SMS keyword for the customer so they can access a deal for that item.

Here is our good friend Alejandro from Toma. He has a sign that tells the customer to text a Toma to a WeStock-assigned number. From here the customer gets an offer (in this case a BOGO), then they upload their receipt and fill out a post-purchase survey.

This is great because:

• Your brand gets a full ring sale at the register

• You get the customers number, email, and feedback

• The customer gets a redeemed quickly via Venmo or PayPal

We have also seen a lot of brands (especially beer, wine, and spirit brands) use their demos as consumer activation events for their online audience. Don’t just assume people are going to stop by your table at the store organically, instead notify your online audience about the tasting event and get them to the store. I love this approach!

There are plenty of tools out there, but it is critical to not just schedule and run demos, hoping they work, instead, you need to be intentional in your approach.

To summarize:

• You need to be the one running demos in the early days

• Never outsource your demos to the store

• Train the outsourced demo team yourself and make sure they reflect your brand values

• Make sure your table and demo setup reflects your brand

• Bring swag for the store staff

• Make sure you have a data partner that enables you to collect customer information during the demo

• Enrich your demo with a promotion

I hope this was helpful and I look forward to everyone selling a bunch of product this summer during your next demo!