What is a Deminar, and How to Host One to Boost Sales?

Sales reps spend over 12 hours a week in meetings, according to the 2022 Sales Happiness Index report by Dooly. If the majority of those calls are demos, that means they repeat the same pitch for one-third of their working hours.

There’s a more effective way of doing sales calls to optimize your time and conversions as a salesperson. Deminars combine the best of webinars and demo calls, for you to get your prospects to convert without repeating yourself over and over.

For this article, we spoke to Jennifer Owen, Account Executive at Livestorm, to get her expert insight on deminars: what they are, how to prepare one, and how to choose the right software to host them.

Table of contents:

• What is a deminar?
• Why are deminars used in customer onboarding?
• How can you host a successful virtual deminar (and impress your customers)?
• How can you choose the right video engagement platform for your deminar?
• Should you do demo calls at scale?
• Frequently asked questions about deminars

What is a Deminar?

A deminar is a product demonstration and webinar combined. They’re a great way of helping users to get to know your products and services and teaching them how to use complex tools.

Deminars attract bigger audiences than demos, so it can be challenging to meet the different use cases and requirements of every attendee. If you have a complex offering with many different use cases, you should offer smaller deminars for segmented customer groups.

What’s the difference between a deminar and a webinar?

In short, deminars can be considered a subcategory of webinars. They both involve someone doing a presentation to a large group of people, but deminars also include a demo element.

“A webinar is a way of getting information to a large group of people, [usually] more than 10,” says Jennifer Owen, Account Executive and Product Expert at Livestorm. “A demo is a one-on-one call where I share my screen and try to explain to customers specifically what our product does.”

A deminar sits in between a webinar and a demo, and typically involves delivering a standardized product presentation to a large group. But deminars and webinars can also differ in primary audience, purpose, and types.

Deminars:

• Primary audience: someone who has an understanding of their problem and have the intention of buying your solution or a similar one
• Purpose: getting people closer to converting (they can be top or bottom of the funnel)
• Types of deminar: product demonstration to a large group of people

Webinars:

• Primary audience: someone who wants to learn about a particular topic and might or might not end up purchasing a solution
• Purpose:
  • Create brand awareness
  • Position your brand as an expert
  • Get more leads and encourage marketing conversions
  • Webcasts or any form of live streams
• Types of webinar: Town Halls, thought leadership presentations, deminars, training, onboarding

3 Deminar formats to be aware of

Deminars can be presented in different formats depending on your sales strategy

1. Live: run live webinars for product demonstrations or virtual sales meetings with an audience. Have everyone connected at the same time and answer questions in real time.
2. Hybrid: have a part of the meeting previously recorded like the product walkthrough and then offer a live Q&A.
3. Pre-recorded: record the complete deminar and post it on your website as evergreen content for users to access it on-demand.

Can deminars be used for virtual sales?

Deminars are a great virtual selling asset that can be used at two different funnel stages:

• Deminars as a lead magnet: this happens when you have potential customers researching products like yours and they stumble upon your deminar because you’re advertising it online. In that case, the deminar makes these people enter the funnel but might not be the reason why they close the deal.
• Deminars as bottom of the funnel: this happens when your prospects have already had some touchpoint and have gone through the sales process that the sales team planned for them. These prospects are ready to convert and have the deminar as the last step in the sales funnel.

Why are deminars used in customer onboarding?

Just like you need to onboard new hires to ensure that they have all the tools and information needed to do a good job, you need to make sure your new customers can understand how to use your platform. That way you ensure higher retention and customer engagement.

Deminars are an effective way to do customer onboarding because they allow you to walk users through your features and tools and answer all their frequent questions.

How can you host a successful virtual deminar (and impress your customers)?

If you’re hosting deminars you should:

1. Choose your video conferencing software
2. Create a product demo flow
3. Schedule the meeting
4. Include some focused customer training
5. Don’t forget the interactive elements to break the ice
6. Bring the energy and focus
7. Encourage questions from both ends
8. Ask for feedback
9. Keep to time
10. Share follow-up resources

Here’s how.

Choose your video conferencing software

The first thing you should do is pick the best video conferencing software for hosting your product demo. Look for a platform with customizable registration pages, engagement features like live polls, screen sharing, and built-in data analytics. Livestorm offers all this while hosting deminars for up to 3,000 attendees (more on the best software features later!).

Create a product demo flow

Your demonstration should follow a logical flow that a customer would follow when using your product. For example, at Livestorm, Jennifer Owen explains:

“We present the logical progression that a person who wants to join an event would follow."

1. How to create a landing page and have someone register
2. How we send a number of email reminders with the possibility of adding the event to their calendars
3. What happens on the day of the event after they've got everybody registered
4. Which features they can use to animate and make the event more engaging, use the features ourselves, and share our favorites
5. What type of data we collect from the presentation and what to do with it.

You should define what content goes under each one of your product demo steps and how to include them in the meeting flow. During this stage, you should also define how many people will be hosting the presentation.

Include some focused customer training

By definition, a deminar shows your customers how to use your product, so you can’t skip this step. When drafting the presentation flow, make sure you take time to include customer training and onboarding crucial steps. This is the best chance you have to show powerful features or tricky functionalities to ensure your customers get the most out of your platform.

Schedule the meeting

You can use apps like Calendly that sync to your calendar and let customers know at which time you’re available. Or you can offer them certain dates and times and build a registration page so they can choose from the different options.

If you’re using Livestorm to host your product demos, you can create as many registration pages as you need, but we’re still working on the calendar integration.

Don’t forget the interactive elements to break the ice

Keeping your audience engaged during virtual events will ensure they stick around until the end. To capture your audience’s attention, you should use interactive features such as

• Polls
• Q&As
• Chat box
• Emoji reactions
• In-video CTAs
• Screen and media sharing
• Engaging virtual backgrounds

All of these elements are good for interactivity, but shouldn’t replace a conversation. Allow your customers to speak directly to you, ask questions, and request a feature demonstration.

Bring the energy and focus

Selling depends partly on the product features, but a huge part of it is how engaging the sales rep is at each touchpoint. As a salesperson, you represent the company, so should always aim to make the session informative and entertaining.

“I like to throw a bit of humor in there,” says Jennifer Owen. “I mean, product demos are never the most fun session to attend. So if you can, make it a little bit fun, engaging, and human you're likely to be more successful."

Encourage questions from both ends

You should allow attendees to ask questions throughout or plan to have at least two blocks of Q&As. That way you can make sure you’re solving their questions in a timely way, instead of waiting until the end to answer a question they had in the first two minutes of the call.

You should also ask questions to the audience via live polls, to get to know more about them, their background, and how to tailor the presentation to meet their expectations.

Ask for feedback

There are two different types of feedback that you should request in any deminar

• One time at the beginning of the call: to understand what are the audience's expectations and which features they’d like to see in action.
• A second time at the end of each call: to gather insights on what to do better next time. Livestorm lets you create interactive polls or Typeforms to see what you can improve next time.

Keep to time

Deminars shouldn’t be too long, otherwise, it’ll be harder to get people to sign up and stay until the end. You should plan your deminar to last around 30 minutes. Make sure you start and finish on time to be respectful of everyone’s commitments to boost the chances that everyone will get to hear all the relevant information.

Share follow-up resources

A great way to continue the conversation with your prospects is by sending them an email afterward including

• A typeform feedback link
• The call recording
• More information about your product
• A direct point of contact

You could send a dummy account for them to test the platform in detail. This is also a good time to remind people about the CTA that you used during the call, for example, booking a video for sales with the team.

How can you choose the right video engagement platform for your deminar?

Choosing the right video engagement platform is crucial for having a smooth deminar creation and execution. You should make sure that you:

• Prioritize certain features
• Do your market research
• Try before you buy

Prioritize certain features

When you’re looking for a video engagement platform for hosting product demo videos, you should prioritize platforms that allow you to:

• Create registration pages that your customers can easily navigate
• Send automated email reminders before and after the meeting
• Minimize attendance barriers by using a browser-based platform
• Demonstrate a platform with simple screen sharing
• Invite attendees to participate using in-app features like polls, Q&A, and emoji reactions
• Get meeting attendees to click on in-video call to action (CTA) buttons
• Automatically record and save on-demand webinars or deminars
• Analyze attendees data to qualify leads
• Nuture those leads and store contact information with native CRM integrations

Do your market research

Before settling on a platform, you need to investigate

• The user’s needs: find out how your customers like to communicate, what tools they use already, and if they’re willing to adjust to a new one for this type of call. Maybe they would prefer a Zoom alternative because that platform feels too corporate.
• Product reviews: research what others are saying about your chosen platform and see if they have any concerning complaints or preferred features.

Try before you buy

The best way to know if a platform will be helpful for running your virtual sales calls is by testing it. Sign up for a free trial and get in touch with the sales department if you have any questions on how to use certain functionalities. Get some of the people from the sales department to test it out before making a purchasing decision.

Should you do demo calls at scale?

Virtual sales calls can risk feeling spammy and impersonal, but with the right preparation they’ll help you connect with large groups of people from anywhere in the world. Deminars are great for selling your products at scale and making the most out of virtuality.

Also, if you use a video conferencing platform that’s packed with interactive features like Livestorm, you can keep your audience engaged throughout the call and increase your chances of conversion.

With Livestorm, you can plan your product demo video from start to finish; creating registration pages, automatically recording your deminar, and reviewing the video engagement metrics after the event so you can easily continue working those leads.

Frequently asked questions about deminars

What is the purpose of a deminar?

The purpose of a deminar is to deliver a product presentation to a large audience, usually over ten people. They can be used either to bring prospective customers into the sales funnel or as a final step before converting.

What is an example of deminar?

Deminars are a mix between demo calls and webinars. Some examples of deminars can be hosting a live webinar with the content of a demo call to a large group of people who all have the same need: getting a new video conference platform with integrated analytics.

What are 3 recommendations for effective product demonstrations?

1. Get to know your audience
2. Define your value proposition
3. Write and practice your sales pitch