Your "Book a Demo" button is losing conversions

When a prospect is on your website, they often have a specific problem they are looking to solve. They've discovered your product and they are at the awareness / education stage of the funnel. Book a demo forms that appear after a “Request a Demo” button and have over 5 fields can see bounce rates as high as 67%, according to Formstack. 

So, while your "book a demo" or ”request a demo” button is intending to solve their next immediate need (trying the product out), it actually ends up being a high-friction next step for someone who is only in the early stages of the buying process.

Or even worse, when a company uses a call-to-action like "try it now", “try for free” or “start a trial” but the link leads to a form, prospects find this "trick" extremely disappointing. This is typically accompanied by a very high bounce rate from your trial booking form.

When they interact with these buttons, the buyer’s intent is at an all-time high, what they’re saying is:

"I like what you're offering so much that I'd be willing to try it right now."

So they click on the link and are presented with a form which offers them:

1. A delay to their next goal (trying your platform out)
2. A social and time commitment that they might not want or need in order to purchase your product
3. In some cases (often it's just the form!), a walk-through video or screenshot that doesn't actually involve them getting to try and feel your SaaS product for themselves.

None of the outcomes listed above are as effective as the prospect trying the product out immediately, even though plenty of businesses want to put this blocker in place.

Is there an alternative to a “Book a demo” button?

A lot of marketers can feel a bit stuck, particularly if your organization isn’t a PLG (Product Led Growth) company and there is generally some hesitation to these types of initiatives. Even if you are a PLG style company you can use these ideas to increase your conversion rate by up to 1.7x.

1. Interactive product demos
2. Pre-recorded webinars
3. Instant booking links
4. Free trial
5. Better booking forms.

Let’s take a look at each of these alternatives.

Interactive product demos

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Prospects who decide to click on the "Book a demo", "Request a demo" or "Try it now" buttons will generally fit into two categories:

1. They want a sales call: Use an interactive demo to give them an immediate result while the call gets arranged. This gets them excited for the call, and gives your sales function breathing room to perfect the pitch.
2. They are more interested in self-assessing product fit: Use an interactive demo to give them that self-assessment opportunity and progress them more quickly to the next stage of the sales cycle.

You can craft something that answers the fundamental question “Does your product do what you say it does?” and responds to their immediate need to understand your product better. 

This could be enough to close the deal, or at the very least it carries them through to the call with a richer understanding of what you offer and makes that call even more productive. Most importantly, in both situations, you are increasing the velocity of your sales funnel.

Funnel velocity refers to the speed at which potential customers move through different stages of a sales or marketing funnel, from initial awareness to conversion. It is a metric used to measure the effectiveness of a company's sales and marketing efforts in converting leads into customers.

Crafting a demo, or collection of demos that work for every inbound prospect isn't easy (we're happy to help you though!).

The demo calls delivered by your sales team and prepared and maintained by sales enablement are an excellent starting point to understanding how you can cater to different prospect requirements.

Pre-recorded webinars

Pre-recorded webinars offer a low-friction way to introduce prospects to your product while respecting their pace in the decision-making process.

At this stage, buyers are usually researching solutions, comparing features, and assessing which platforms best align with their needs. A pre-recorded webinar allows them to educate themselves without feeling pressured by sales calls or immediate commitments.

Why pre-recorded webinars work

Pre-recorded webinars provide an opportunity to showcase your product in action, allowing prospects to see how it solves the problems they’re trying to address.

Unlike live webinars, pre-recorded ones are available on-demand, giving them the flexibility to watch at their convenience. This non-intrusive, self-service approach makes them ideal for those in the awareness or consideration stages of the buying process.

By answering common questions through Q&A sections and demonstrating use cases, pre-recorded webinars address objections and reservations before a live demo is scheduled. This makes your eventual one-on-one conversations more targeted and reduces friction in the sales funnel.

Best practices for pre-recorded webinars

1. Concise and Focused Content: Keep your webinars under 30 minutes. Focus on the key features, benefits, and solutions that align with your target audience’s pain points.
2. Clear Call-to-Actions (CTAs): End with a strong CTA, such as “Book a demo now” or “Start your free trial.” These CTAs should direct the viewer to the next logical step without overwhelming them with too many options.
3. Supplement with Additional Resources: Provide a leave-behind interactive product demo, downloadable guides, whitepapers, or case studies that further engage prospects and nurture them through the funnel.

Suggested platforms

1. Demio: Known for its simplicity, Demio allows marketers to create both live and pre-recorded webinars. The platform offers interactive features like polls and handouts, even for pre-recorded sessions, making the webinar feel more engaging.
2. EverWebinar: This platform is specifically built for automated, evergreen webinars. It lets you schedule replays to appear as if they are live, increasing engagement while reducing effort.
3. Zoom: While more commonly known for live meetings, Zoom’s webinar feature allows for on-demand recordings. It’s ideal if you already use Zoom for other business purposes and want to centralize webinar management.

By utilizing pre-recorded webinars, you enable prospects to learn about your product in a way that feels natural and non-pressured, increasing the likelihood they’ll progress further down the funnel at their own pace.

Instant booking links

Instant booking links offer a simple yet effective way to streamline your demo scheduling process. Rather than directing prospects to a traditional “Request a Demo” form that can feel like a barrier, instant booking links allow them to self-schedule a demo directly into your calendar. This method provides immediate gratification for the prospect while increasing the likelihood of a successful conversion.

Why instant booking links are effective

When a prospect is ready to take the next step, they don’t want to wait for follow-up emails or phone calls to confirm availability. Instant booking links eliminate these delays, making the process seamless. By giving prospects control over when they meet with your team, you cater to their preferences, reducing friction and enhancing user experience.

Instant booking links also increase efficiency for your sales team. With the ability to automatically sync with your calendar, you reduce back-and-forth communication and improve the speed at which leads progress through the funnel. This is especially beneficial for high-volume inbound marketing strategies where automation can help scale personal interactions.

Best practices for instant booking links

1. Ensure Calendar Availability: Ensure that the calendar you connect is updated in real-time. Block off internal meetings or non-working hours to avoid overbooking.
2. Offer Multiple Time Zones: Make it easy for prospects in different time zones to book by displaying availability in their local time.
3. Set Expectations: Include a brief description of what the demo will cover to set clear expectations about the value they will receive.
4. Send resources and material ahead of the meeting to improve qualification: By sharing a product demo beforehand using HowdyGo, you can improve qualification and ensure that your call is an effective use of everyone's time.

Suggested platforms

1. Calendly: A user-friendly platform, Calendly integrates with various calendar systems (Google, Office 365, Outlook) and allows prospects to schedule meetings instantly. It offers features like buffer times between meetings and automatic timezone detection, making scheduling more efficient.
2. HubSpot: If you’re already using HubSpot for your CRM and email marketing, its meeting scheduling tool offers a built-in solution. It allows prospects to book demos directly from emails, landing pages, or even chatbots.
3. Reclaim.ai: Another user-friendly platform with a wide variety of features to make it easier to slot these meetings into your calendar. 

By using instant booking links, you reduce the back-and-forth communication that often delays the demo scheduling process. Prospects who are ready to engage can move forward quickly, improving your chances of converting them into customers.

Free trial

A well put-together free trial is a highly effective tool for inbound opportunities. The problem is that designing a free trial to lead to conversions is a lot of work. Believe me, HowdyGo has a free trial, and we have spent a lot of time improving the pathway to conversion. A substantial amount of time and energy needs to go into this experience to make it effective.

Your product might be too complex for a free trial

Dropping a prospect into your platform without a guide can lead to a negative perception of your offering. This is particularly the case when the product is:

• Very complex
• Utilizes data that might not exist yet
• Requires a lot of knowledge about the problem-space
• Needs configuration, team members or users on-boarded

Creating sandbox environments is difficult

Development and engineering teams would love to have a solution for their marketing and sales function that shows off what they are building. The challenge with this is that it can be extremely complicated to create a demo environment that effectively demonstrates the platform for a wide variety of reasons. We've encountered a few of these issues in our time:

1. Dashboards & Data: Fake data is very difficult to generate on an ongoing basis, but for enterprise applications this is often the most valuable thing you can present. Having a cohesive narrative to that data is even more challenging.
2. Authentication: Creating simplified ways of accessing your platform is the antithesis of security. The security team within your engineering function can find it very challenging to find the commercial balance to providing access to the app, without effectively removing some very valid and necessary constraints on access to your system.
3. Ongoing Maintenance: How do you reset the sandbox, when does that occur, is it every day, week, month? This needs to be automated/set-and-forget, but doing that requires even more development time. Even if you do automate it, how do you make sure the maintenance is being kept in lock-step with the application as it changes over time? It's really, really easy to accidentally break your sandbox environment.
4. On-boarding Tutorial Tooltips: Once you've solved the challenges above, providing context to those new users is really important. You could implement a series of onboarding tooltips to improve the experience, but this requires more development time and requires your engineering team to include the product marketing function in the development process on an on-going basis. Otherwise, your tooltips can end up out-of-sync or worse, removed unintentionally because there is a need to change the underlying UI/UX.

Better book a demo forms

A well-designed “Book a Demo” form is crucial for capturing high-intent leads without introducing unnecessary friction. Unfortunately, many companies rely on forms that are long, tedious, or poorly optimized, resulting in high bounce rates and low conversion rates. The key to creating a more effective demo form is to make it as intuitive and painless as possible.

Why booking forms often have low conversion rates

Forms that ask for too much information upfront tend to scare off prospects. If your form requires filling out detailed company profiles, budgets, or project timelines, it can overwhelm users who are simply looking to learn more about your product.

Additionally, forms that don’t provide immediate confirmation or next steps leave prospects wondering what will happen next, reducing their likelihood of continuing engagement.

Best practices for better “Book a Demo” forms

1. Keep It Short: Ask for only the most critical information - Realistically this is probably just their name and their email address.
   According to a study by HubSpot, reducing the number of form fields from 4 to 3 increases form conversions by 50%. This reduces friction and increases form completion rates. You can gather more detailed information in follow-up communication.
2. Provide Immediate Feedback: Use dynamic form fields that display confirmation messages or progress indicators to let users know their submission has been received.
3. Offer Value Right Away: Upon submission, provide instant access to valuable resources, such as a product tour or a whitepaper. This keeps the prospect engaged and excited about your product before the demo.

Suggested platforms

1. Typeform: Known for its clean, conversational design, Typeform makes forms feel more engaging. Its customizable templates allow you to ask relevant questions and present them one at a time, reducing overwhelm.
2. Formstack: This platform specializes in creating forms that integrate seamlessly with your CRM, allowing you to streamline data collection and follow-ups.
3. Leadformly: Designed specifically for lead generation, Leadformly offers optimized templates and lead capture features that make it easier to track where prospects are in the funnel.

By simplifying your “Book a Demo” form and providing immediate value, you’ll keep prospects engaged and increase the chances that they’ll move forward with scheduling a demo.