Not necessarily a four minute demo. Experience has shown us that throwing too much into your demo only leads to information overload and loses an audience pretty quickly. There are several things that you can do to improve your chances of success. Here are four things to remember:

1. Your demo is meant to engage, not close the sale. A demo is meant to convince the audience that they need to take action, be it calling a sales rep or following a link for more information. You don’t need to give them all the information, just make them aware that they would benefit from finding out more. Keep in mind that there is nothing wrong with including a deeper level of information right in the demo through navigation. Its usage can even be tracked so you can be informed on what information your audience is finding most valuable.

2. Organize your material so that the audience gets a quick sense of what information is contained within the demo. In the first ten seconds the viewer should be able to know the main points that are going to be covered. I’m sure you’ve heard the latest, “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them.” Yes, repetition is important for retention, but only when it’s organized and intentional. Common repetition side effects are drowsiness, lost leads, and sometimes nausea.

3.  Get to the point. Many demos belabor the point that they understand their audience’s business and spend one to two minutes just explaining the current problem. Most of the time, the audience is well aware of their problems and spending too much time talking about them just stirs their frustration rather than peaking their interest. Let the audience know that you understand the problem and quickly get to the solution.

4. More than ever, people want control, or at least a false sense of it. Be sure to build in some sort of clear navigation if a demo needs to be longer than a few minutes. Be sure to title your navigation something besides intro, solution, and conclusion. This tells the audience nothing. Use the navigation to give the viewer a way to identify what they are going to see and why they should continue to watch. A slider bar is also a nice way to give your audience control. Be sure to add clear graphics and text on screen for key points so, as they quickly drag through, they still get the message.

I love comfort food — the familiar flavors, simple ingredients, and all that food on the plate! According to food trend experts, comfort food is IN. Bonny Wolf, food commentator for NPR, states that food trends in 2009 are “colored by the economic recession”. She adds, “We’re in uncertain times, and this is the time when we crave comfort food.”

So what does comfort food have to do with flash product demos, the meat and potatoes of your marketing toolkit? Three words come to mind “Comfort, Simplicity and Value.”

Comfort

Like the rich flavors my nana simmered into every pot of chowder she made from simple ingredients, a product demo has to be more than a sequence of bland screenshots and voice over track pieced together. Instead, it is a seasoned recipe including branding elements, on-screen messaging and supporting imagery. These elements come together with sound and motion to communicate the features and functions of your product and express the unique flavor of your company establishing credibility, competence, and familiarity.

Simplicity

Restaurants are serving up simple, home-style dishes like pasta with meat sauces or meatloaf with mashed potatoes to ease diners back to their tables. These uncomplicated dishes serve up plenty of flavor while saving prep time and costs. CGI sees Marketing and Product Managers craving simplicity as they shoulder more responsibilities and fewer resources. Our flash demo template solution offers a simple process, saving time and money. The result: a compelling product demo in formats compatible for tradeshow use, online broadcasting, and socializing on the web.

Value

In college, breakfast at the Shawmut Diner was my favorite meal of the week and worth every penny at $6.99! The huge quantity of good food beyond satisfied my hunger at a price that would make my Nana proud. Designed to be scalable, with source files as part of the fixed price, makes the solution like ordering the Breakfast Special! With the ability for Google Analytics to be cooked right in, your can track your investment.

I guess you could say our new Flash product demo template solution is comfort food for savvy marketers looking for value without sacrificing quality or effectiveness. Check out some samples of recent demo we have created using our fixed-priced, template solution and tell us what you think.

Website content management tools have been evolving for years (and years). As we posted before, building your website on a CMS platform is an excellent choice in most cases. It is critical for our clients to update their sites constantly to keep them not only relevant, but also ahead of their competition. And, our clients are filling more roles than ever with less time, so – it better be easy to do.

Our CMS allows clients to have a custom website design, that is super-easy to update. The best part is the price. Because we didn’t re-invent the wheel when developing our CMS the development time is reasonable and so are the budgets. The technology is not proprietary, it’s based on existing open source code and widely used languages like PHP, so there are no ongoing fees or complicated hosting changes.

CGI’s CMS isn’t for every company, but its easy to use, easy to build onto and you’ll see very quickly why our clients love it.