🛑 Stop Showing Off
Hello! Adam Thornhill here. ‘The Podcast Guy’ saving you 10 hours a week.
Enjoy the 167th Podup, with special thanks to ChatGPT Consulting - a proven 4-week program to transform your team’s productivity and creativity.
Today, you’ll learn about reverse demos thanks to Marketing Against The Grain.
Demos are often one-sided, with companies showing off their product’s features. But what if you flipped the script?
Kipp Bodnar introduces the reverse demo - a powerful tool to uncover blind spots in your product and create stickier workflows.
Watch, don’t show
If you’re trying to build a self-serve product, don’t demo your product to customers.
Instead, your customer should share their screen and sign up to your product.
You get to see all the buttons they click, and more importantly, the buttons they don't click, and you can ask them about it.
Your reverse demo becomes a user interview at the same time.
Then right after the call, you can give those learnings to your engineering team.
Kipp Bodnar
How to make demos stick
Don’t just show them features, because they’ll likely forget what you show them.
You should take them through their daily workflows so they've actually done what they need to do on a recurring basis.
This builds muscle memory.
Kipp Bodnar
Why it matters
The reverse demo shifts the focus from showcasing your product to understanding how customers actually use it. Here’s why that’s so important:
Identify friction points. Users will instinctively avoid confusing or unnecessary features. Pay attention to what they skip and where they hesitate.
Build products that resonate. These insights are your roadmap for building features that people actually use, not what you think they’ll love.
Boost retention with muscle memory. Walking users through their daily workflows ensures they’ll leave the demo with habits that stick, not just a vague idea of what your product does.
Next steps
Run your first reverse demo to uncover the truth about your product:
Highlight aha moments. Identify where users get excited or feel a sense of accomplishment. Focus on amplifying these moments in your product to create stickier experiences.
Track unintended paths. Notice when users interact with your product in unexpected ways. These detours often reveal missing features or confusing design elements.
Identify dead zones. What features do users consistently ignore? This can inform decisions to improve, repurpose, or remove them entirely.
Follow the first 3 clicks. Analyze a user’s initial clicks after signing up. The first few actions often reveal whether your onboarding is intuitive or overwhelming.
Prioritize quick wins. Immediately share actionable insights with your team. Fix the most obvious issues first to create an immediate impact.
Your thoughts
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