How to Increase Demo Requests From Your Website

TL;DR: It's usually about your messaging, not CRO tactics

Demo requests are the holy grail of B2B websites. How do you increase them?

9 times out of 10, the answer won’t be tactical CRO moves. Changing the colour of a button isn't going to get prospects to talk to your sales team. Neither will changing the CTA text from "schedule a call" to "get a demo”.

The TLDR is that demo requests are almost always about messaging or product-market fit. But to be sure, first check the following:

Is traffic to your product pages growing? It’s extremely rare for a prospect to read a blog post and then immediately ask to talk to sales. A lead that ends up requesting a demo will usually pass through a handful of ‘core’ webpages - your homepage, pricing page, product/features, etc. You need to find ways to increase this type of traffic, not just top-line website visits.

Is the traffic relevant? Sources such as display advertising or one-off PR hits can inflate visitor metrics. A user that wasn’t relevant in the first place - wrong persona, wrong geo, not looking to buy - will stay irrelevant, and cannot be fixed by more efficient or more aggressive marketing.

Are there any obvious UX issues? Again, forget the colour of the button - can people actually find the demo request on your site if they look for it? Are you funnelling them to that conversion path, or is most of your website telling them to do something else like download a report?

If you’ve checked all of these and they seem okay, then…

It’s a messaging problem. If you’re getting relevant traffic to the right pages but no high intent conversions, the problem is almost always going to be your messaging. Your website is simply not convincing users to hand over their personal details and wilfully enter a sales process.

Technically you can call this a copywriting issue, but really you need to think about it from a sales perspective:

• Do people understand what your product does? How long does it take them to understand?

• Are you clearly communicating the value of your product? Are you clearly pointing to a pain your prospect has right now, and explaining how you solve it?

• Are you differentiating yourself from everything else that’s out there?

• Are you inspiring confidence in your solution and your team?

• Are you anticipating and handling objections correctly?

These types of questions don’t inform just the headline on your website. They should be at the heart of your go to market strategy. Not getting demo requests is a symptom that your current answers are wrong.

As long as your product is actually useful for someone, messaging issues can be fixed; my point is that the solution is more likely to be strategic rather than tactical.