Not making a demo is absolutely the primary mistake deep tech startups make. Product page is littered with words like Revolutionary, Smart, Simple, Powerful, Empowering, Automates xy work, Next generation, Saves time / money / planet / whales.
And what do your prospective buyers see? They see the same lingo as they see on 90% of landing pages. Toothpaste landing pages use them. Yeah, that’s right, you market your deep tech like they market toothpaste.
If you are lucky enough to spark some interest, maybe they will make an effort to try to figure out what you actually do. And usually they find nothing.
You created a copy that is general enough to “cover” all the possible customers, have a few images of happy smiling people doing “some kind of undefined work” and that is it. You better have some pretty good sales people doing the hard work, cause marketing pumped hyper growth is not going to be in your company’s future.
What should you do then?
Show your tech in action!
- Pick a client type (Yes it’s hard. But do it, be specific).
- Pick some issue that your client has and you solve it with your tech.
- Simplify the issue. Simplify it more. And some more.
- OK, now implement a small and simple system that has that issue and apply your tech to it.
The first thing your visitors should see on your landing page is
“We help (X) do (Y) by doing (Z)”, and right after that a link to a demo: “Let me show you how”.
You can cover one or more industries like that. Create a few demos. Let the user pick an industry that they are interested in.
Show, don’t tell!