NERD REPORT #64
How to state the obvious: post-purchase DIY content has a huge impact on the customer journey.
Because that’s when your customers are going to, you know, do something with the product. And their experience can be the defining moment of how they feel about your brand.
If all goes well, you’ll build brand loyalty, invite word-of-mouth recommendations, earn rave reviews, and maybe even give rise to a lifelong, pro bono brand ambassador.
If the experience falls flat, brace for getting spammed with one-star reviews, burned by viral “nightmare UX” rants, and ceding market share to your more user-friendly competition.
All to say, it’s clearly important to get this often overlooked and underdeveloped part of the customer journey right. How?
1.
The look and feel of DIY content should be as true to the user experience as possible. Of course, it should look professional and consistent with your brand’s other touchpoints—lending the content some official “we know what we’re talking about” legitimacy. But the key here is real-life-look-and-feel authenticity.
FrogTape, a global leader in high-performance painter’s tape, needed how-tos for their new FrogTape reMOVEables wall-mounting solutions that reflected the brand’s tech-forward excellence in a variety of real life (and really useful) situations.
2.
There’s real, sustainable value in making your customer feel competent. So, yes, make your DIY content engaging and on-brand—but first, make it easy to follow and replicate. A useful approach to achieve this is to detach yourself from your 24/7 brand brain and view your content from the perspective of a newbie who has never, say, applied a rich amber wood stain to an antique armoire.
Which just so happened to be Minwax’s goal: educating and empowering customers to confidently bring out the natural beauty of wood with America’s #1 selling brand of interior stains and clears.
3.
DIY content isn’t a one and done exercise. It’s more useful to envision it as chapters in a book in a library of everything a customer could need to use and love and buy more of your products. So, think holistically. Consider new and upcoming features, additional (and maybe related) products, software updates, additional use cases, and addressing the most frequent of your FAQs.
For GE Lighting, the list of useful applications is literally off the charts. Which means thoughtfully adding to a living library of on-brand DIY content that inspires, educates, aids in safe installation, and offers useful tips for their many helpful products.
The big takeaway here? Investing in quality post-purchase, DIY content is a smart way to sustain and extend the customer journey. Giving DIYers a good reason to keep looping back for another trip down your brand’s boulevard.
And if you need a partner who loves creating authentic, easy, and big-picture-relevant DIYs, we’re more than ready to, you know, do it together.