Huggies Australia — content marketing genius?
When you think about nappies, what brands come to mind?
For me, Huggies is top of mind. It’s been around for as long as I can remember and is synonymous with nappies.
And Huggies.com.au is absolutely nailing the content marketing game.
Just look at their entry in a Google SERP for ‘huggies’:
This is the non truncated page title: “Baby Information, Parenting Advice, Nappies and Pregnancy Tips — Huggies”
Notice how nappies isn’t the primary focus? It’s the 2nd last item in the page title. As a reader, you can expect Baby Info, Parenting Advice, Pregnancy Tips and oh yeah, nappies.
This is what their other country websites look like:
Only Huggies South Africa seems to come close in terms of focus. Their India and Singapore sites have a different approach as can be seen by their meta data.
Now check out the nav menu on the Huggies.com.au homepage:
If you’re visiting the website just for product info or to actually buy nappies online, there’s a clear CTA by way of a big red ‘BUY HUGGIES ONLINE’ button (which takes you to huggies.com.au/nappies)
Even the Products link in the menu goes to the above landing page. It’s a decent landing page that’s geared to make it easy to buy Huggies nappies online by helping you choose the right type based on age and weight of your baby.
But let’s get back to the content marketing side of things. Huggies is all about nappies but they know that there’s only so much you can do and say when it comes to nappies. Normally you have to tap into your end user and resonate with them but how do you do that with babies? Fun cartoon characters and speaking in a baby voice aren’t going to cut it!
So they looked at the primary user of their nappies and decided to rewind the clock quite literally. And focus on parents!
Going back to basics with content
They start off with “Getting Pregnant” which goes back to basics and explains everything related to conception from fertility and getting pregnant with conditions like PCOS and Endometriosis to pregnancy tests, ovulation and alternative options like IVF. I like that the top of the page mentions a new product and then immediately below it is an email sign up form. There’s an added incentive to sign up (prize draw for a 6 month supply of nappies). They know their information is highly valuable but they’re not going to miss an opportunity to sign people up for their email newsletter. Because their email sign up form is on every other page too: Pregnancy (next step), Birth, Baby, Toddler. These sections follow the logical progression of things from getting pregnant to actually raising a child (up to the toddler era).
Each section after ‘Getting Pregnant” is chock full of the important information every parent (or soon to be parent) needs to know. Huggies is an authority when it comes to nappies, so why wouldn’t they be an authority on this sort of thing? They have made sure the content touches as many different elements of parenting as possible by being easy to understand and find.
Look at the Parenting section. As any parent knows, parenting isn’t easy and there’s so much to learn along the way. This section covers fitness for both mums and dads (dad bods are out!), child safety (super super important and something you can easily overlook as a new parent!) and there’s a great amount of tips on schooling, step-parenting, kids parties, traveling with kids, the ‘dreaded’ toilet training and so much more. I’m not a parent but I know that if I need information, I’ll come to this website. I could easily go to the plethora of parenting websites out there too but if I’m buying Huggies for my babies, I’m bound to come back to the Huggies website to learn more. The sheer breadth and depth of content is quite amazing when you think about it! Here’s part of the Parenting section so you get a feel for the detail:
Cross promotion like your life depends on it
The trick with content marketing is not to forget about your product or service. Huggies makes sure there are plenty of links and product shots throughout their content. They aren’t leaving things to chance by expecting you’ll just scroll up and click the big red button to buy, which is really the end goal. They’re feeding you with golden nuggets of advice then throwing in product hints to buy. This is smart content marketing that isn’t leaving any money on the table.
It’s not for everyone
Not everyone can pull this off the way Huggies has. This feels very natural and in sync with the brand and something that could be a lot harder for fast food brands or tobacco companies. McDonald’s has been an Olympic sponsor since 1976 (first got involved in 1968) and I’ve always questioned this, given the negative sentiment around its food which has a global perception of unhealthiness and this association with the biggest athletic event in the world. If Maccas started dishing out fitness and nutrition advice on its website as part of content marketing efforts, that’d be a joke. Side note: McDonald’s has ended its relationship with the Olympics to focus on its core business (which is either burgers or real estate, depending on who you talk to!). My point still stands: don’t try to do something that doesn’t make sense in your niche, unless you want to alienate your customers and get them looking like:
Content Marketing Genius
Whoever thought about looking beyond just talking about nappies and how great Huggies is, deserves an award. This is the sort of excellence in content marketing that brands dream about and us marketers aspire towards. Well done Huggies.com.au — these are #contentmarketinggoals (I’m making this a thing, just go with it). And yes, it’s content marketing genius!
A few final points:
- Their SEO is solid too. Well optimised page titles, meta descriptions and H tags along with great internal linking and what appears to be optimised imagery. The site loads quickly enough for me on different connections.
- David Fuller on twitter pointed out that there’s a much bigger picture with capturing emails on the Huggies website..like knowing the age of a child and who their parents are. Something that’s definitely for another topic and for another blog post!
- Pampers are probably their biggest competitors and they’re doing a very comparable job with content marketing too. That’s for another blog post though.
Let me know what you think. Did you find this interesting?
Get a website audit from me and say hello to SEO services that will make you own your niche.
Originally published at Jaaved Khatree.
