12 minute read time
Positively Good Marketing: The Honest Company
Positively Good Marketing is Campaign Monitor’s series at the intersection of marketing and social responsibility. Showcasing socially conscious companies whose missions center around bettering the world, PGM specifically studies how these companies’ digital marketing strategies—from email newsletters to Instagram posts—reflect and further their core values and initiatives.
We highlight how companies with socially responsible mission statements not only communicate their story and values through various digital marketing platforms but also how their marketing strategy brings in enough revenue to help them accomplish their goals.
After all, today’s consumers make buying decisions—including how much money they spend—based on a company’s initiatives and reputation as much as on the basis of their products.
By studying what these socially conscious companies get right, we will empower you with tools you can use to take control and improve your marketing game and make your goals a reality.
After all, when socially responsible companies succeed, so do the rest of us.
Introducing The Honest Company
The Honest Company, founded by Jessica Alba in 2012, focuses on creating safe and responsible products for babies and the homes they live in.
According to them, The Honest Company’s mission is “to empower people to live healthy, happy lives. We’re committed to creating effective, safe, delightful, accessible, responsible products.”
Who are they?
The Honest Company is a wellness brand, founded when a new mother couldn’t find safe household products that actually worked.
Now, The Honest Company sells everything from diapers to cleaning products, most recently launching a line of beauty products that meet the same stringent guidelines as the rest of their products.
They have a “No List” that contains over 3,000 chemicals they refuse to use, including chemicals banned by the EU, but also many, many more. They also test their products extensively to make sure every product is safe for every member of the family, including the most vulnerable.
Their mission
They strive to make products families can feel good about using in their homes, not only for the way these products take care of customers’ own families but also for the way The Honest Company’s products treat the earth. These products are free from toxic chemicals, true, and the company also ensures their products are created using renewable resources.
The Honest Company also focuses on transparency in their products, meaning that customers never have to wonder what they’re putting on their families’ bodies. As an added bonus, The Honest Company also ensures these safe products live up to their promises and actually work.
Positively good marketing:
Read on to discover what makes The Honest Company a great example of Positively Good Marketing.
1. Positively good branding
Every marketer knows that one of the best ways to bring in more leads and generate more revenue is to tell your brand’s story and cement a crystal clear identity in your customer’s mind.
The Honest Company keeps their story and their mission front and center in all of their marketing, from their social media to their website, but one way they do a stand-out job telling their story is through their website.
Transparency
In fact, while their homepage features bestsellers and recent updates above the fold, one doesn’t have to scroll far to see their mission statement and what it is that makes The Honest Company different from their competitors:
Source: The Honest Co.
But their dedication to transparency as they create products healthy for hearth and home doesn’t stop there.
Dedicated web pages
In addition to the quick rundown of their identity included on their homepage, The Honest Company also provides dedicated web pages that explain specific aspects of their company.
For instance, while their “Our Story” page explains the company’s origin, the “Honest Standards” page details the extensive process the company goes through to create their products.
Source: The Honest Co
It’s important to the company’s core values that customers can read exactly how they test their products to maintain their rigid safety standards.
These tests are clearly explained using accessible language so customers can feel good about the products they purchase. These web pages keep The Honest Company’s customers educated and up to date, bolstering their transparency—an important part of the brand’s identity.
Company-specific definitions
One of the most helpful things The Honest Company’s “Honest Standards” accomplishes is defining their “NO List,” i.e. the list of chemicals the company refuses to use in their products.
Because this list is specific to their company, clearly defining the list and how they determine which products are on it enables The Honest Company can discuss this unique aspect of their process across platforms and their customers know exactly what they mean.
2. Positively good content
Creating a consistent and friendly voice for your brand helps build loyalty and trust with your customers, ultimately leading to greater retention and more conversions over time.
This voice isn’t just your internal story, though that is part of it, but also what kind of images and content you produce and publish throughout your digital marketing platforms.
Coinciding with The Honest Company’s mission to provide safe and effective products for families, they consistently share positive, health-conscious content they know will resonate with their customers.
The content they produce not only pertains to the products they sell but also to their mission to empower and encourage parents and all health-conscious people through education.
Source: Honest Blog
Email marketing
For example, their welcome email—sent to people right after they’ve subscribed to the email list—includes a link to a blog post that explains the FDA’s ban of a chemical that’s been on The Honest Company’s no-list for years.
Source: The Honest Company
This content not only resonates with their consumers, who obviously have an interest in which chemicals can hurt their families, but it also serves to confirm The Honest Co as a front-runner and an authority in the health and wellness field.
Most importantly, it reassures consumers that the company won’t use chemicals that have even the potential for risk while also backing-up The Honest Co’s science.
Curated content
Their emails—along with their blog—share healthy recipes, time-saving hacks for busy parents, even design and beauty tips, all topics of interest to parents trying to lead healthy, balanced lives, including fathers.
Likewise, the colorful and bright images and graphics that The Honest Co uses throughout their digital marketing often feature happy babies, promoting their belief that healthy families mean happy families.
Source: Honest Company’s Instagram
In order to affirm The Honest Company’s position as an ally to their customers, they also intersperse lighthearted and encouraging messages amongst the rest of their content and promotions to help their customers feel engaged in a community.
All the content produced by The Honest Company—whether it’s in their emails or on their Instagram page—has a similar message: they’re in the business of happy babies, and happy babies mean happy families.
3. Positively good philanthropy
In their mission to support and provide for happy families, The Honest Company doesn’t just rely on their products and their positive messages to make the world a happier, healthier place.
They also give back to their communities by donating time and resources to various charities and initiatives that share their goals to help families in need and, through their marketing, they invite their customers to do the same.
Charity partnerships
The Honest Company partners with various charities that focus on providing resources to families and schools in order to make sure the company doesn’t just talk the talk but also walks the walk.
Though they often focus on giving back in their own communities, they also partner with charities committed to helping women and children around the globe.
Likewise, The Honest Company has partnered with the Mount Sinai Health System in New York to promote and sometimes even fund scientific research into the effect of environmental factors on children as well as adults.
Source: The Honest Company
Whether The Honest Company is donating diapers for babies in need or just donating man-hours to some of the various non-profits they partner with, they use their digital marketing to invite their customers—and prospective customers—to join alongside them in their efforts.
They manage this by announcing every new partnership or new accomplishment, such as the recent grant they funded, on their blog and their email updates, as well as on their social media channels.
By making these announcements and increasing their partners’ visibility, Honest enables their customers to research these groups and their causes on their own, and potentially to get involved.
Source: The Honest Co’s Instagram
By doing so, The Honest Company not only helps these charities extend their reach and do more good work, but Honest also encourages their customers to care about the same initiatives as they do. Being aligned on values ultimately makes them more likely to support Honest with their purchases.
The Honest Company’s commitment to families goes beyond selling quality products. By promoting these charities and accomplishments through their own digital marketing, The Honest Company recruits their customers to become a part of the fight to make the world a safer, healthier place.
4. Positively good revenue
Of course, marketing is also about bringing in revenue, even for companies trying to make the world a better place. After all, without revenue, The Honest Company wouldn’t be able to fund grants or continue their own research, which enables them to accomplish their mission.
Rewards for loyal customers
For Honest, optimizing their digital marketing for conversions means including special promo codes in their emails for their most loyal subscribers.
Source: The Honest Company
For instance, they offered a free Halloween tote to their current subscribers by giving them an exclusive promo code in their emails. Offering rewards to your most loyal subscribers and customers gives them a reason to stay devoted to your brand because you value them, helping their company maintain a high level of customer retention and repeat customers.
After all, it is more effective to retain old customers than it is to convert a new lead. Not to mention, previous customers spend 67% more than new ones.
Subscriptions
Offering a subscription makes their customers’ lives easier, giving them one less thing to worry about and ensuring their customers never run out of the products they need.
The Honest Company’s website proclaims, “We love our babies. We love your babies,” thus positioning their brand as a friend and ally to parents seeking healthful products. By taking some responsibilities off their customer’s shoulders—by, say, letting them forget about buying diapers because their customers know diapers will appear when they’re needed—The Honest Company allows their customers to focus on being better parents and loving on their little ones.
Promo codes
Another great way to optimize your email for conversions is to include a discount code in your welcome email.
A welcome email or a welcome series is a great way to welcome new subscribers into your community. The Honest Company uses their welcome email as an opportunity to familiarize new subscribers with some of their best content as well as a chance to offer a discount code to make their subscribers feel valued and incentivize them to make a purchase.
User-generated content
Additionally, on their social media campaign, The Honest Company features real Honest parents giving demos and talking about why they love Honest products.
Source: The Honest Company’s Instagram
This UGC, or user-generated content, not only provides a powerful testimonial, it also allows potential customers to witness a small bit of what it’s like to a part of an encouraging community composed of like-minded parents. UGC makes your company more relatable, builds trust, and drives organic impressions, all great ways to expand your reach and convert your digital audience into paying customers.
Both of these are great ways to recruit your customers to become brand ambassadors for you. You take work off the shoulders of your own people (at least a little bit) and you also manage to increase your customer’s engagement with your brand and products. They’ll get the chance to see themselves on your page, which helps them feel even more attached to your company.
Takeaways
When your company feels less like a business and more like a calling, you want to be successful. Luckily, you don’t have to sacrifice your story or values in your marketing. This is how you can adopt these practices to optimize your marketing to see better results for your company and make an even bigger difference.
- Be transparent with your audience and provide all the details about your products as well as how your products are made like The Honest Company does on their website.
- Keep your content consistent across channels and don’t be afraid to branch out and share the articles and news your audience is interested in, especially with news related to your company’s values
- Recruit your customers to care about your cause by highlighting awesome charities and ways for them to get involved individually
- Reward your most loyal customers with discounts and free gifts in order to increase retention and drive revenue
Whatever the mission of your company, whether you’re a non-profit or a publisher, digital marketing is key to the success of your company. And the more successful your company, the more good you can do in the world. Adopt a few of these tips in your digital marketing and you’ll be able to see better results
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