Is your business using Pinterest? Facebook, Twitter and Instagram tend to get a lion’s share of the love from social media marketing strategies, while tossing aside the millions of opportunities to be discovered on Pinterest. With 93% of people in the U.S. using the platform when planning to make a purchase, we decided to take a look at why people are bypassing this important social media channel.
Pinterest Is For Girls!
Roughly three-in-ten online Americans use Pinterest. While it’s true that women use the virtual pinboard at higher rates than men, keep in mind that this platform is a strong search engine. With more than two billion monthly searches, keeping your brand present in search results can drive qualified, engaged traffic to your site. In fact, visitors referred to a site by Pinterest have a tendency to visit multiple pages on the site and make purchase decisions more quickly than other referring sources.
With the holiday season ramping up, it’s also an ideal time to cast a wider net with your marketing dollars. Depending on your product or service, it’s not just your ideal customer that you need to market to. Many people are turning to Pinterest for gift ideas and making shopping decisions for other people. So when it comes to Pinterest over the holidays, don’t just market to your ideal customer, market to the holiday shopper.
Plain Ole’ Pins
Believe us, we get it. Between expanded content calendars and promoted pins, Pinterest can take quite a bit of work. Something people tend to miss, however, is that it’s a platform built on sharing and curating other content. This means the impressions on your pins are typically far greater than the size of your audience.
So, when planning your strategy, make sure you create an extensive mix of your own content while also repinning valuable and relevant content by other users. Did you get that? You are EXPECTED to be curating content from other sources. So while Pinterest done right does take a time investment, there’s also plenty of relevant content already out there that you can utilize. Plus, pinning is fun!
Promoted Pins
The next time you are browsing Pinterest, take a closer look at who shared the pin. Every so often you will see two extra words: “Promoted by.” Promoted pins allow you to put budget behind your best pins and target them to people who would be most likely to click or repin based on demographics, interests, search keywords, location and business data, such as customer lists, lookalike and retargeting.
Remember those two billion monthly searches we mentioned earlier? This is like taking paid search and pairing it with a platform like Instagram to drive visual results based on specific keyword searches. And brands are seeing the results. According to Sprout Social in 2015, promoted pins can often outperform organic pins, up to a 30 percent increase in earned media from campaigns. What is really great about the platform, however, is that these promoted pins continue performing after the campaign is over, earning even further impressions, clicks and potential conversions for your business.
The Farthest Reach
Contrary to other popular social channels you are probably on your pins will be seen by MORE people than just your followers. WHAT? In today’s world that is unheard of.
Zombie pins might sound like something that you would only find at the end of October, but they are aren’t scary at all. Pinterest works in waves. Certain topics move in and out of popularity regularly. If you create an engaging promoted pin that pin could be resurrected later and drive even more traffic to your site without you putting any more of your budget towards promoting it.
A long-term strategy that aligns with your organic marketing plan, utilizing best practices for promoted pins are encouraged to deliver the strongest results. Luckily, ANDERSON has just the team to guide you.
A Few Things To Remember
Have we convinced you to join the Pinterest bandwagon? Keep these things in mind before you get started:
- Start with a strategy: make sure it aligns both your paid and organic efforts and leverages best practices
- Make the images on your site easy to pin, and chose the images you pin wisely so you stand out, in a good way
- Use rich pins to add extra details, like price, availability and location, to ease the consumer’s path to purchase
- Keep your boards and pins organized, keeping the overall user experience in mind
- Have fun!
Happy Pinning!
