Is Pinterest Important for your brand? (spoiler : the answer is yes, here's why!)
As a marketer or business owner you’re reviewing your social media marketing efforts. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin? Check. But what about Pinterest?
With a market value of $15 Billion+, shares of the digital scrapbooking site were up by 28% following their public debut on the New York Stock Exchange in April 2019. Trading under the symbol "PINS," the stock delighted investors and reawakened marketers. So, prompted by this news, Moondust is asking the question, Is Pinterest important in 2019? Let’s look at the latest stats and platform features, and what they mean to marketers.
Pinterest in Numbers
· Pinterest has 250 million active monthly users
· 40% of new Pinterest signups are men
· However, men account for only 7% of total pins on Pinterest.
· The median age of a Pinterest user is 40
· Half of Pinterest users earn $50K or greater per year
· Each pin on Pinterest drives 2 site visits and 6 page views
· Each pin is worth around 78 cents in sales.
A Pinterest Recap
If you’ve been away from Pinterest for a while (or you never joined) then you may have missed out on the latest platform features. Here are the updates that retailers, advertisers and content creators will want to see.
#1 Pinterest Updates for Retailers
If you’re a retailer using Instagram and not Pinterest, you could be missing out. New Pinterest updates are helping retailers get in front of customers who are looking for related products, and Pinners to see items that match their unique style. As of October 16, 2018, Pinterest stopped supporting the old Buyable Pins, so what’s new?
- Pinterest Catalogs - Brands like Levis’s pictured below were quick to get in line for Pinterest’s new catalog feature. A new dedicated feature means that brands can now upload their full product catalog to Pinterest, turning products into dynamic Product Pins.
- Personalised shopping recommendations: Now, Pinterest users can see personalised shopping recommendations based on the pins they have been saving on their boards. Users can click “more ideas” next to style, beauty and DIY boards, then the shopping tag to access recommendations.
- Shopping Ads: Pinterest has made shopping ads available to all businesses through its Ads Manager tool. After uploading products to Pinterest, brands can easily promote items to targeted users.
- Shopping Search: Pinterest users can now search for the products they want to purchase and view the shopping results in their home feed.
- Link your Instagram, YouTube and Etsy to Pinterest: Independent and mainstream retailers can now link their Instagram, YouTube and Etsy account on Pinterest. That means that when followers pin your content from those platforms to Pinterest, your account will get attributed with engagement stats. It also provides retailers with a multichannel approach to promoting stock and building their community.
- Pinterest Lens: If you’ve been MIA from Pinterest you may have missed this update. Pinterest Lens allows users take a photo of something like a pair of shoes and instantly view similar ones on the site. It’s features like this that are winning over the next generation of Pinterest users.
NEXT ACTIONS
To really benefit from the changes, retailers should create a business account. To utilise the Pinterest sales channel, you need to meet the following requirements.
Be on the Shopify basic plan or higher.
Use the Online Store sales channel.
Have a refund policy documented.
#2 Pinterest for Advertisers
Pinterest says it’s seen a 50% year-over-year increase in small businesses advertisers on the platform, and new hire Matt Hogle’s dedicated role will be to develop new programs designed to maximize opportunities for smaller operators. This is great news for advertisers with a smaller budget because the platform is committed to supporting their needs.
- Conversion optimisation – Advertisers can now utilise a new campaign type that optimises Promoted Pins for specific consumer actions, rather than just clicks. What does that mean? It means that you can choose conversions as a campaign objective. By doing so, you can encourage specific actions like online checkouts, increased signups or stronger leads. Pinterest optimises adverts specifically for Pinterest users more likely to take your desired action.
CASE STUDY
Using conversion optimisation, Flaviar, a club for spirits enthusiasts, saw 409% more traffic and an 8x increase in leads.
Promoted Videos: Pinterest has also expanded its Promoted Video offering for advertisers with traffic or conversion goals. Promoted Video for ‘conversions’ goals now takes visitors to a landing page that houses the advertiser’s website and the video. We know from experience that landing pages produce better conversions and this is proving true for Pinterest advertisers too.
One Tap Pins: As of this year (2019) all Pinterest ad formats have been migrated to the one-tap system. That means that when a user taps or clicks your ad, they’re taken directly to your landing page. Again, much better news for advertisers who know that fewer clicks mean greater conversions.
Promoted Carousels: Advertisers love carousels and Pinterest introduced theirs in November 2018. They feature two to five images that Pinners can swipe through. Each card in a Promoted Carousel ad can include a different image, title, description, and landing page.
CASE STUDY
Brands who tested out Pinterest Carousel included Cheerios, Covergirl and Everlane. Cheerios Promoted Carousel ad campaign resulted in an 11.4 point lift in ad awareness and 8.6 lift in message association. Check out Cheerios carousel here
NEXT ACTIONS
Advertisers should get set up properly on the platform before investing ad dollars. Before launching a Pinterest ad campaign, install Pinterest Tag to track the actions users take on your website after seeing your Pinterest ads, including checkout, sign up, and search.
#3 Pinterest for Content Creators
If you’re a content creator, then Pinterest should be exciting you right about now. The site is no longer just about pictures of candles and crochet patterns. Pinterest is supporting longer form content and more brands are using the platform to run innovative campaigns. And then there’s the longevity of your content. Facebook posts come and go but Pins are timeless. They’re searched for, found, and repinned over time. Content doesn’t fade like it does on other social media platforms making your creation efforts truly worthwhile.
- Story Pins: We love storytelling at Moondust and now Pinterest will support this popular content marketing trend. A new type of Pin format is being tested with select business accounts. Story Pins feature up to 20 pages of images, text, and links and appear in users’ home feeds with a cover image and a title.
- Pinterest for SEO: Pinterest is known to be effective for SEO, if your content is optimised of course. Content creators should ensure that text, even captions includes searchable keywords. Also, that images always include tracked links to your website.
- Pay Attention to Naming: Content creators will want to make sure board names are specific and relevant to their audience. They should contain good keywords in the description and name and be logical to readers. For example:
Spring 2019 - Shoes
Spring 2019 – Purses
Spring 2019 – Perfumes
- Care About Visuals: Remember that like Instagram, Pinterest is a very visual platform. The ideal aspect ratio is 2:3. Or, 600x900px, square 600×600 works well too. Pins longer than 1260px like infographics, will get truncated.
- Utilise Content Curation: Pinterest is all about content curation so utilise it. Share great content and thank the owner. In turn, be sure to brand your images and include web links so that your own content, when curated, is actually functional.
- Watch Out For Trends: Content marketers need to be talking about subjects that users are interested in. So, it’s good to keep up with trends on Pinterest and use them to form the basis of your content. Here, Pinterest shares with us its upcoming trends for April. How incredible is this for data?
Check out more Pinterest trends here.
NEXT ACTIONS
Content creators and social media managers will want to dig into Pinterest’s ever advancing analytics panel. https://analytics.pinterest.com is great for viewing impressions, click throughs to your site, your most popular pins and much more. Analysing this data will help you to see which content is popular, what should be boosted and what can be repeated.