The Power of Pinterest
Pinterest is often overlooked, even ignored, when choosing social media platforms for your business. If you’re marketing to women, moms, cooks, readers, crafters, gardeners, DIY-ers, homeowners, shoppers, travelers, brides, or millennials, you may be missing out. Look at it this way: LinkedIn is about business, Facebook is about friends and family, TikTok is about quirky videos, and YouTube is about how-to. Pinterest is about dreaming and doing.
If you’re not familiar with Pinterest, it’s a combination of a scrapbook, vision board, and magazine for modern consumers. In 2020, 98 million Americans were active on Pinterest, or about 25% of the entire U.S. population, up 11% from 2019. Pinterest is a place to get ideas, find solutions, get inspired, and take a fresh look at any project. It’s a highly visual platform that allows users and advertisers to upload and share images or videos that often link to your typical “how-to” blog posts. Pinterest is also full of products to buy, designs to explore, books to put on your reading list, recipes to collect, hobbies to explore, gardening tips to try, and life hacks to experiment with.
And like most online tools, Pinterest algorithms track user activity and interests to curate the information the user sees in their feed. This simply means that the platform’s code pays attention to the posts (called Pins) you like and assigns importance to the types of images you spend time viewing and interacting with.
For example, if you start spending time looking at matcha cupcake recipes, Pinterest will begin to show you lots of images and recipes for matcha cupcakes and other related products.
If you want ideas on how to fix brown spots on your lawn, your Pinterest feed will fill up with lawn care Pins. Pinterest learns what you like and then populates your Pinterest feed with images and messages that matter to you.
A Customized Feed Makes Digital Marketing Easier
Even if you’re not ready to advertise on Pinterest, creating pins may be a great way to reach your best customers. After all, Pinterest sends images and messages to consumers based on their interests. Pinterest consumers want and expect information on buying, learning, watching, reading, or accessing the products and ideas being featured in Pins. That means that your Pins are more likely to reach relevant audiences, especially if you create ads (also called paid Pins).
Who Should Market on Pinterest?
Is Pinterest a good fit for every business? Absolutely not. But there are ways to make almost any category more successful on Pinterest.
1. Position a Product as a Life Hack
Life hacks are easy solutions that allow the user to do an everyday task really well. (See the “Easy Makeup Hacks” Pin from L’Oréal above.) Even showing the proper way to apply eyebrow liner will work on this platform. And if you have a NEW way of doing old tasks, or a new use for an ordinary object, you’re destined for greatness.
2. Create Rankings or “Best of” Lists
In the “Best Products For Windowsill Gardening” Pin (shown above), Gardener’s Supply Company sells planters and garden supplies, but they lead by positioning a set of products as the “best” for a given application.
3. Demonstrate a Benefit
Show what makes your product better. The “Clean-Cut Paint Edger” Pinterest ad (shown above) shows their product in action and a botched job at the bottom. It’s a simple but effective tactic.
4. Utilize Buyable Pins
While posts can help you get notices, paid ads, and buyable Pins will deliver a large audience quickly. Advertisers can format these Pins to contain pricing information, availability, a product title, and a description. Users can start the buying process simply by clicking on the Pin.
Want to Learn More About Pinterest and Digital Marketing?
If you want to know how Pinterest might help your business grow sales, contact us at Cup O Content. We’ll answer your questions and help you think through obstacles in your business strategy with no obligation.
And make sure you check out these Cup O Content blog posts about social media platforms.
