Most brands used to think about Pinterest in the Context of Radio Caroline, the now infamous pirate radio station parked offshore in the English Channel, sending out a stream of rock and roll that offset the boring pulse of the BBC.
The signal was great but not a lot of market-share, or “scale” as start up geeks are prone to say.
That’s no longer the case.
Pinterest has morphed into a social media behemoth delivering stellar marketing ROI in the form of traffic, on site eCommerce incremental sales revenue and strong brand awareness.
Pinterest is Now a Must for Consumer Facing Brands
Publishers and brands ignore at your peril: he hard numbers underscore the blistering growth (especially among creative females), BuzzFeed’s second highest generator of referral traffic is now Pinterest!
Based on Comscore’s most recent numbers, Pinterest is in high growth mode (blistering) with an estimated 75M users as of the end of Q-2 2014. And, Pinterest user’s spend money, with an estimated $170. per purchase, contrasted with $95. via Facebook and $71. via Twitter users.
If your brand is targeted educated women buyers (you’ll strangely find lots of boards via men devoted to more mundane images) Pinterest is where you want to be.
With a demographic rich target market, comprising educated, sophisticated females with discriminating taste.
Who is on Pinterest: 52% between the ages of 24-34 (boomers are MIA), 57% have a four year college degree and a 88% have purchased a product they’ve pinned, win an average 105 repins on each image shared.
Content Curation Defines Your Brand on this Social Platform
If your images are primarily self-promotional and product-centric don’t expect repins (brand amplification) or interaction with Pinterest Users.
You can log in to Pinterest and find terabytes of funky images with descriptions written by amateurs with a low signal to noise ratio.
They aren’t doing anything for the brand they represent.
Spend time researching and sharing content - a good rule of thumb for image curation is 1-3 hours for a Pinterest Board with 30-40 images, 30-50% of images should be “lifestyle” oriented.
Check out Pardee Homes via Twitter and Pinterest - their boards are a superb example of stellar content curated and targeted for home buyers in Las Vegas and L.A.
Why Pardee Homes Stands Out
Pinterest Boards all have high quality images, with a good mixture of Boards featuring their homes and Boards with lifestyle content visually targeted for their customer demographic.
Our mini critique: Pin descriptions are too short, with no hashtags on their pins - long form descriptions drive SEO rankings and deeper engagement on the platform.
Note: your brand will generate a much higher volume of Likes and Repins with well written Pin descriptions, potentially piquing the interest and social engagement of the viewer.
Don’t be boring on Pinterest with your brand - look at the Gucci’s Pinterest presence - it’s all magazine or print centric high quality images, with no soul, no real personality or anything that generates brand impact.
Boring and doesn’t engage the viewer.
This is an iconic brand no less and you would think they would invest a lot more in their digital assets - but their Boards are product and model centric, with the personality of a tree stump.
For another digital reference point, Forever21′s Pinterest Boards are just about as boring and mundane as Gucci.
It’s just product centric images, with no real lifestyle branding components (videos!!? MIA) - not what you would expect, especially for a brand that’s targeting a younger brand conscious demographic.
The images are glossy, the models are fashionably draped but the brand resonance doesn’t move the meter much. No videos, music, or how about featuring customers wearing the product. That would be cool and a great way to throw up a contest on Facebook.
Who Wouldn’t Love FreePeople’s Boards?
Free People has a great mix of boards. They are selling product but lifestyle elements boards are part of their content strategy.
There’s an embedded brand statement - something is being conveyed that attracts the visitor and drives engagement.
Board descriptions are wonderfully done: compelling and sophisticated.
Image content has been well curated and thought out.
Images are sophisticated, provocative, tasteful and thematically put together across multiple boards.
The sum is more than this parts.
Pinterest is About Brand Cachet and Good Tactical Marketing Execution
Pinterest is a full blown social media platform: on site eCommerce, first generation analytics, more robust commenting process, deep linking functionality and more.
Many brands on Pinterest never get any traction just using low cost outsourced labor to create funky images, with a high volume lots of pins marketing strategy, with no real optimization for boards and pins.
That’s not a great marketing strategy.
Pinterest success can be conveyed in two words: content curation.
Creating dedicated board with thematic content matching your target market, optimized with hashtags and keywords in the Pin and Board titles and long form descriptions.
- Create high quality content comprising images that resonate with the Pinterest community (it’s competitive BTW).
- Don’t be a boring brand (no guts no glory) - creativity has to be embedded in all marketing activities on Pinterest.
- Use Pinterest to leverage content marketing costs: repurposing all Infographics, Images, Staff, Company Functions, Events and Tradeshows, YouTube, Instagram (in some cases), Vine Videos, Blog images.
- Make customers part of your social fabric: use them in images and boards. #becreative
- Be social and engage with the Pinterest community - comment back on other Pins and Boards.
- Refresh your account 3-5 times a week at a minimum with 1-3% new boards as a per centage of your total number of boards.
- Map and assess Pinterest’s analytics against Google - we see some disparity in the former.
- Recognize success on Pinterest is again just content curation in purest form: your own and others.
- Remember, Pinterest is overwhelming female demographic (75% estimated): it’s about cachet, style, being eclectic and targeting the right demographic.
- If consumer facing brand, test ads via Pinterest vs. Facebook.
- Integrate some personality with a mix and match “board strategy,” blending product-centric boards with “lifestyle” boards consistent with your market focus.
- Deep link into your product pages with dedicated pins and a URL string mapping to the right page to drive SEO benefits.
- Download and use the Pinterest browser plugin to curate content as you move around the web.
- Verify your account with Pinterest.
- Twelve great WordPress plugins for increased efficiency.
If your a consumer facing brand you should be on Pinterest and investing $3-5K in creating a quality profile, a minimum of ten boards and 500-1K quality pins.
It’s going to drive traffic, help you position your biz against others (it’s a digital landgrab), generate incremental revenue and help you build a stronger social community.
As above, success on Pinterest is about sourcing and sharing great images resonating with your target market. And, engaging with them on the platform: think social.
Need inspiration? Coolhunters click here.
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