Why Your E-commerce Business Should be Using Pinterest
The results of our social media marketing survey showed that, of the 123 Highlands and Islands businesses that took part, only 19% used Pinterest to promote their business last year. If you think it’s all wedding boards and quotes, think again – Pinterest is a top driver of traffic and the platform is said to be three times more effective at generating leads than Twitter. And if you run an online shop, here are some more reasons Pinterest may be an effective platform for your business.
Pinterest Demographics
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/how-pinterest-ads-are-changing-game
- The site has 110 million active users and about 70% of these are female (the infographic above shows that 45% of online women are users of Pinterest)
- Food, home decor and women’s fashion are some of the most popular categories
- Pinterest is the top social channel for online shopping – 55% of US users have used it for shopping (only 12% shop for products via Facebook and 12% via Instagram)
- Many users are on Pinterest to make purchasing decisions
- Two thirds of pins are brands/products
- 87% of users have purchased a product they’ve seen on Pinterest and 93% have planned to in the future
Why use Pinterest Advertising?
Promoted pins are aimed at increasing your visibility to a targeted audience. They can help to get your products in front of people who are ready to make a purchase. Promoted pins are searchable, therefore it’s important to add keywords so your pins will be found by Pinners who are looking for your product. (According to Pinterest, there are over 2 billion keyword searches and over 250 million visual searches made on the platform each month).
Advertising Campaigns
We’ve noticed more and more blog posts recently about the success of Pinterest advertising. As it’s in its early stages, there is less competition than other social media platforms.
There are three different types of ad campaigns:
- Awareness – this puts your business in front of people who haven’t heard of you
- Engagement – this encourages users to interact with your content by clicking on Promoted Pins or repinning
- Traffic – this directs people from your Pinterest ad to your website
Setting up a Campaign
- Convert your account to a business account
- Choose your campaign goal
- Select your start and end dates
- Choose your budget
- Select the pin to promote (make sure you are promoting high-quality images)
- Decide on the landing page
- Select your audience (choose relevant keywords and interests to help you reach your target audience)
- Choose your maximum spend
- Track the results
This blog post by Hootsuite has more information on setting up a Pinterest advertising campaign.
Pinterest Image Requirements
Vertical pins are said to get more engagement as users are mainly on mobile devices and these images take up more of the screen so are therefore more attention-grabbing. Vertical images must be at least 600 px wide and they can have an aspect ratio of 2:3 to 1:2.8.
Still not convinced?
One of the most interesting stats we came across recently was in this Social Media Today post on how Pinterest ads are changing the game: half the people who will see your tweet will see it in the first 15 minutes, with the other half coming across it in the following couple of hours. Half the people who will see your Facebook or Instagram post will see it in the first 8 hours. But the ‘half-life’ of a pin is between 3 and 4 months. Very ‘pinteresting’…!
If you would like advice and training on how to make Pinterest part of your social media strategy, why not get in touch.
Sources:
http://www.razorsocial.com/optimize-pinterest/
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/how-pinterest-ads-are-changing-game
https://business.pinterest.com/en/blog/picture-this-advertising-that-goes-beyond-words
https://www.dreamgrow.com/promoted-pins-paid-pinterest-campaign/
https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-use-pinterest-for-business/
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-promoted-pins-on-pinterest/
https://adespresso.com/academy/blog/step-step-guide-pinterest-marketing/
