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“Do you know Pinterest?”
Pinterest is a social platform based on visual content.
Unlike Facebook and Instagram, where users share about themselves and their daily moments, Pinterest is comparable to an image search engine. Users can find and share inspirations or ideas for their interests and hobbies.
While it doesn’t reach the user base of Facebook and Instagram, the platform is visited monthly by around 400 million people who actively use it: they save, share, rate, and draw inspiration from various topics. From home decor to gym workouts, from fashion to cooking recipes, there’s something for every taste and interest.
For this reason, Pinterest could be a valuable option for a company’s digital marketing strategy.
How Pinterest Works
Using the platform’s search engine, users can search for and save content they find interesting, pinning it to boards like photos pinned with a tack.
Photos, illustrations, infographics, video tutorials: all these different pins can be saved on personal boards categorized by common topics.
It’s also possible to save interesting content while browsing the web by adding a browser extension or directly from an overlay button on images, if implemented by the website owner.
Is that all? Exactly. Pinterest is simple and intuitive and, with constantly updated captivating content, it’s a social network that always manages to arouse curiosity and user interest, even just for passing the time.
Who are the Pinners? – Pinterest’s Audience
Pinterest has captured the interest of a predominantly female audience from the start, seeking inspiration for home decor, cooking, beauty, and more. While the male audience is smaller, it has still increased by nearly 50% year over year.
Over time, the platform has also attracted more Millennials and Generation Z individuals (of both genders), who find the right space on this social network to cultivate their interests, driven by image-based searches.
Why Should a Company Consider Pinterest?
For a business, Pinterest represents a great opportunity to capture the interests (and consequently, trends) of people who frequent the platform. This allows for valuable insights to decide where and how to direct a brand’s communication.
For example, a company dealing with products for mothers would find a “sudden paradise” in Pinterest: in the United States, about 8 out of 10 mothers actively use it, not only for inspiration but also to discover brands and make purchasing decisions.
And this isn’t just for the female target audience. According to the social network’s data, about 84% of weekly users use Pinterest to make purchase decisions, and similarly, around 83% make a purchase based on the visual content and brands present on the platform.
So, Pinterest isn’t just useful for branding, but also for driving traffic to a website: pins can also link to websites, making Pinterest an excellent tool for encouraging new user traffic (pinners love discovering new brands and products!).
Another strength of the red-pin network is the longevity of content. According to a Wisemetric study, a Facebook post gets half its views and clicks within the first 90 minutes of publication – and this is in the best-case scenario. This parameter is known as the half-life.
The half-life of a Pinterest post is three and a half months!
This drastically higher number probably stems from the fact that pins are much more accessible than Facebook or other social content. Pinterest offers users more opportunities to find their own content, which is why the life-value of pins increases.
In Conclusion
Many brands exclude Pinterest from their digital marketing strategy because they don’t think it’s lucrative, and especially because they believe it’s not suitable for their type of business.
The data presented so far could provide food for thought.
Even for a B2B company (whether dealing with products or services, like Mailchimp), Pinterest can be an integrated channel in a brand awareness strategy: it won’t guarantee immediate sales, but it can bring more traffic to your website.
This doesn’t mean that Pinterest is a must for all B2B brands, but it shouldn’t be excluded beforehand either.
Companies like RYOBI tools prove this: an electric tool manufacturer that, with the right visual storytelling strategy, manages a business profile on the platform. In this case, the company decided not only to showcase its products for sale but also to gather inspiration on small DIY projects that every customer could achieve using RYOBI tools.
After all, as they say, people don’t want a drill, they want a hole in the wall.
Or in this case, inspiration for a DIY project.
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