What is Pinterest? Is it Worth Using to Promote Your Online Store?
Pinterest’s ‘Pin, Click, Buy’ process is a silver bullet for e-commerce traders.
It combines social networking with marketing to overcome one of the biggest challenges businesses face today: buyers’ suspicion of anything that smells even vaguely like advertising. Pinterest's social media side acts like a butterfly net, gathering willing buyers who willingly thumb through the very same ads they ignore on other parts of the web.
Interesting, huh? It gets better.
Every time someone repins one of your products (or ads), they are casting a net to catch other people in your ad web. One simple pin can be exposed to millions of people without much effort on your part because it is presented as fun or useful instead of an advertisement.
Put simply, your buyers enjoy their Pinterest experience, despite the fact that they’re unwittingly advertising on your behalf and exchanging marketing content with their friends.
How Does Pinterest Work?
Members’ boards display the products and stories that have grabbed their attention online and within the site itself, ultimately creating a fun-to-navigate collage. Like an ordinary collage, each member’s creation is a unique conglomeration of his personality. Unlike a typical art project, a Pinterest board can include videos and text-based content, which gives you a great deal of flexibility as a marketer. The site has a rapidly growing membership of 70 million monthly users, with each member spending an average of 15 minutes daily on the site. These statistics pale in comparison to Facebook's billion users, but don't underestimate the power of a pin. Pinterest actually drives more traffic to websites than Reddit, YouTube, Google Plus, and LinkedIn combined. Impressive, isn't it?
Advertise Your Products on Pinterest
Most users don't flock to when they are ready to make a purchase. Instead, they are in the idea and inspiration phase. But that doesn't mean you can't convert them. Pins that display price tags receive 36% more likes. And if conversion doesn't happen immediately, at least you will have a semi-permanent spot on their board. Consider it as a bookmark for a future purchase.
Engage with Pinners
Curulate’s analysis reveals that Pinterest users are more likely to respond to detailed images, rather than the simple gifs that work best in video marketing. Images without faces are repinned 23% more often, and dark, textured images are far less successful than light, untextured ones. Once you’ve built that first, one-second impression, your pin needs to add value to users’ lives, giving them information or entertainment that they would benefit from even if they didn’t buy your product. Responsiveness and transparency build the trust you need to boost purchasing decisions by up to 77%.
Group Boards
When you are ready to take your Pinterest marketing to the next level, start participating in group boards. These are boards based around a specific interest and managed by a group or community. There are a few online tools to help you to discover group boards that fit your demographic. Board Deck and PinGroupie are tools that automate the discovery process through keywords. They even offer a free analysis of your market demographics. Any old fashioned marketer would be in his element with that much free data, and I'm guessing you are no different.
Interacting
If you want to become an active part of the Pinterest community (and you should if you're interested at all in Pinterest marketing), you must interact with other community members. Makes sense, right? Every time you repin something, it leaves a trail that buyers can follow to reach your page. The same applies when you tag other users and comment on pins. As you interact, keep an eye out for members who are dominant in the community. These influencers can reach your target customer from a different angle than you can. It's somewhat like they are the friend who is recommending a product. The Wall Street Journal reported that businesses that harnessed the loyalty of influencers achieved double the engagement. And be on the lookout for Pinterest's upcoming influencer strategy.
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