Posted: 25th May 2016
Many thanks to Helen Reynolds from The Ink Gardener for letting us feature this great blog about Pinterest for Business
Last week I was lucky enough to attend Buy Yorkshire conference in Leeds. The highlight was a seminar by Adele Cooper, the enthusiastic and friendly head of Pinterest UK. Despite being beset by video gremlins, she gave some amazing insights into how Pinterest can work for your business. Here are some of my notes:
It’s a place where people can save images on virtual online pinboards. The images can be from websites or from other Pinterest boards. People can catalogue ideas. It’s especially popular for fashion, travel, food and interior design.
In the UK there are 10 million UK visitors a month. 80% access Pinterest from a mobile and 70% are female.
The largest group is 25 – 34 age group. 21% of Pinterest users are from this age group. As the UK population for this age range is 13%, it goes to show Pinterest is grabbing their attention.
Pinterest is used to plan big life events and smaller everyday moments. Many of the biggest life events such as getting married, buying a house and having children happen in the 25 – 34 year age range. For example 80% of brides are using Pinterest.
Pinterest is for people planning ahead. It’s something personal, so often isn’t widely shared.
These statistics were a real eye-opener though:
When shopping in-store, people are looking at Pinterest to help them decide what to buy. 57% are looking at food products and 42% are looking at fashion. This is definitely food for thought. What could be better than reaching people when they’re in active buying mode?
Adele shared these statistics about the majority of searches for Christmas on digital platforms:
You can install Pinit on your website for free. Adding small line of Java code is all it takes for customers to pin content from your website to their Pinterest board. Ask your web developer if you’re unsure.
Another free addition is setting up Rich Pins. These pull images automatically from your website and the supporting information. So if your price changes, this feeds through to Pinterest without your having to change it. Made.com increased their revenue by 173% by introducing Rich Pins.
Promoted Pins have to be paid for. However the promotion angle is subtle, with just a ‘Promoted by’ under the image. This means the Hide rate (as in people clicking X to hide them) is 90% lower than other platforms. There are also Cost Per Engagement and Cost Per Click options, based on an auction model similar to Google.
Pins should be helpful. Think about people actively planning something.
“The image pulls you, but text drives sales.” – Adele Cooper, head of Pinterest UK
As you can imagine, as a copywriter I was more than a little delighted to hear this.
Adele said your images should be beautiful or helpful. This made me think of the quote by the artist and designer William Morris:
The same seems to go for Pinterest images.
This all depends on what type of business you are. But it seems to work best for:
The curtain manufacturer sat next to me was planning to embed Pinit onto his website that very day…
