The social media marketing secret and what it provides.

There seems to be an under-utilised social media platform that not many businesses have incorporated into their marketing strategy due to the misconceptions about what Pinterest can do for businesses selling products or services alike. Pinterest is a social network platform that enables users to share images that they have found by ‘pinning’ them (Sandorford, n.d.). Due to the nature of Pinterest being to share and pin images it can be considered a visual search engine or a visual “Google” (Sehl, 2019).

Pinterest is a continually growing platform between 2018 to 2019 Pinterest grew 38%, in 2018 Pinterest originally had 171 million users and at the end of the third quarter of 2019 Pinterest had 225 million active users. Today Pinterest has 332 million active users which means it has grown by 28% every month since the third quarter of 2019 (Sehl, 2019).

Pinterest’s growth alone should entice all marketers to utilise its social networking platform due to the ability to reach larger target markets. Businesses can promote their products and services on Pinterest by pinning an image and utilising descriptions that are short and to the point encouraging users to repin or save the image (Fitzpatrick, n.d.). Pinterest like many other social media platforms enables businesses to provide a link to the business’ website where users may scroll through and search the varying products or services offered (Fitzpatrick, n.d.). Businesses may connect their other social media platforms to their business Pinterest account to ensure all current consumers follow them through multiple platforms (Daley, n.d.).

Pinterest is a powerful marketing tool not only for businesses offering products but also for those businesses offering services to their consumers. For service organisations Pinterest can be used as a way to create a visual resume for their consumers and Pinterest users, as an example business’ providing website design services can share images of sample web designs that they have created as a way to demonstrate their capabilities and build brand awareness for users (Sandorford, n.d.).

Pinterest offers a new way for businesses to engage with their consumers and other users by encouraging customer feedback through repins of the most liked products and services (Sandorford, n.d.). Businesses can also address user questions or comments through Pinterest as a way of engaging with them and should also reciprocate the engagement by repining and commenting on their follower’s pins as a way to build stronger relationships (Daley, n.d.).

Pinterest is a strong marketing tool to use when creating sales conversions as it the second most effective tool to use to generate leads/traffic to a business website with one business stating it received 67% more traffic to its website through Pinterest(Neilpatel, n.d.), at least 50% of Pinterest users have bought a product or service after seeing a promoted pin on Pinterest (Sean, 2019). Pinterest encourages users to save pins they like to refer back to later for potential purchases, 70% of Pinterest users save and search specific pins (Sean, 2019). 93% of active Pinterest users have stated that they use the platform to plan for future purchases which inspire them and 87% of the users have stated Pins have a big influence on their buying decisions (Neilpatel, n.d.).

Facebook has been known to drive high conversion rates however, Pinterest drivers higher value conversions as users are spending more money on Pinterest than any other social networking platform (Neilpatel, n.d.). Pinterest is therefore a great tool for any business to use as it provides a larger market reach which provides a highly effective manner to spread the word of business products/services , the users of Pinterest are more likely to visit a business website and purchase than on any other social network while encouraging and engaging with customers and users from attraction through to purchase (Neilpatel, n.d.). Pinterest Analytics also enables businesses to track and improve images based on what users like and respond to the most (Sandorford, n.d.). Therefore, Pinterest is a powerful tool to be utilised by businesses to improve sales, awareness and customer leads.

References:

Daley, R. (n.d.). The Ultimate Pinterest Marketing Guide: How to Improve Your Reach and Promote Your Brand. [Online].
Fitzpatrick, P. (n.d.). 12 Strategic Ways to Use Pinterest Marketing. [Online].
Neilpatel. (n.d.). How to Generate 67% More Customers With These 3 Pinterest Hacks. [Online].
Sandorford, B. (n.d.). 7 Ways to Use Pinterest to Promote Your Business – Plus Infographic. [Online].
Sean. (2019, November 5th). Pinterest Marketing: The Only Guide You Need to Make It Work.
Sehl, K. (2019, December 10th). How to Use Pinterest for Business: 8 Strategies You Need to Know.