Why E-Commerce is so ‘Pinterest’ing
Pinterest crossed 7 billion pins with places recently. Plus, 67% of Pinners consult pins on their mobile devices while in stores according to this recent study. With a single platform replacing search engines, community building and e-commerce, its no wonder that there are several things that big and small businesses alike need to be aware of about their customer’s most recent undying obsession.
Oh so Engaging
Pinterest is one of the most engaging platforms for community building. Solid brands and companies have created user generated boards, hosted contests, and become curation experts. Software and tech companies have exhibited boards about foods or arts, and conversely artists have tech boards. The cross pollination of interests makes it a fascinating platform that almost requires engagement.
Fundamentally, the key advice is to treat Pinterest like a search engine with smarter capabilities. Post, watch, measure, tweak and grow.
Pins Last Forever
Unlike Twitter, Facebook and Instagram where feeds are time sensitive, pins last forever. For seasonal and time sensitive content, searching on the former platforms brings anything that is current to life. Searching on Pinterest brings back anything relevant to the topic, from any point in time. This alone makes Pinterest a timeless tool, where an aptly compelling and well labelled pin can be key to track backs to your sites. On a cautionary note, since pins last forever, phrases like “new” will undeniably be irrelevant, something for marketers emerging from marketing 101 to be wary of.
As such, every pin should have context that make it inspirational, provide information, a how-to, or have a call to action. Steering clear of promotional information, Pinterest functionality (pin here type phrases) or hashtags in the pin itself are not recommended, as it is a discovery platform. Using the 500 character limit wisely (bearing in mind that only 75-100 will show up whilst scrolling) is key to ensuring Pinterest success.
Using Rich Pins
According to Shopify Pinterest sales orders via referral can be up to $80, compared to $40 from Facebook, and pins with prices are 16% more likely to get clicks and likes. Pinners consequently spend up to 15X more than Facebook users according to Sephora. Which brings about the topic of why one should utilize rich pins, enabled via Pinterest and some back end coding.
Rich have extra information simply embedded onto the pin itself. Pinterest defines these as app, movie, recipe, article, product or place pins. The rich pin typically shows pricing, has a direct link to product page, and show up with recommendations from the site that are relevant. Small business owners with Shopify storefronts can configure this functionality too. Compared to regular pins, this is a major benefit, as the latter require pinners to enter the price manually, which can only be done by the original user and not the repinner, which is also only visible on hovering.
Location Fundamentals
Businesses can attribute to a geographic location with either rich pins, or Pinterest place pins, launched in November 2013 using Foursquare’s location API. As of October 2015, location details are added to pins automatically, rivaling the likes of Google and Yelp with handy info like addresses, numbers, store hours, preview on maps, etc. For B2B businesses, mapping locations and clients is always an idea. For retail and community outlets, discovering nearby places makes it helpful when planning a trip, bringing in avid travelers amidst a plethora of shoppers who make up the largest constituent of pinners. This is helpful for the discovery phases of Pinterest, branching away from its lucrative roots in e-commerce, with an opportunity for travel brands or global brands with international inspirations and storefronts.
Buyable Pins vs. Track Backs
If anything, buyable pins is an indication that Pinterest is a commerce contender. While most small businesses have to get on a waitlist for enabling the magic blue button to buy pins, the shoppers who are pinners exhibit more diversity. As per Pinterest’s own blog, Pinners are almost 4X more likely to shop online than non-pinners, with many of them indulging in self treating as well as shopping across a variety of businesses, particularly small businesses. So while you may not have a buy button yet, ensure that your pins can be tracked back to your sales platforms for your potential customers!
The SEO Game
Ever conducted search engine optimization (SEO) by battling algorithms to yield what one would aspire to be a biggest average monthly search number? Some are learning that SEO is not exactly a mathematical marathon to target a handful of words, and how related phrases and associations have more than they are merited for with rankings. Which is why Pinterest, with its buyable buttons, comes in handy. For those savvy with e-commerce, its interesting to know that the average order value of a Pinterest user is $123.50, compared to $54.64 for a Facebook user, as per the Internet Retailer. Buying buttons are a clear indication that Pinterest is a community focused more on discovery and retail sales, versus say an Instagram or a Facebook.
All the more reason to have accurately labelled file names, descriptions and board titles that can drive qualified traffic. More importantly, keyword searches on Pinterest can help with content relevancy, directing traffic to and from purchasers. Sources, and link backs, can be direct e-commerce sites, blogs, or simply sources for similar content. Pinterest can be used to optimize SEO by the Pinterest auto populated search, and also the Pinterest guided search, i.e. semantically related key words and associations, which can be tailored to fit the specificity your product or service needs.
