the state of pinterest · pdf file merce sites from pinterest are 10% more likely to buy than...

The State of Pinterest Marketing

The State of Pinterest Marketing

1. Visual discovery (browsing & guided search)

2. Visual content sharing (photo pinning and repinning)

3. Content-based conversation (liking and commenting)

From a marketing perspective, Pinterest also boasts im-

pressive stats for driving referral traffic and e-commerce

sales (particularly among women), including:

– 1 in 5 U.S. internet-using women have a Pinterest ac-

count. This demographic also skews young, affluent,

tech-savvy and early-adopter

– The vast majority of Pinterest content showcases at

least one consumer product. Only 20% of pins dis-

play people’s faces.

– Pinterest is now the #2 source of social referral traffic

to websites, trailing only Facebook

– According to Shopify, shoppers referred to e-com-

merce sites from Pinterest are 10% more likely to buy

than referrals from other social networks, and also

buy more per shopping cart checkout

– Each “pin” that a user attaches to one of his or her

(usually her) boards is worth, on average, an esti-

mated $0.78 cents in additional sales to the brand

whose merchandise is featured

In addition, Pinterest is another example of a mobile-first

social network, with 75% of its daily traffic coming from

mobile apps. Pinterest users are 27% more likely to make

a mobile purchase from Pinterest than Facebook, and this

percentage is even higher for mothers on Pinterest.

Pinterest now has over 40 million monthly active U.S. users, making it one of the largest visually-driven social networks. Although Pinterest adoption trails leading mobile, visual platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram and Tumblr, it has grown quickly through an experience that revolves around three key features:

Pinterest: A 2014 snapshot

Pinterest Monthly Active Users

Total Users

Mobile Users

Mobile Only Users

Source: ComSource, BI Intelligence

What Makes Pinterest Unique

Pinterest may also be introducing a new phase of visual

SEO, where content indexing for search is influenced not

only by traditional social meta-attributes like hashtags,

but also visual themes and characteristics. As Pinterest

expands its new Guided Search offering and integrates

more features like product price drop alerts on rich pins,

the platform is likely to win visual product search share

away from Google.

Of course, this opportunity hasn’t gone unnoticed by

brands. There are now more than 500,000 business ac-

counts on Pinterest, and 107 Fortune 500 companies with

branded Pinterest accounts, representing major year-over-

year growth.

Visual, mobile, brand-friendly At a time when the average person checks their phone nearly 150 times per day and 17% of people also use it to make purchases, Pinterest provides a different channel to engage female mobile and visual consumers. The platform also shows relatively high engagement, with the average user spending 14.2 minutes on Pinterest per visit.

The State of Pinterest Marketing

Percentage of Fortune 500 Brands on Pinterest

Source: ComSource, BI Intelligence % of F500 with Pinterest Accounts

The State of Pinterest Marketing

Top Brands on Pinterest

Unlike Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, most of the top

brands on Pinterest in terms of content engagement and

follower count are smaller brands not in the Fortune 500.

In particular, early-moving women’s fashion, beauty and

retail startups like ModCloth, Birchbox, Etsy and Refin-

ery29 consistently outperform larger retail brands in their

respective Pinterest categories.

Among the top 10 most followed brands on Pinterest,

only three -- Nordstrom, Lowe’s and Yahoo! -- are from the

Fortune 500, whereas virtually all -- with the possible ex-

ception of the last, Yahoo! Sports -- are focused on female

audiences from a content perspective.

Top Ten Brands on Pinterest by Followers

Pinterest Followers in Millions

Top Content on Pinterest

Top Content on Pinterest

Popular Pinterest Categories

Popular Pinterest Categories by Gender

Source: “Specialization, Homophily, and Gender in a Social Curation Site: Findings from Pinterest” http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~schang/papers/cscw14.pdf

Based on two metrics, shares (i.e., repins) and engagement (the % of likes and comments per post relative to impressions/board followers), analysis of the 1,000 most followed boards on Pinterest show five types of visual content captures the largest share of social attention:

1. Recipe Inspiration, Food & Drink (an estimated 20% of all pins)

2. DIY Crafts

3. Home Decor

4. Fashion

5. Weddings

The State of Pinterest Marketing

Making Your Brand Stand Out on Pinterest

However, marketers should remember that Pinterests’

communities also respond positively to content centered

around inspiration, achievement, educational instruction,

personal connectedness and family values -- fertile ground

for almost any consumer brand to craft messaging and ex-

periences around. Ultimately, authenticity, creativity and

visual quality dictate content success on Pinterest, not the

category itself.

Optimizing your own brand’s Pinterest presence begins

with three steps:

1. Profile optimization

2. Board optimization

3. Brand consistency and guideline adherence

The first step, profile optimization, requires thoughtful

attention to detail in terms of how your brand integrates

with Pinterest. Remember to:

– Include relevant search keywords in your brand’s

profile title (i.e., “Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts”

instead of “Four Seasons”) and about description

– Verify your website using an HTML file or a META tag

– Link and display your Twitter profile

Next, turn to your boards and create at least 15, each

with at least 5 unique, interesting and high resolution

images per board. This way, any user visiting your profile

will see it completely filled out above the fold with strong

Any marketer approaching Pinterest as a brand-building platform should start by asking how their brand identity maps to Pinterest’s core content categories and user interests. For brands with pillars in food, fashion, beauty, home décor, DIY or sports, there’s a natural content-audience fit.

How to put your brand’s best foot forward

The State of Pinterest Marketing

visual content. Put your brand’s best, most relevant boards

at the top, and include common Pinterest and Google

keywords in each board title. Pinterest boards are indexed

for search by both Google and Pinterest.

Finally, set consistent, clear brand guidelines for image as-

pect ratios, fonts, color palettes and other brand elements

within your posts. Visual consistency – across categories,

topics, boards and collections inside boards – is an import-

ant factor for driving content engagement on Pinterest.

More Efficient and Effective Pinterest Marketing Now that your brand has a presence and understands the

audience it’s trying to reach, it’s time to focus on optimiz-

ing your content. Data indicates content has a much longer

discoverable life on Pinterest than Facebook or Twitter,

making Pinterest less of a real-time marketing play and

more of an evergreen content ecosystem. Unlike Facebook

and Twitter, Pinterest boards can rank on Google, and a

larger percentage of content discovery is from search, rath-

er than feed browsing. As a result, your marketing team

needs to think about the longer-term relevance and appeal

of your content, since repins and category-based searches

will resurface it weeks and months after it was originally

posted. In fact, newer analysis indicates that almost 50%

percent of referral traffic and e-commerce purchases from

a branded Pinterest post happen more than 2.5 months

after the original pin.

But, just because pins have a longer discoverable life,

doesn’t mean infrequent pinning is an effective strategy.

Pinterest’s own best practice guidelines suggest pinning at

least once per day to keep fresh content appearing in your

followers’ feeds. Early research has also uncovered useful

guidance for how to tailor your image content on Pinterest

to attract higher engagement, including:

– Positive, aspirational content tends to outperform

more emotionally balanced content

– Use bright colors and broad color palettes: using

images with multiple dominant colors attract 3.25

times more repins per image than images with single

dominant color

– Use photo filters with modest saturation: images that

are 50% saturated have four times more repins than

images that are 100% saturated and ten times more

repins than images that are desaturated