5 Ways to Leverage Pinterest for your eCommerce Site
By Jen Scott, Applications Engineer
As discussed in a previous LYONSCG blog post on monetizing social media, social commerce is gaining momentum and one of the platforms best poised to take advantage of it is Pinterest. In 2013, 21% of pinners said they bought a pinned item later, and a year later, 47% of pinners bought something based on a pin referral. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth have concluded that millennials are the primary drivers of the social commerce movement, and so, because of their size and buying power, we can expect to see a continued emphasis on using social media to facilitate online shopping.
Don’t miss out! If you’re selling online, it’s imperative that you establish social commerce strategies for your business. Here are five ways you can leverage Pinterest eCommerce specifically to increase sales.
Use Top Pins in your Web Storefront
Use the Pinterest analytics data from your account to determine which are your top pinned products. Then use this information to feature those products in your product searches and to establish callout messages on product pages on your site. Add top pinned product carousels to your category landing and home pages. Create a “Most Pinned” badge on product tiles. These tactics will help fuel a product’s popularity on both your site and also your Pinterest page. Your pinners are a free focus group; use the data they give you to better understand and speak to your audience and convert pins to sales.
Put Pins in a Life Event Context
Recently, Millward Brown Digital and Pinterest partnered together on a study that revealed 47% of active pinners were using Pinterest to plan for a life event. Whether it was for a wedding, the arrival of a baby, a home remodeling project, a vacation, or even planning for a party, pinners used Pinterest to collect ideas and products. The pinners were more receptive to new products and brands while collecting pins.
eCommerce can leverage this knowledge by creating boards that showcase products that fit into these life events and design pins that speak directly to those pinners. In other words, don’t create a “Dresses for Spring” board, create a “Bridesmaid Dresses Perfect for any Wedding ” or “Prom’s Best Dressed List” board.
Promote your Pins
Promoted pins look like regular pins, but you pay to have their visibility increased. Unlike other social media advertising, the results for promoted pins continue to roll in long after the initial post. It’s not uncommon for pins to see an increase in impressions a month or more after its first post. You’ll continue to get impressions long after your campaign has ended.
Pinterest offers three types of pin promotions: Awareness, Engagement and Traffic. Each ones comes with a different payment plan, but the latter two are pay-per-impression or pay-per-click based. Pinterest counts a closeup, repin or click as an impression.
Here’s more information on using Promoted Pins to advertise your products.
Utilize Rich Pins
Rich pins include pricing and stock data directly in the viewable pin, in addition to a brand visual. Users don’t have to click through to see the product data, but if they do, they’ll be able to go directly to the PDP on your site. Rich pins result in a better click through rate (CTR), increased discoverability, and higher referral traffic to the PDP. In addition, the “real-time pricing” feature of rich product pins means that if someone repins your rich product pin, that user will get an email when the price changes. You can leverage this price drop broadcast with your marketing campaigns to reach consumers beyond your email list.
Encourage Purchases with Buyable Pins
Take your rich product pins one step further with the ‘Buy’ button. Pinterest is rolling out buyable pins that enable users to purchase new products directly from pins. Currently, buyable pins are only available in the US on the iPhone and iPad Pinterest apps, but plans to roll them out across all of North America are in the works. Buyable pins are distinguished with a blue price and blue buy button. If a product has multiple variants, users can swipe through to find the one they want.
Pinterest does not take any cut from your sales, and because the process uses your already established business services, you have full control over delivery.
Want to learn more? Request more information to see how our Digital Marketing practice can enable your business to grow with social commerce.
