It’s hard to believe that Pinterest is already 5 years young. Yes, young. The highly visual social media platform has made many exciting announcements for businesses over the past few months and has released some impressive numbers as a friendly reminder of how the platform continues to gain popularity year over year. Among these announcements are a few exciting advertising initiatives like promoted pins and buyable pins.
As the platform gets closer to rolling out the promoted pins feature to all business accounts, I thought I’d single out 6 industries in particular that could (and should) benefit from promoting their pins. First, let’s take a look at just how much Pinterest has grown since last year.
According to Pinterest, there has been a 66% increase in pinning activity year over year. Most recently, Pinterest has announced they’ve hit 50 billion pins.
A total of about 1 billion Pinterest boards supports those 50 billion pins, compared to 250 million boards in April 2014.
More statistics courtesy of Marketing Land:
- Every day, about 2 million people pin product rich pins.
- More than 14 million articles are pinned each day.
- Of the 50 billion pins, 1.7 billion of them are recipes.
- 80% of the users are on a mobile device.
- The growth of male users on Pinterest is outpacing overall Pinterest growth. Male users in the US have doubled this year alone.
Now, let’s talk about the industries that are missing out on brand awareness, engagement, and most importantly, conversions, if they aren’t paying attention to promoted pins.
- Retail
Although this industry is very broad, most retail companies have one main goal: Sales. Through promoted pins, companies are able to target shoppers on Pinterest who are searching for specific key words or phrases. For example, a retailer focusing on women’s clothing could choose to target users searching for “women’s summer dresses” or “girls’ tops.” Don’t stop at just product related pins, though. Home Depot uses Pinterest for home improvement inspiration by pinning DIY projects and how-to instructional images. Each of these images links to their website.
- Real Estate
Architecture and home décor are two of the most popular categories on Pinterest today. To say that real estate companies and individual agents are missing out on their target market by not utilizing Pinterest would be an understatement. A few years ago Pinterest introduced Place Pins where users could add a location to each pin and board for search purposes. Place pins even include details like address, phone number, and directions. Now, advertisers can promote their pins to specific locations, narrowing down the target audience as precisely as the city they’re located in. I think we can all agree that this audience is going to be very visual, so make sure to hire a professional photographer to really catch the eye of your audience. Again, don’t just stop at the houses! Inspire users with home decorating tips, curb appeal advice, and information about the area to draw people in.
Real estate agents should be utilizing promoted pins on Pinterest. Here's why: Share on X
- Local Businesses
Small businesses and local businesses are also industries with many possibilities. Just like the real estate industry, having the ability to target users based on precise location is crucial to their paid advertising strategy. It’s more beneficial for local businesses to promote pins to their audience, instead of relying on place pins to draw attention, simply because by promoting a pin, it’s placed right in front of the eyes of your potential customer, instead of relying on users to search for your location. Shoppers are known to be very loyal to local businesses. Pinterest users are no different. Think of BuzzFeed articles targeting specific locations with titles like “10 Best Bike Trails in Minnesota.” These posts usually go viral so quickly because locals are much more eager to share and engage with content that relates to them. Put something related to a user’s hometown in front of them and there’s a good chance you’ll see an increase in awareness, engagement, and traffic.
- Non-Profits
While non-profits usually have very small advertising budgets, our experience so far has proven CPC results much lower than Twitter and LinkedIn and very close to Facebook advertising CPC (depending on your audience size, of course). The best part? You’re only charged for clicks to your website. Engagement is free! Like most other social networks, Pinterest pins that trigger emotion also trigger higher engagement rates. Promoted pins that inspire are a great way to spread the word about a non-profit’s campaign or initiative.
Now, non-profits can advertise on Pinterest for less money than Facebook: Share on X
- Artists
For emerging artists looking to gain more traction in the industry and grow their audience, Pinterest is a very under-utilized platform. Artists can promote pins of their music videos, cover songs, professional photos, branded gear, and even host contests and giveaways. Quick tip to get ahead right away: create a cover song of a popular artist/song and promote it by targeting that artist’s name in search results.
- Crowd Funding
Pinterest promoted pins are a great way to get “the next big thing” to go viral quickly. If you’re running a Crowd Funding campaign, consider promoting pins with eye-catching graphics and minimum text. While the category for Technology is quite popular on Pinterest, Search Engine Journal found that users are more likely to search for something tech related on Tuesdays so keep that in mind when running a campaign. If your campaign is not tech related, read the rest of the article to see which pins are most popular each day of the week.
Does your business fit into any of these six categories? Whether you’re in retail or the non-profit sector, in real estate or another locally based industry, looking for crowd funding or launching your career as an artist, Promoted Pins can help you increase brand awareness, audience engagement, and ultimately, conversions. If you’d like help integrating this new tool into your company’s social media marketing strategy, contact us here at Zen Media today.
Stats: Marketing Land
