Boris is the keeper of the data around here and he called me over the other day all excited.  I looked over his shoulder at the client’s website analytics and he pointed to where Pinterest had surpassed Google as the number one driver to their website.  This is huge, people.

With 70 million users – 80% of them female, Pinterest shows no signs of slowing down.  And they just made some upgrades that will keep the picture powerhouse growing.

As guru Gary Vaynerchuk wants you to know, every social media is different: storytelling differs for different social outlets.   

On Pinterest, clearly consumers are in a ready to buy frame of mind.
Which is why  59% have clicked through from a Pin to make a purchase.  The good news for you is that the majority of those purchases (33%) are in Food and Cooking followed closely by Fashion and Clothing (32%).

 

Pinterest vs Facebook:

What’s the key to Pinterest’s power?  As we’ve said before, it has developed into a crowd-sourced catalog.  Here’s further proof:

Look at that second metric:  70% get inspiration to buy, vs. 17% on Facebook.

Want more?  Shopping cart averages are higher when purchasers come through Pinterest.  So if you’re a food marketer with sales through Amazon, you should be making Pinterest a major focus of your efforts.

Get Rich – Rich Pins, that is

Now with the Rich Pins feature on Pinterest, you can add extra information to images – like links to ecommerce.  There are currently five different kinds of rich pins: product pins, place pins, article pins, movie pins and recipe pins.

Recipes can take viewers to your website for more information, or straight to your Amazon page for purchase.  In fact, Amazon has become the lead beneficiary of the Pin phenomenon, with over 16,000 pins per week of products they sell, even though they are not doing the heavy pinning themselves: they’re letting the brands pin and link.  http://econsultancy.com/blog/63996-with-little-effort-amazon-becomes-the-most-shared-retailer-on-pinterest

 

Digiday summed up the opportunity for CPGs nicely: “Product pins enable retailers to attach real-time pricing, inventory availability and a “Buy this” link to their product images. This added data not only provides relevant information to the consumers who are pinning these products but also means a lot of new marketing opportunities for retailers and a strong way to directly connect pins back to the retailer’s site.

The key to rich product pins is the real-time pricing feature. For example, if you pinned a coffee table from Overstock.com, which uses rich pins, and a week later the price drops, you would get an email from Pinterest notifying you of the price change. The price-drop notification email comes from Pinterest, not the retailers, which is an incredibly valuable feature for retailers. This means that even if someone is not on a retailer’s email list, through rich pins, there is still a way for retailers do drive pinners back to their sites.”

Given the frequency viewers are on, and the amount of time they spend, Pinterest is cracking the old “portal” model open again.

HELPFUL HINTS:

• 75% of Pinterest traffic comes from mobile devices.  So if you’re linking to your website, make sure your site is mobile optimized.
• Although many brands have their own boards, 59% of pins are posted by individuals.  So make it easy for visitors to your website to pin items they like, and put your Pinterest link next to pinable content.
• Quality wins: invest in professional quality photography. 80% of the pins are Re-Pins, so unless you’re an adorable kitten, quality wins.