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The Beauty of Marketing on Pinterest: Numbers and Examples

When Pinterest became fairly known, it was impossible to suspect the impact it would have on the social sphere. Now, a few years later, it has become the fastest growing social network in history. Integration with websites is common place, brands have adopted it as their new go-to marketing platform, and the userbase keeps on growing.

If you want to see the power behind Pinterest traffic, you only have to look at the facts… and the brands who have already benefited from its use.

  1. Audience! ≈80% (2013) of Pinterest users are women (+50% of users have children) 92% (2014) of pins are made by women. Unlike other social networks, this one has a very clear gender-based demographic. Nearly all pinning is done by women, with a small sliver of males users littered among the users. This was a trend seen very early on, and it has only increasingly become the case since.
  2. Content: The top Pinterest category is food: 57% of users interact with food-related content. The most popular color of pins (in terms of interactions) is orange..
  3. pinterest statsReferral influence: Pinterest is a bigger traffic driver than Reddit, Twitter and LinkedIn… combined – Facebook holds the top spot, but Pinterest is next, driving traffic more than most social sites (Stats by Shareaholic as of 2013). While some social networks are losing referral influence, Pinterest is only growing – In 2014, Shareaholic released the findings of the last quarter of the year before. Among the four growing social media sites for traffic referrals, Pinterest was one of them. They saw a 30% increase.
  4. Conversions: While back in 2012 Forbes remained skeptical as to how much pinners were willing buy, the conversion potential is reported to be growing year by year (WE all know how women love buying what they like seeing, right?) Moreover, The average Pinterest user is within a higher income bracket, at around $75,000 per year. This might explain the high number of conversions from Pinterest links, with users 10% more likely to buy if the link was found on Pinterest. Quick Sprout found that Pinterest clickthroughs generated four times as much revenue as Twitter, and 27% more than Facebook.

Examples

 

Southern Swim

Using the shopping platform Shopify, Southern Swim decided to leverage Pinterest to promote their store. As a niche brand, they offered swim gear that brought to mind trips to the lake, namely in styles popular to the American South. They created look books and posted them on Pinterest, offering a visual catalog of their work.
Southern Swim
Within five weeks they saw more than 40,000 visits to their site, and more than 120,000 impressions, all generated from Pinterest. Through the use of customized boards and Pinterest giveaways, they have exploited this interest and seen some serious returns.

Kraft Foods

Knowing the popularity of the food board on the site, Kraft was one of the early brand adopters of Pinterest. They used the site to share recipes that included their product, along with high quality images of the finished product, and tutorials.
Kraft Foods
Using the clickthrough information from other pinners every week, they cultivate their content to respond to demand. According to the brand, they have seen the most progress using well lit food with color contrasts, and boards aimed at special events and holidays (such as their popular Christmas board).

The Container Store

High brand engagement has been a priority for The Container Store since day one. They have incorporated Pinterest so deeply in their marketing strategy that the entire plan would crash and burn without it. Which has seen great results, keeping to the home boards and offering organization and storage ideas for families.
The Container Store
What makes The Container Store an interesting case is that Pinterest was working for them before they ever adopted the platform. Before creating a business profile, the number one source of traffic driven to their website still came from Pinterest. This was thanks to the millions of users who were pinning their products straight from the site.

Conclusion

Pinterest rocks for driving traffic (especially in Pinterest-friendly niches). Don’t be fooled into thinking that only certain networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, will be your best options for a social marketing strategy. Don’t forget: Pinterest is a social network: too many brands look at Pinterest as nothing more than a content curation site. But it is still a social platform, and should be treated as one. Remember to engage one on one with your users.

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136 Responses

  1. Great post Ann! I’ve been active on Pinterest for over a year now and I’ve been saying it would grow. Currently Pinterest is 7th on my list of traffic referrals. I did a cool post on my blog “Using Pinterest to Attract Twitter Influencers” integritymcseo.com/using-pinterest-to-attract-twitter-influencers/

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