Does Pinterest Marketing Make Sense for Your Brand?

Pinterest, a social networking site filled with pictures, infographics, and articles, is much more than just a place moms share recipes and Millennials pin their favorite outfits of the day. Pinterest is becoming one of the leading social media sites and has over 250 million active monthly users, 175 billion posts, and 2 million users who save shopping-related pins every day. When done correctly, this visual platform can make a lot of sense for certain brands when it comes to your omnichannel strategy.

But the question remains: does Pinterest marketing make sense for your brand? Just like any marketing strategy, Pinterest marketing isn’t one-size-fits-all. It can be a great tool for certain eCommerce or experience sites, but might not be best for some high-level B2B companies. But before we decide whether or not it makes sense to you, let’s learn a little bit more about Pinterest marketing, what demographic is on Pinterest, and whether or not you should add the platform into your social media marketing arsenal.

What is Pinterest Marketing?

Pinterest marketing is using the social media platform to spread awareness of your business. Just like other social media networks, like Twitter and Facebook, Pinterest has both paid and organic options for brands. If you want to approach the platform organically, you can create your own boards. Boards are how users categorize their pins, which are images, a link, and a description. For example, many Pinterest users have boards for things like recipes, outfits, workouts, and more. They search Pinterest to pin things to their board. You can also pin things from the internet with Pinterest’s web extension.

You can also pay for promoted pins, which are a lot like Facebook’s boosted posts. They will show up natively in the platform and look like non-sponsored pins.

Who is on Pinterest?

Knowing who’s on Pinterest will help you decide if this marketing platform makes sense for your brand and how you can use Pinterest for marketing. According to Lyfe Marketing and OMNICORE Agency:

• 60% of new sign ups are women
• They have a Buying Power Index of 211 (compared to 100 of the average internet users)
• 40% of users have an average household income of $100,000
• 93% of users are actively researching to purchase
• 50% of users buy products after seeing a promoted pin
• 70% of users search and save pins, meaning that they actively use the platform
• 85% of users view the site on their mobile devices
• 87% of users purchase a product after researching it on Pinterest
• The median age of Pinterest users is 40, but younger users tend to be more active on the site

Does Pinterest Marketing Make Sense for Your Brand?

Now that you have a better understanding of the demographics of Pinterest users and how big the site has become, you might wonder: does Pinterest marketing make sense for your brand? While every marketing strategy will be different, Pinterest may make sense for:

• Home Decor brands
• Hospitality brands
• eCommerce
• Lifestyle brands
• Brands that cater to Millenials and Gen Z
• Health and fitness brands

According to this article by Neil Patel, these are some of the most common categories for Pinterest users. Quotes, animals, celebrities, sports, art, and more.

How to Use Pinterest for Marketing

If you’ve decided to make the leap into Pinterest marketing, there are a few best practices to follow to get the most return on your marketing efforts. An important part of Pinterest marketing is the visuals, as this is an image-driven, social networking site. Pinterest marketing makes a lot of sense for brands that can convey beautiful imagery, such as product shows, lifestyle photos, and other creative aspects of their business. Clear, high-res images that are lighter and airy get the most re-pins. In addition, photos without faces get 23% more repins. When marketing your business on Pinterest, aim for simple, clear, and beautiful photography.

In addition, you’ll want to make sure your images are sized correctly. There are three sizes of images on Pinterest – the square pin, the recommended pin, and the max height pin. For the three, we recommend 600×600, 600×900, and 600×1260. Your profile image can be 400×400 (check out our Social Media Image Sizing Cheat Sheet for more recommendations!).

You may want to experiment with copy on your creative when marketing on Pinterest. The site actually coined the word “instructographics,” which refers to images with short instructions or how-to copy on the images. These images are popular on Pinterest because users can easily pin them for future use.

Another tip for marketing your brand on Pinterest is to connect the platform to your other social media networks. This will help you get more followers because you can leverage the ones you already have on Facebook and Twitter. You can easily connect these accounts in the account settings tab on your Pinterest profile.

Pinterest might not be on the top of the marketing to-do list for a lot of brands, but it’s quickly proving itself as a sustainable platform with a wide range of users. Not only are the users on Pinterest actively involved on the site, but they are also further down the buying journey and are more likely to make a purchase or convert. Take advantage of this marketing strategy by creating beautiful visuals, compelling copy, and strong calls to action and you’re likely to see traffic (and potential leads) increase.